(This is excerpted from my article about how Dashboards are being eliminated.)
In terms of functionality, this change is a good thing. Most teams don’t use Dashboards because the information they provide requires manual updating regularly, and I think most people find the Google Spreadsheet integration has little to no value in terms of what information is actually useful for project reporting. I’m willing to bet Asana has the data to know Dashboards weren’t being used widely.
The new portfolio solution will be so much better. But the problem I see, similar to the last time prices were increased, is how this change is being rolled out.
A great leadership lesson I learned is:
COMMUNICATION + TIME = UNITED CHANGE
Giving users less than 2 months to change what COULD be a major shift for them is an enormous headache. Add on top of that how this change has been (or not been) communicated (I didn’t receive an email…most users are probably not scanning the forums) and it feels like Asana, Inc. is hiding something.
And based on what I’m reading on this page, there is something being hidden that wasn’t communicated in any of Asana’s announcements so far. Asana is taking away what was a core feature people paid for—and perhaps a selling point for switching to Asana in the first place—with no replacement unless you switch to Enterprise and pay 2x what you’re currently paying for Asana.
I think a lot people are going to feel very frustrated by this. A user like me should not be the one having to point this out. Asana has HUGE switching costs. When someone chooses to run their team or their whole company on Asana, they’re doing it by putting trust in the product and the company backing it. To have features suddenly yanked out from under them and told to pay double the price (a $6000 difference for a 50-person company!), that breaks the trust.
Did the switch need to happen? Yes, they are creating a much better solution. But why punish and frustrate customers? Seems like better solutions would be:
- Give portfolios to all Premium customers
- Give a portion of portfolio features that at least replace the functionality of dashboards (my recommendation is to hide Portfolio Custom Fields behind the Enterprise paywall since users are already used to having to pay extra for Custom Field functionality)
- Grandfather existing users into portfolios and have all new users pay for it, like what Asana, Inc. did previously with Advanced Search
I hope all Asana users get to hear a better announcement about this with the details people actually need to plan. They deserve to know more than, “We’re taking away Dashboards and replacing it with something better,” because that’s a partial truth. To suggest that the new Homepage somehow replaces Dashboards is not accurate at all. They have completely different purposes.
OK, getting off my soapbox now 
I love Asana and based on how they handled feedback from the most recent price increase, I encourage everyone to share your feedback, avoid getting angry yet, and trust they’ll do the right thing for their customers.