In this modern era, As IT services have become more widely available, organizations are encountering a slew of challenges in managing incoming projects. Major IT companies are having trouble streamlining their processes.
Asana, a Project Management tool, can strengthen businesses to achieve success seamlessly with Workspace Management Dashboards. Asana offers enough customization for planning and organizing projects to help teams boost productivity and deliver requirements within the timeline. Asana also features various charts to visualize the work progress, and one of the methods that are helpful in project planning is the Asana Gantt Charts.
This article provides you an overview of Asana Gantt Charts. It describes the Asana software and the types of charts one can use for Project Management. You will also gain an understanding of the features, benefits, and steps to create Asana Gantt Charts. Let’s get started.
Prerequisites
You will have a much easier time understanding the ways for setting up Asana Gantt Charts if you have gone through the following aspects:
- An active Asana accouunt.
- Working knowledge of Project Management Tools.
- Working Knowledge of Gantt Charts.
Introduction to Asana
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Asana is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) designed to enhance Project Management and collaboration in an organization. Commercially launched in 2012, Asana was developed by Moskovitz and Rosenstein (former Facebook employees). Over the years, with automation and integration services, Asana provides a seamless platform to users without compromising data privacy and security. It also comes bundled with Agile Methodologies to increase productivity and optimize teamwork.
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Asana facilitates various views like List, Board, Dashboard, Timeline, and Calendar to simplify Project Management. These views inherit graphical visualizations to display the status of work. It becomes easy to conclude by visualizing numbers and features with a particular chart. With such figures, one can depict the trend, time, and tasks to plan for an ongoing project. Hence, it becomes necessary to understand various charts in the available views to accurately set the timelines before finalizing the deals with stakeholders.
Types of Asana Chart
Asana incorporates dashboards that contain graphs and charts. These charts display the team’s day-to-day progress, eventually highlighting potential blockers. The charts in dashboards auto-populate, and a user can add customized charts and numeric roll-ups to get the pulse of a project. Dashboards will update automatically every time a page is visited or refreshed, thereby presenting up-to-date information. Below are a few charts helpful in presenting work progress:
1) Gantt Charts
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A Gantt Chart is a type of bar chart that assists in project planning and scheduling irrespective of any project size, it helps simplify complex projects.
2) Donut Charts
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A Donut Chart is used to show the proportion of categorical data. In the Asana dashboard, the Donut Chart helps in understanding the completion status of a project or task.
3) Burnup Charts
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A Burnup Chart is used to measure the progress, it tracks the completed work and also displays the total amount of required work. As Asana supports Agile Development, this chart would help trace the team’s velocity.
4) Bar Graphs
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A Bar Graph is a chart used to summarize categorical data. Asana dashboard provides this chart to visualize incomplete tasks by each section.
Introduction to Asana Gantt Charts
Asana Gantt Charts ensure businesses organize their work and estimate the timeline of a project. Scheduling a project can help teams get organized to hit the milestones, leading to the efficient delivery of work. Each bar in the Gantt chart represents a phase of the project (or task in a project) and the length of a bar signifies the amount of time required to complete the task. This chart offers you an entire overview of the workflow for management to keep an eye on each task and prioritize them accordingly. Following are the features and benefits of the Asana Gantt Charts:
1) Key Features of Asana Gantt Charts
Today, Asana Gantt Charts run on intelligent software, helping teams collaborate their work to accomplish tasks. Some key features of Asana Gantt Charts include:
- Instantaneous Project Progress: Asana provides a cloud-based platform to monitor project progress. The team submits their tasks online, and the Gantt chart updates accordingly.
- Scheduling: Asana Gantt Charts provide the start and end date of each task for a project. If the tasks’ schedule clashes with other tasks, they can be adjusted and planned accordingly.
- Map Dependencies: Apart from visualizing a schedule with Asana Gantt Charts, team members can easily prioritize their work. However, some tasks are dependent on prior tasks, thereby making teams or team members understand the importance of their inputs in a project phase. Even if work needs to be pushed back for some reason, teams can shift dependencies accordingly before solving a new task.
- Milestones: As Asana Gantt Charts span horizontal bars according to the completion time, it assists teams in their milestones, representing distinct points of a project phase. These points will provide at-a-glance insight highlighting key dates and important moments in the timeline of a project.
2) Benefits of Asana Gantt Charts
Asana Gantt Charts are widely used in every sector from small organizations to large organizations. Following are a few benefits of this Asana Gantt Chart:
- Visualize Plan: Although a schedule can be made with a simple row and column table, visualizing with Asana Gantt Charts provides a better overview of the entire project.
