Project ManagementAsana Project Management Software Review

Asana Project Management Software Review

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If you are in the market for project management software to increase your development team’s efficiency while making their lives easier, then Asana should be up for consideration. While not perfect, it offers several pluses in the form of user-friendliness, seamless onboarding, simplicity, and a full set of project management features specifically related to developers.

To help you make the most informed decision possible, we will break down Asana’s pros, cons, and pricing, so you can see if it fits your organization’s needs as a project management tool.

Asana Project Management Software

What are the Pros and Cons of Asana Project Management Software?

As with most things, Asana has its good and bad. Luckily, it has more good than bad, making it a solid project management pick for small and mid-sized organizations seeking customization, affordability, and flexibility. With that being said, here is a look at Asana’s strengths and weaknesses.

Read: Best Project Management Tools for Developers

Asans Pros

Where does Asana excel? In various places – as demonstrated in our highlights below.

Excellent Collaboration

One of the biggest reasons why software developers seek project management software is to bring their teams together to improve cohesion and efficiency. As such, collaboration features play a big part in choosing PM software, and Asana is strong in this department.

Many PM software offerings lack sufficient collaboration tools, but that is not the case with Asana. It gives you everything you need to collaborate and share ideas in one place, such as group and team communication, Google docs, .PDF and .jpeg sharing, and more. You can assign tasks to specific team members, designate priorities, create task dependencies, set and adjust due dates, and chat without having to switch between apps. And, to ensure nothing gets lost in the shuffle, all of the above can take place within a single card, so everyone is up to speed and on the same page.

What is one form of collaboration that can waste a team’s time? Going back and forth via email. With Asana’s collaboration tools – like the calendar view – that is avoided, as team members can see each others’ schedules to view progress and changes in real-time without having to send and sift through constant emails.

To further simplify collaboration, you can manage to-do lists and discussions directly in Asana. If your team has a favorite tool that it wants to stick with, they will likely be able to do so thanks to Asana’s third-party integrations with email apps and other popular messaging applications, including Outlook and Slack.

Read: Project Management Software for Developers

A Variety Of Project Views

You get tons of flexibility in terms of project views with Asana. This is a major plus in Asana’s favor, as other project management software tends to offer just one to two views at the most. Whether you want to manage tasks or view projects through lists, Kanban boards, timelines, calendars, workloads, or portfolios, Asana has you covered. Since team members may differ in their view preferences, this flexibility gives them the power to pick what they like most, which can boost overall productivity and employee satisfaction.

Asana PM Software

As mentioned, Asana is an ideal PM software pick for development teams that place a premium on customization. One area where this comes into play is with customizable project dashboards that you can tweak to your liking to get quick access to the specific information you need. With real-time updating, the days of feeling disconnected from your team or out of the loop will be over.

Extensive Integrations

While Asana offers most of what you would need to complete projects efficiently, you can further extend the software’s functionality with over 100 third-party applications. A sampling of Asana’s integrations includes such developer favorites as Zoom, Zapier, Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox, just to name a few.

Support For Agile Project Management

Development teams that employ the Agile methodology should find Asana’s features right up their alley. Unlike many PM tools for developers, Asana has the flexibility to adapt to Agile teams with support for Kanban, Scrum, product launches, sprint planning, work requests, bug tracking, feedback, roadmaps, and more.

Read: What is Agile Project Management Software?

Time-Saving Automation

Time is of the essence for any development team, and it is a significant reason why many seek project management software to increase productivity. Asana can help you save time since it makes it super simple to automate workflows, repetitive tasks, and processes, so you can dedicate more resources to other areas.

For example, with the graphical workflow builder, you can easily create custom rules, actions, and triggers. And, if you want to create basic automation, like checking a box or assigning tasks to the subsequent team member in the flow, you can do that too, plus much more.

Flexibility And Adaptability

Although we are looking at Asana through the lens of a development team, this PM software can be used for much more. Asana’s feature set can work wonders for teams of all sizes in different industries, including healthcare, marketing, and construction. What’s more, it can also mesh well with various management methodologies.

