Complete Guide to Asana for Project Management [+ Tips]

What do employees at Google, Spotify, and NASA have in common? They all rely on the same project management tool. Asana, developed to improve employee productivity and company efficiency, provides a platform for collaboration from concept to completion.

The software tool is intended to improve project management, but it takes an understanding of the fundamentals to become a truly effective project manager. That’s why the University of San Diego partnered with Pathstream to develop the Professional and Continuing Education Asana Project Management Certificate.

Hands-on practice and projects will provide students with a portfolio to show future employers, as well as a certificate co-branded by USD and Asana. Get acquainted with this project management tool and its renowned benefits in this blog post.

What is Asana? 

Asana software offers various features to streamline individual and collaborative work — regardless of where team members are physically working from. Users have the ability to create tasks, assign them to team members, set due dates and document expectations. With Asana, progress is tracked through project timelines, calendars, and other clear visuals. See how much work team members are taking on across projects, track their progress and more.

The following are some key features of the Asana task manager tool:

• Keep a calendar and log time
• Sync work in real time to all devices
• Assign tasks
• Maintain communication between team members
• Integrate popular systems that are already working for a team (Google, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce and more)
• Track workload by team member
• Set and track goals — individual and joint
• Build Gantt charts in minutes
• Use automation when appropriate to streamline processes, reduce errors and spend less time on routine tasks

Pros & Cons of Asana for Project Management

PROS	CONS
• Modest price point (ranging from a free version to $24.99 per user, per month) • Flexible task management in personal workspaces • Task automation as you see fit • Collaborative workspace among remote workers • Flexible for industry and project-specific needs	• Learning curve that comes with a new tool • Reviewers prefer desktop over mobile version • Tasks can only have one assignee (this is intended to minimize confusion, but is a common question from customers) • No internally hosted (on-premises) version of Asana • Default settings send many actions to email inbox as notifications

How Much Does It Cost?

Asana offers three pricing tiers. Here’s a summary of each to consider while you weigh how to use Asana effectively for your business:

BASIC	PREMIUM	BUSINESS
Free	$10.99 per user, per month	$24.99 per user, per month
• Intended for newcomers to project management • Capable of managing tasks and personal to-dos • 15-person capacity • Unlimited tasks, projects, messages, activity log and file storage	• Unlimited dashboards • Workflow builder to automate tasks • Custom field options • Administrative console to help manage team members, billing information and security settings	• Includes every premium feature • Portfolio management used to see a high-level status of important projects • Time tracking • Advanced integrations with Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, Tableau, Power BI

Complete pricing information can be found here.

Tips For Using Asana Effectively

Here are some tips to familiarize you with Asana:

• Create a project for large coordinated efforts; a task for a singular to-do for one person; a subtask to break one task into smaller pieces.
  
• Try out an Asana workflow template or create one of your own.
  
• Get organized by creating sections; deadline, work stage, timeframe and task type are some of the most common.
  
• Think of custom fields like spreadsheet columns that can be filtered and sorted; create fields for status, priority, cost and more.
  
• Archive your projects to remove them from your view without losing any content.

FAQ