Asana

Review of Asana: By Joe Posante, 2016 Asana – project management for collaboration efforts.  Sets tasks, make comments, set deadlines. Price:  Free      Users:  anyone Basic information: What does the method or tool "do" ­ in other words, what skills, practices, and/or means of collaboration are supported by this method or tool?

• Asana is a To-Do-List on steroids.  Asana has a multitude of functions, all centralizing around a specific task that you can create around a single project or a multiple/complex project.  Within these tasks you can assign “jobs” to others, create goals of completion, and Asana  even shows a handy little graph to show how far you have gone to complete your task/project so that everyone you are collaborating with can review what stage the collaborative tasks/projects are in and how close to completion you are.   Even within each task you can coordinate a series of mini-tasks that need to be completed before moving on. Asana also allows you to add files from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox or any media to any task or conversation.    All of your tasks are synced with a calendar and provides reminders as well.  Another great aspect to the tasks are the feeds that are provided within each task.  This helps to coordinate communication and collaboration, as well as to stay organized with whom said what and when about whichever. Teams can also set up team pages that allow for task conversations to help everyone clarify what still needs to be done and project conversations that allow discussion back and forth to keep the team on track to their goal.  One of the best features of Asana is that you can get email updates about just the tasks that important to you and not emails between the whole team.
• Also important - Asana has a mobile app!

Usage: How is the method or tool being (or might it be) used in your current project management and design, your teaching, and/or your graduate coursework? What type of example activity might be developed for utilization by someone unfamiliar with the tool?

• I can see this tool being used in the 6-12 setting in the classroom.  Personally I can see this tool being used for group projects/research.  Asana would allow the students to have a series of tasks that need to be completed, shows the steps to completion and even gives them visual cues of how much more they need to complete.  It would also allow the convenience of self-accountability within the group by showing specific tasks that each group member would be responsible for with a specific date on the calendar for them to follow.
• This tool would also be helpful in our graduate coursework to help us identify goals and set tasks within a team.  Each person could be assigned, or sign up for a task and then mark it as complete.  The communication features of this tool would allow for everyone to follow conversations, give/solicit feedback and would as discussed above, give a visual chart allowing you to see how far you are until completion of the assigned task.  A team would also be able to set reminders and notifications of upcoming due dates.

Design: What are the affordances and constraints of this particular method or tool in relation to current/future collaboration, team or group work, and project management?

• Asana is great, for the right user.  I can easily see some people going overboard with creating tasks.  The more tasks that you create the more variables are being added.  You can easily get carried away with the amount of tasks.  With that, you can also easily click the completed check mark off, even when there is nothing to show that the completion actually took place.  I like the feed for each individual task, but I think it would be more helpful for a general feed about the actual project; perhaps a home page for the project that shows a list of the tasks should also provide a group feed frame?
• Asana appears to work best for a bigger team/group of collaborators.  With the task/multitasking assigning of work, it could become cumbersome for a small group of three or four.  This tool appears to be geared for bigger groups of say 6-10 or larger.

Relation: How is this method or tool similar/dissimilar to other methods or tools you have previously used? How is it similar/dissimilar to those methods or tools your peers in this course have already reviewed?

• Asana is similar to the Google features in aspect to the synchrony of the calendar, tasks, and forum.  
• Asana is also very similar to Trello, Wrike and Wunderlist, Backbone.  They all have similar functionality and all have rave reviews like Asana.

Media: Incorporate multiple forms of digital media to illustrate the functionality/purpose of this method or tool.

• Asana Mini-Tutorial:
• Asana; Getting Started

Reflection: How does this method or tool relate to course themes and/or professional practices?

• Asana is a great project based tool to collaborate in the task/goal orientated aspect.  If you have a specific deadline to complete something that has a series of steps to complete in order to complete the whole, use Asana.  Asana allows for team members to easily collaborate and communicate and set deadlines.  This tool would allow for educators to quickly and easily assign tasks to groups of students and then follow the students progress visually and through task conversations.