Asana for Team Leads

This article will provide actionable steps you can take as a team lead to help your team use Asana to its full potential.

If you have just been invited to Asana and don’t know where to start, read this article for invited users.

Create a team

When you first log in or sign up for Asana, you will be part of a team. Teams are a group of people who work together on projects. For example, the IT department will have its own team where they will add IT-related projects and where they can send messages relevant to the IT department.

You can create a team and invite your colleagues to it or add them to an existing team so you can start collaborating on different projects. If you decide to create a new team, you can add the team’s name, a short description of the team and select the appropriate permissions.

Once you’ve created the team, you can start creating your projects and templates within that team.

You’ll be asked to select a team whenever you create a new project. All projects belonging to a team will be visible on the team’s page. Your team page will show your team’s description, members, projects, and templates.

Add your team’s work to Asana

Transfer your team’s projects to Asana

The second step you need to take is to transfer the projects and initiatives your team is working on to Asana. Projects keep all your tasks and messages in one place. This will allow you to delegate work to other team members and monitor progress.

Let’s say one of the projects your team is working on is a seasonal marketing campaign. You would start by creating the project, then creating tasks and assigning them to people on your team.

Asana provides you with a template library you can use when creating a project, or you can start from scratch and create your own.

You can use different views for the project. A calendar view can be handy for a Content Editorial project, or a board view could be better for a Creative Requests project. Ultimately, it depends on what works best for you and your team.

Create one-to-one projects

One-to-one projects are a great way to get your team used to assigning tasks. If you’re a team lead, you likely have weekly meetings with team members to check on their progress and discuss projects or anything that might be of interest to them.

To create a one-to-one project, you would follow the same steps as when creating any other project. You and the other team members can add topics to this project you would like to discuss during your next meeting. Make sure the project is private so that only you and the appropriate teammates can access it, as sensitive information may be discussed during these meetings.

Here’s an example of what a one-to-one project can look like:

1. Add different sections to organize tasks
2. Set the project’s privacy to private

Create a weekly meeting agenda

If you have weekly meetings with your team, creating a project for the meeting’s agenda is another excellent way to incentivize your teammates to use Asana.

Use the meeting agenda to add discussion topics and make meetings more efficient. Everyone on your team can add a task to the agenda and assign it to themselves; that way, we all know who is responsible for what during the meeting.

You can create recurring tasks for each team member and title it Remember to add discussion topics for the next meeting, so your teammates remember to add discussion topics before each meeting.

Create portfolios to group projects together

Portfolios help you organize multiple projects in one place. You can monitor the progress of several projects at once and ensure that they don’t go off track. Learn how to create portfolios here.