- Organize Project: Be it remote or in-premise, cross-team initiatives involve collaboration and clarity of work. Mutual understanding can be developed as Asana Gantt Charts act as a guide at each step for ambitious projects.
- Coordinate with Stakeholders: Since organizations grow by partnering with multiple stakeholders, Asana Gantt Charts give a perspective of all the active phases of a project for any given instant. It also helps businesses decide the number of clients to be considered in contrast with the existing capacity for new projects.
Steps to Create Asana Gantt Charts
Asana Gantt chart has a specific use, ideally applied when a project has a start and end date. This chart may be fruitful during a Product Launch, a Marketing Campaign but can be critical during the initial planning stages. Asana’s timeline view helps in making a Gantt chart for Project Management. Below are the steps to create Asana Gantt Chart:
Step 1: Defining Schedules
Before beginning with the Asana Gantt Chart, authorities must plan the estimated start and end dates of tasks. For instance, a company plans to launch a new product. The product team starts working on 1st August and expects to be market-ready by 1st September. The Gantt chart in such cases would begin from 1st August and run till 30th September as a buffer considering press interviews and social media productions before the Product Launch.
Step 2: Assigning Tasks
To define a schedule in the Asana timeline view, drag the desired tasks in the time range of interest. A task time can be scheduled by adjusting the length of the task. A user can also set the desired time by clicking a particular task.
If a particular task in a project requires continuous feedback, it can be further broken into subtasks and similar tasks in a project can be color-coded like blue for a production team, purple for a design team, black for a marketing team to identify the progress of diverse teams. This is shown by the below image.
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Step 3: Declaring Dependencies
Asana presents the Gantt chart with the dependency feature as often in a project certain tasks cannot be started until the other tasks are completed. For such occasions, a dependency can be created to make teams understand the responsibilities for each task they handle.
For instance, a dependency for task 2 can be created only after a successful review of task 1. To create a dependency, click on task 2 and select the more options button. Select Mark as dependent and writing task 1 in the find task search bar. Then Select task 1 in the search result; it will display the connection between tasks marking the dependency.
Step 4: Setting Milestones
A project should have some pre-decided milestones or key checkpoints. These points convey to management a larger portion of the work has been completed. It creates enthusiasm for the teams to march actively in contributing their work effectively. In case, if a product has passed test criteria, the Gantt chart displays a milestone with a line.
In Asana, a milestone can be created by selecting a drop-down option in the Add tasks button. Select Add milestone. A user can also make an existing task a milestone of the project.
Step 5: Modifying Plans
Despite rigorous planning, businesses may pitch short in reporting their progress. Management may ask for an extra review of a product, which could delay the entire schedule. Plans change inevitably, and Asana adapts to the requirements. To reschedule a task, a user can either click on a particular task to be rescheduled and change the date or drag the entire task.
If the need arises to shift multiple tasks or projects, it can be done by selecting such entities and dragging them simultaneously. Asana Gantt Charts automatically shift associated dependencies, giving an entire overview of the rescheduled workflow.
Conclusion
This article briefs an overview of Asana Gantt Charts. It explains Asana software and various types of charts available in a dashboard view for Project Management. Lastly, it describes the features, benefits, and steps to create a Gantt chart.
As organizations collaborate with stakeholders for new projects, it becomes crucial for maintaining product quality and timely delivery. To manage multiple projects, Asana can aid businesses to become productive and provide optimized solutions with the timeline view. This view inherits a Gantt chart, helping companies to schedule their work among teams with milestones. Each milestone pings the management to make progressive decisions and set a plan of action for the next phase.
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Share your experience of setting up Asana Gantt Charts in the comment section below!
FAQ
Does Asana do Gantt charts?
Asana does not offer traditional Gantt charts, but it provides a Timeline view that functions similarly, allowing you to visualize project schedules and dependencies.
Does Asana have a timeline view?
Yes, Asana has a Timeline view that lets you create a visual representation of your project’s tasks and their timelines, helping you manage schedules and track progress.
How to create a PERT chart in Asana?
While Asana does not have a built-in PERT chart feature, you can create one by breaking down your project into tasks and subtasks, setting dependencies, and using the Timeline view to visualize task sequences and relationships. Alternatively, you can use external tools to create a PERT chart and link it to your Asana project.
Amit Kulkarni specializes in creating informative and engaging content on data science, leveraging his problem-solving and analytical thinking skills. He excels in delivering AI and automation solutions, developing generative chatbots, and providing data-driven AI & ML solutions. Amit holds a Master's degree and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, consistently achieving distinction in his studies.