Use Asana for your dev team to give their productivity a boost. And, if your organization also has sales, marketing, operations, IT, human resources, or finance departments, they can use Asana as well, thanks to its superb versatility.

Asana Project Management Review

A Top-Notch Free Version

As you sift through various project management software solutions, you will probably conclude that their free versions are virtually unusable. In other words, while most free plans give you a glimpse into what the software has to offer, there is not enough there to be functional.

With Asana, the opposite is true, as its free plan offers a bevy of features to get your team started without paying a penny out of pocket. If you are looking to manage basic projects and your team has under 15 members, you can use Asana at no cost forever. This includes integration with time tracking tools too.

Other highlights of Asana’s free plan include support for unlimited teams and projects, multiple project views, messaging, file storage, activity logs, and more.

Read: Best Project Management Software for Game Developers

What are the Cons of Asana Project Management Software?

While Asana offers a robust set of features, it does fall short in certain areas, as evidenced by the following cons.

You Can Only Assign Tasks To Single Users

Asana limits task assignments to single users to avoid confusion. While helpful for some developer teams, you may see it as a disadvantage if you want to assign tasks to multiple users. There are workarounds to this obstacle, however, such as duplicating tasks and assigning those duplicates to other users.

The Mobile App Needs Some Work

If you are looking for PM software you can use on the go, you may be a bit turned off by Asana’s mobile app. Although it works, Asana is best used on a big screen if you want a stress-free experience.

Excessive Notifications

Some say Asana is too distracting with its notification emails, especially right out of the box.
Luckily, you can turn these notifications off by tweaking the notification settings.

Asana Project Management Tool Pricing

Asana offers different pricing plans to fit every budget. These pricing tiers break down as follows:

Asana Basic

This free for forever plan is ideal for developers, project managers, or teams looking to get started with project management. It offers unlimited essentials, such as projects, tasks, storage, activity logs, and comments, along with three project views. The Basic plan also gives you some reporting features, plus integrations with over 100 apps.

Asana Premium

The Asana Premium plan costs $10.99 per user, per month, and comes with everything the Basic plan offers, plus timeline views, automated workflows, enhanced reporting, and more.

Asana Business

For $24.99 per user, per month, you can enjoy Asana’s Business plan, which offers portfolio views, advanced workflows, and reporting, plus much more.

Asana Enterprise

Last but not least is Asana Enterprise, which comes with every bell and whistle under the PM software’s umbrella. To get pricing for this plan, you will need to contact Asana directly.

Read more project management software reviews and tutorials.

Asana Project Management Alternatives

Still not convinced Asana is the right project management tool for your team of software developers and programmers? We have a list of Alternatives to Asana Project Management to help you find the right PM software.

Interested in Asana and want to learn how to get the most out of the PM solution? Check out our list of Tips and Tricks for Asana.

Featured Partners: Project Management Software

Wrike

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Wrike’s top-notch workflow management software allows you to easily visualize priorities, boost collaboration, and maintain control of your projects. Bonus: you can move seamlessly between apps, without logging in or out. Wrike has more than 400+ integrations with popular platforms such as Google, Dropbox, Microsoft Office, and many more. Automation and AI features strip away time-consuming admin tasks so you can do the best work of your life.

Learn more about Wrike

monday.com

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monday.com Work OS is the project management software that helps you and your team plan, execute, and track projects and workflows in one collaborative space. Manage everything from simple to complex projects more efficiently with the help of visual boards, 200+ ready-made templates, clever no-code automations, and easy integrations. In addition, custom dashboards simplify reporting, so you can evaluate your progress and make data-driven decisions.

Learn more about monday.com

Quickbase

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Big ideas aren’t simple to execute. So we’re here to help you tackle any project, no matter how complex. We’re Quickbase.

Quickbase helps customers see, connect and control complex projects that reshape our world. Whether it’s raising a skyscraper or coordinating vaccine rollouts, the no-code software platform allows business users to custom fit solutions to the way they work – using information from across the systems they already have.

Learn more about Quickbase

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