Hi asana-dev-team!
please develop the functionality that subtasks are automatically shown in the workload board. Or that i can decide if they should be shown aswell or instead of the main task.
Right now i need to add the project to the subtask for the subtask to be shown in the workload board in portfolios.
we need to see the capacity of each team member. And as the tasks are mostly getting done by more than one person we need to see the timestamp of the subtask to be added to the workload board of each colleague.
Thanks for sharing your feedback with us, @anon91100101! We already have a thread on this topic so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the main thread to consolidate feedback!
I am discussing with a client to develop an automated script that would add subtasks to a second project, so that if you add that second project to a portfolio, Workload would basically count subtasks as well. Let me know if you are interested!
Hi Bastien,
After reading quite a few threads with people facing issues regarding sub-tasks structure, can you advise what are exactly sub-tasks if they aren’t really sub-tasks?
In most project management tools, the definition is quite clear and the infrastructure behind is as logical as the name.
The fact that sub-tasks would be into another project (?!) is even more confusing for most people trying to get used to the workflow. I personally don’t get why it wouldn’t be linked directly?
Either I have to get right of all my sub-tasks and created dozens of sections of sections for visibility purpose, or I need to be less precise in my planning (what when a mother task is composed of multiple sub-tasks that are performed by different departments? I can’t assign effort correctly).
Both listed solutions are not appealing me.
to avoid any problem, keep subtasks as “a personal checklist of things to do in order to complete the main task”
keep in mind that Asana did not “remove” features on subtasks, so yes they have assignees, due dates, multi homing etc but using some of those features will create confusion
I suggest @lpb jumps in here as he always has a good advice on subtasks, usually different from mine.
I understand your frustration, Fabien. Asana provides an all-purpose set of tools with constraints and in some cases the constraints start to get hard to keep track of. You must learn where the dead-ends are. More and more, as Asana grows in functionality it gets more complicated (and more helpful to have an Asana consultant help you with choosing the right Asana implementation).
For my general thinking on subtasks, see the Subsection and Subtasks section of:
Basically, I encourage their use more than Bastien does, but only in the “right” cases.
Understanding the nature of your needs to give a more specific reply would require more discussion, so this is the best I can do here, I’m afraid.
Funny thing is that I do use them, I would probably use them even more if @Julien_RENAUD my partner was not trained on not using them at all. But I do use them knowing the limits
The main challenge is to know the limit of the tool. We received a training but this aspect wasn’t mentioned. The naming is misleading somehow and also the experience with other project management tools.
Probably stronger communication on the usage of sub-tasks/limitation is really necessary before bumping into a dead-end like I did.
An example I could bump into with different assignees would be:
Project: Marketing
Sections: SEO / SEM / Google / Social Media
Tasks: Create social media accounts / Make link between different accounts
In this current case, I need to rethink how to structure so timeline/effort is assigned rightfully.
We will emphasize task usage and see how to avoid overcharging sections with too many tasks for visibility purpose
I’m pretty disappointed in the response here. I run a large cross-functional development team where we have about 60 tasks a sprint, and tasks inherently need to change hands. It’s very redundant and noisy to create a top-level design task, a primary dev. task, a code review task, and a QA task all within a single board for a single user story. We are handily able to use assignees for this purpose, but then we are prevented from any visibility into that work in our dashboards. This strongly hampers our ability to estimate and plan for, e.g., QA capacity vs. front-end capacity, since the effort level for a single task must then be reflective of two separate engineers’ time.
I would ask Asana to reconsider the dismissal of subtasks. Their strongest potential value to some teams is the ability to assign multiple pieces of one task across different users, but current functionality limits their utility beyond a simple checklist.
Hi,
I love the workload management feature in the portfolio beta. But it has some room for improvement:
I work very much with sub- and subsubtasks. The workload of those is not being added to the workload, but just from the main task.
It also does not add up to the workload of the main task. Following example:
Main Task: Grocery shopping
Subtasks: Milk, Cheese, Bread (each of them 10 minutes assigned in the custom field with which I track the time)
The time of the subtasks is added up in the section but not in the main task. I’d like to see now 30 minutes assigned to grocery shopping. If I enter it manually, it’s double counted in the section sum. The issue is, that I could buy milk and cheese on one day but bread on the other, so the workload is not being tracked properly.
Thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback We do have an existing request for these features in the #productfeedback so I’ve gone ahead and merged your requests to consolidate feedback
I’ll keep you posted and let you know if we have any updates in the main thread
Our team is trying to build out our product roadmap and recently utilized the product roadmap template. It’s been great, but we’re still missing the capability of tracking workload in there.
Background:
Our roadmap has 3 main sections and roadmap items under each. We added the true tasks people are working on as subtasks to those roadmap items, so each has an owner, timeframe and estimated hours.
From what I can tell, I can only track workload in a portfolio, so I made a portfolio and added my product roadmap as the “work”. Unfortunately on the workload tab, it only pulls data from who’s owning each roadmap item, instead of the owners of each subtask that make up a roadmap item.
Is there any way to do this in a better way? We want to identify who would be over / under utilized throughout time.
Hi @anon13627270, thanks for reaching out! As it stands, subtasks do not inherit the Project from the parent task, the only way for them to show in your Workload, for now, is by manually adding them to the Project. You can find the steps in this article: How to Use Asana subtasks | Product guide • Asana Product Guide
This is a popular request in the Forum, and this feature is definitely on our radar, but we do not have a timeframe to share yet. If you don’t mind, I’m merging your post with the existing thread on this topic. Please make sure you leave your vote there!
@anon13627270 - We’ve been waiting for 4+ years for them to solve some of the issues they have with the relationship between subtasks and parent tasks. The current architecture limits this from being a possibility and it would take a major undertaking to resolve it—so I wouldn’t plan on it anytime soon.
Asanas lack of communication is increasingly frustrating. Especially with things like subtasks which have a huge impact on the portfolio, workload and rules (and other) featuresets.
Especially with competitors catching up with asana more and more.
How Asana can actively encourage people in some guides to use subtasks while ignoring all their flaws really is beyond me. That’s just terrible product management and setting people up for failure.
