Asana’d to within an inch of our lives

I don’t know if “to Asana” has yet been adopted by the Oxford English Dictionary – if not, it should be.

I Asana, you Asana, he/she/it Asanas…

Takes me right back to the Latin classroom!

Back to the point. Anyone who knows me will know that I love a list. Provided I’m on track and have things organised, I’m a happy bunny. So imagine my delight when I discovered Asana.

My role here at evidencebased.education is in project management, primarily. Yes, I do some aspects of delivery work, and the day-to-day running of the business – I’m very much a jack of all trades – but my skills are best utilised in bringing other people together to make something greater than the sum of its parts pharmacie viagra vente.

Asana is the Swiss army knife of this world. The multi-tool to solve all project management problems. No – that doesn’t quite do it justice…

Asana is my playground.

I see recurring tasks as the swings; set them in motion and they just keep on rolling – backwards and forward, week after week. An email notification accompanies each well-timed kick of the legs. Stuart sighs in despair as another Monday comes round and he has yet another excruciating bank reconciliation due tomorrow.

The project dashboard is the slide; the staple of the playground. The slide, for me, was the eye-catcher of any good playground. It was the first destination for the dozens of children, upon bursting through the gates at 3:35pm after the school bell had gone. A weekly, graphical overview of all of the projects at hand – bringing all of our people together, no matter where they are in the world, and tracking our progress up the ever-growing virtual mountain of tasks.

Sub-tasks and dependencies are like the roundabout. That rusty, unloved, neglected-looking bit of equipment in the corner of most parks. “What is the purpose of a turntable which renders kids nauseous?!” I hear you ask… Well, only when you have a little sister and are old enough to run relatively quickly, do you harness the full power of this bit of kit. I see myself as a pretty experienced Asana user, now, and making less-experienced playground-goers feel ill with the sheer dizzying power of sub-tasks and dependencies is a legitimate after-school hobby. Flat-track bully…

The separate Teams and Projects functions serve, as any good park should, to keep the different groups well apart, lest any cross-contamination occur. I mean, I wouldn’t want my WebDev team mixing with my Training Delivery group. Chaos would ensue when the five-a-side game spilled over, and the ball ventured into the sandpit. Mothers with pushchairs would scramble and become Durham’s answer to Peter Schmeichel, diving to fingertip the ball round the corner and save their innocent one-year-old and their sandcastle. It’s a battle, but we have to keep our Translators caged and contained somehow…

Finally, the holy grail. The monkey bars. Only for those old, strong and experienced enough. The show-off piece of the playground. Search Views. Oh my goodness. The day when I found this tool was the day I first made it all the way across those treacherous bars. I can slice and dice information in any way I choose, from across all projects and stakeholders to create for myself customised lists. I have search views favourited, so within a click of a button, I can see what my teams have completed recently, what each individual has to get done in the next week, or tasks I’ve assigned that are not yet complete.

But, whatever my teams have to do, I have no need to remind them – all mailers are automated, and I can rest safe in the knowledge that they’ll be nudged, pushed and Asana’d to within an inch of their lives, until they mark that damn task complete. Then, the games begin again!