Creating effective projects in Asana

Whether you're launching a product, orchestrating a marketing campaign, or simply organizing your weekly team meetings, this article will help you optimize your projects for efficiency and collaboration.

Creating a project that’s relevant to your team

Projects allow you to organize all tasks related to a specific initiative, goal, or significant piece of work in one place. The key is to tailor your projects to your team's unique needs and structure them effectively. Here you’ll find examples of when to create projects. 

Product launch

Create a project to plan upcoming product launches. Break down your project into sections such as Read Me, Sprints, Milestones, Research, Risks, Solutions, Bugs, Open Questions, Experiments, and Reference. This not only provides a clear roadmap but also helps in managing tasks efficiently. 

We suggest using timeline view and setting due dates to meet deadlines.

Marketing campaign

For marketing campaigns, Asana projects can help you track progress, build schedules, map out channel strategies, and keep all campaign assets together.

One-to-ones 

Create one-to-one projects with people you collaborate closely with where you can add tasks as agenda items. You can set up one-to-one projects with peers or your manager. These project's permissions should be set to private to members, so that tasks are private to members of the project. Learn more about project permissions.

Reference project 

Projects can serve as valuable repositories for reference tasks, such as company policies. Adjust the project permissions to comment-only to maintain a clear and organized reference space. You can also create projects for personal reference notes, keeping your information easily accessible.

Weekly team meeting agenda

Asana projects are perfect for organizing your weekly team meetings. Each team member can contribute agenda items and set priorities. Assign the task to yourself or to the person discussing that agenda item.

To streamline discussions, consider adding fields like Minutes and Priority. This ensures that your team efficiently covers high-priority items first.

Organizing your project with sections and custom fields

Sections

Dividing tasks into sections within your project is a powerful way to organize it. For example, a project for creative requests could have sections like New requests, Assigned, In progress, Review, and Completed. This allows for a clear workflow and effective task management.

Custom fields

Custom fields enable you to add additional data to your tasks. They help you track work according to your team’s needs and can bring you up to speed on the progress of your project at a glance.

Adding a priority field can help your team prioritize their workload or meeting agenda items, depending on your project's use case.

Examples of custom fields can be found here.

Project templates

Project templates are a significant time saver. They allow you to create custom, reusable templates to kick-start new projects in seconds. 

If you frequently use a particular project, like an employee onboarding project, save it as a template to save time in the future. You can create a project template from an existing project by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the project title and selecting Save as template.

You can also create new custom templates by following the steps outlined here.

Project overview tab

The project overview tab provides valuable information to the team and project members. It's the go-to place for understanding the project at a glance.

Project description

Add a project description to provide users with more information about the project. Use this space to set the tone for how the team will work together; include meeting details, communication channels, and any other essential information.

Project roles

Assign project roles such as Project owner, Approver, Contributor, or any other role that suits your project. This ensures clarity of responsibilities and keeps the project organized.

Key resources and attachments

Make use of the overview tab to attach key resources and important attachments. This makes it easy for team members to find relevant information without searching through various tasks.

Status updates

Create status updates to keep all members and stakeholders informed about the progress and status of your project. This ensures everyone is on the same page and reduces the need for constant follow-up.

Project views

Asana offers multiple views to cater to different project types. Understanding these views and selecting the right one is crucial for effective project management.

The different views can be found in the header at the top of your project, directly below the project name. Click the + button to add more views. Tasks can be grouped differently across List and Board views. 

List view

The list view provides a clear overview of your project's tasks with various ways to sort and filter your list of tasks. You can set the order manually or have tasks automatically sorted by a characteristic like due date or assignee. This view is versatile and suitable for any type of project.

Board view

Organize your work like sticky notes with the board view. It’s ideal for projects that contain a lot of visual assets, such as a blog, social media, or advertising campaign. You can easily move tasks across sections using drag and drop.

Calendar view

Use the calendar view to keep track of important deadlines and milestones within a project. 

Timeline view

The timeline view is invaluable for iterative projects where you need to see how different pieces of work fit together. It's handy for projects with dependencies and changes that can be accommodated on the go, like product launches. 

Gantt view

The Gantt view is designed for structured projects that are process-oriented. Use this view to compare progress against original plans and manage task durations to keep projects on track. Use this view for projects where there are complex dependencies or a strict schedule/deadline to meet.

Saving a layout as default

You can save your preferred view as default so that this view will open automatically every time the project is viewed. Once you've found the best view for your project, you can save it as the default view. This ensures that anyone viewing the project will view it in the default view. 

To save a layout as default:

1. Click on the three dot icon beside your chosen project view
2. Click Set as default

Please note that setting a default view for your project simply means that the project will automatically open in that default view (list, board etc.), however filter and sort options will not be saved.

If you wish to also save specific filter and sort options, click Save view on the right side of the project toolbar to save your preferred project layout. Use the drop down menu for options to save the view as a new tab if preferred.