Iâm often asked this question, and the answer is no. Why?
Because Asana defends the idea that having multiple people responsible for the same task increases the risk that each will wait for the other to take the initiative - in the end, no one does. Making someone âresponsibleâ is essential to ensure clarity and efficiency.
Some tools allow for multiple attribution, but I think thatâs precisely a mistake!!!
Often, when someone gives me an example, we realize that the two âresponsibleâ people donât have exactly the same action to carry out.
As a result, we either create two separate tasks, or sub-tasks.
Responsibility then becomes crystal clear!
And you, are you more in favor of âsingle responsibilityâ or âmulti-responsibilityâ? And above all, why?
Iâve been in charge of rolling out Asana at our organization, and overall, I love the idea of having one person responsible per taskâthings stay clear and straightforward in most areas. However, Iâve run into some frustrations when trying to get other departments on board. We donât want everybody using different tools, because that means extra subscriptions, more places to check, and a general sense of disconnection.
One of our biggest challenges is the Operations department. Their tasks usually involve two, three, or even four peopleâanything from construction work and engineering maintenance to room setup and cleaning. If we split everything into multiple tasks, it gets tricky to keep track of comments and updates, especially since many people in the field arenât constantly at a computer or super tech-savvy. On the flip side, if we keep just one person as the âresponsibleâ user, how do we accurately track the other workers workload or see which tasks theyâre assigned on any given day?
Yes, there are more specialized tools for facilities management, but weâd rather keep everyone on the same platform to streamline workflows and keep everything connected. If Asana offered more flexibility in handling these situationsâlike allowing shared responsibility without losing clarityâit would really help expand its use cases and get even more departments on board.
I would very much support adding multiple owners, but allowing it to be controlled for whether or not this was enabled by the own of the Team based on the use case and justification for/against. Having multiple tasks to reflect ownership can very quickly clog up a project and turn people away from adoption if they are overwhelmed by what they see on screen.
Thatâs the never-ending debate of whether or not Asana should have âoptionsâ to allow for different behaviours. My own opinion is that they shouldnât. This discussion on multi-assignees has been around for a long time and Asana made it clear they wonât allow if for now
I have a suggestion for your use case of multiple people doing one task such as room setup or cleaning. Letâs say your employeesâ initials are AB, CD, EF, and all 3 of them have to do the room setup and cleaning tasks. You create a âRoom setupâ and âRoom cleanupâ task; and either assign it to the person accountable for making sure it is done (e.g. a manager/supervisor) or leave it unassigned. Add each person implementing the task as a collaborator (see below for why you might want that), and then have subtasks for each person called âAB room setupâ, âCD room setupâ, etc., assigned to the respective individual. Then each person can check their subtask off for themselves, or even another person can check it off for all of them if everyone did it together since all subtasks are visible from the main task.
Adding folks as collaborators to the main task allows everyone to make comments in the main task if a discussion is needed, or if you need to notify everyone doing the task of something.
I donât think the reason of âwatching out for usâ is really the reason for not doing this. From a development perspective having a one to many relationship between task and assignee would be an entire architecture change that would be very costly in terms of man hours and design. I would guess the use case doesnât justify the months of work this would take to accomplish.
Having said that - we have this use case that I would love to get some ideas for work arounds.
Our team has to both estimate and track our time on all tasks. Often, there will be two of us in the discovery phase of a task/project, attending the same meetings, working together, etc.
Creating duplicate tasks just for ease of time tracking clogs up the project and gets confusing for others (and managers) - it also makes it difficult to get add a true time estimate. On the flip side, having one task means one person must remember where that task is to add time. Any recommendations to make this easy? This happens often for us.
Did you consider having a subtask for each of you under the single main (parent) task? Your subtasks will each inherit cells to enter estimated and actual time, and those will automatically roll up to the parent task. Isnât that kind of the best of both worlds?
Because an option means the tool is harder to code, harder to maintain, harder to test, harder to teach and harder to understand. You quickly end up like Wrike and people will mostly say âit is too complicated I donât want to use itâ
I am thankfully every day that Asana resists the urge to add options for everything and stays simple and clearâŚ
Sorry, but this is just not great reasoning. If something is assigned to me, I am accountable for it⌠period. If others are also assigned to it, I am responsible for communicating with them to ensure we know whoâs doing what and it gets done.
Even if I and the other person(s) have slightly different responsibilities for the task, why would Asana dictate that we need separate tasks? If a teamâs PM methodology is more deliverable-based than action-based, individual duties/steps might be in a task description or documented elsewhere - especially when those duties are a common SOP that are not project-specific⌠aka the person knows what to do and who to work with anytime they have that kind of task.
Multiple tasks or parent/sub-tasks are not always good solutions⌠they may require redundant effort, and at worst result in more complex + confusing projects.
Also, there is a difference in assigning a task to multiple specific individuals that are both going to work on it, vs assigning/requesting a task to a group that then needs to determine who will work on it. (Another flaw of Asana being the limited intake/triage/routing capabilities.)
We donât need the PM software to be a babysitter, put limitations on a teamâs preferred workflows, or require more admin overhead to accomplish basic task management. We need it to enable our team to communicate and work effectively in the methods that are best suited to us.
I used to always be annoyed that i couldnât do thisâŚbut then i started using Basecamp with a client and which allows for multiple assignees. No one ever completes tasks and often responsibility is confusing. iâm now a big supporter of single task assignees and when i need to iâll make copies of a task or assign subtasks to multiple people
An example I would have is if I have a team of 15 going to a tradeshow. I would like to assign âBook Flightâ to the 15 people rather than create 15 tasks.
Some tools allow for multiple attribution, but I think thatâs precisely a mistake!!!
And you, are you more in favor of âsingle responsibilityâ or âmulti-responsibilityâ? And above all, why?
