Context for Clarity: Get Distributed Teams on the Same Page With Asana Project Overview

Rhea-AI Summary

Asana (NYSE: ASAN) introduced Project Overview, enhancing team collaboration by providing essential project details in one place. An accompanying Anatomy of Work Index survey revealed that new employees spend significant time on completed tasks and unnecessary meetings, highlighting inefficiencies. New hires face challenges in acclimating, linking time-wasting practices to a 30% increase in duplicated work. With integrations for creative tools, Project Overview aims to streamline project management, allowing teams to spend more time on productive tasks.

Positive

• Introduction of Project Overview enhances team collaboration.
• Integration with tools like Figma, Vimeo, and Miro improves workflow efficiency.
• Potential for significant time savings with clearer processes.

Negative

• New hires face significant inefficiencies, spending 21% of their time on completed work.
• 30% increase in duplicated work year-over-year could hinder productivity.

Asana, Inc. (NYSE: ASAN), a leading work management platform for teams, today announced the introduction of Project Overview, giving teams the context and clarity to stop searching for details and start collaborating with ease. Coinciding with the introduction of Project Overview, Asana published its Anatomy of Work Index, an annual in-depth analysis on how people spend time at work and the factors shaping those habits. Across 13,000 global survey respondents, the survey found that despite organizations' best efforts to keep teams aligned and connected in a remote setting, they are struggling to get tenured employees and new hires on the same page:

Project Overview provides a clear line of sight into a project’s most important links, documents, and collaborators, along with direct access to remote work’s most essential tools. (Graphic: Business Wire)

• New hires spend 21 percent of their time on work that’s already been completed, nearly twice as much time as their more established colleagues.
• New hires spend 1.5 more hours in unnecessary meetings each week - an additional 73 hours annually.
• Employees could gain 6 hours and 5 minutes every week—or 8 full working weeks—with improved processes, such as more clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

“Teams fall behind when they spend too much time context switching — toggling between apps and digging through spreadsheets. It's especially painful when bringing new teammates up to speed,” said Paige Costello, Product Management leader at Asana. “Our survey findings illustrate that while it can be incredibly challenging to get distributed teams on the same page, organizations have an opportunity to save a ton of time with better ways of working. We’re excited to get teams started off on the right foot in the new year with Project Overview, enabling them to quickly contribute meaningful work with confidence from day one.”

Expanding Asana’s App Ecosystem with Project Overview

Starting today, the first tab of every project in Asana will feature the most essential information for teams, including project members and their roles, key resources, and related Portfolios and Goals. Instead of holding unnecessary meetings and duplicating work across platforms, Project Overview provides a clear line of sight into a project’s most important links, documents, and collaborators, along with direct access to remote work’s most essential tools.

"Figma opens up the design process across teams of all sizes, supporting product design from ideation to production," said Kris Rasmussen, VP Engineering Figma. "Our integration with Asana brings your team's up-to-date design work even closer to everyone who needs it."

Within Project Overview, teams can build a user-friendly Project Brief using rich text formatting, in-line embeds and integrations with best-of-breed creative platforms. By giving all collaborators a bird’s eye view into how project pieces are tracking across platforms in real-time, they can spend more time creating and less time coordinating. Within Project Brief, Asana customers now have access to Figma, Loom, Miro, Vimeo, Whimsical, Wistia and YouTube, enabling creative workflows—from ideation to execution—directly within Asana.

"Last year, we announced Asana Cards, enabling customers to embed Asana tasks as cards in Miro,” said Andrey Khusid, co-founder and CEO of Miro. “Today, we’re advancing our partnership with Asana by creating a seamless way to access Miro boards directly within Asana, giving every team an easy way to collaborate and capture creative spark. A bilateral integration is just the beginning of what we look forward to bringing to our mutual customers in the future.”

"Video is an increasingly critical tool in helping teams collaborate remotely— it can improve how we communicate, share ideas, impart knowledge and give feedback. We’re thrilled to integrate Vimeo’s best-in-class video player with Asana’s leading platform so more teams globally are empowered to use video to do their best work,” said Richard Bloom, SVP of Business Development, Vimeo.

Lack of clarity on roles, ownership and purpose of deliverables, combined with more messages, meetings and tools to navigate, is making it harder than ever for teams to have a shared understanding of a project at hand. As a result, workers are spending 30% more time on pure duplication of work year-over-year, with new hires duplicating work twice as much as their tenured teammates.

Now, new hires can catch up with ease and teams can win back lost hours by keeping work, communication and context in the same tool. Unlike email, which is disconnected from actual work, Asana makes it easy for everyone to send individual, project-level, or team-level messages directly within the context of the work. From project managers looking for project updates to new hires seeking clarity and context, everyone is on the same page, ensuring work is always up to date and on-track.

For more information on how to keep your team more connected and aligned with Project Overview, visit asana.com.

About Asana

Asana helps teams orchestrate their work, from small projects to strategic initiatives. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Asana has more than 89,000 paying organizations and millions of free organizations across 190 countries. Global customers such as Accenture, Sky, Spotify, Viessmann, and Danone rely on Asana to manage everything from company objectives to digital transformation to product launches and marketing campaigns. For more information, visit www.asana.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210114005351/en/

FAQ

What is Asana's new Project Overview feature?

Project Overview is designed to enhance team collaboration by providing essential project details in one centralized location.

How does Project Overview benefit new employees at Asana?

It helps new hires catch up quickly by providing clear context, reducing time spent on completed tasks.

What survey did Asana release alongside Project Overview?

Asana published the Anatomy of Work Index, showing inefficiencies faced by teams in remote settings.

What are the main findings from the Anatomy of Work Index?

The survey found that new hires spend more time on unnecessary meetings and duplicating work.

How does Project Overview integrate with other tools?

It includes integrations with Figma, Vimeo, Miro, and others to streamline project management.