We get this question a lot, and the answer is no. Why?
Because Asana stands by the principle that having multiple assignees for the same task increases the risk of everyone waiting for someone else to take initiative… and in the end, no one does. Making someone “responsible” is essential for ensuring clarity and efficiency.
Some tools allow multiple assignments, but we think that’s actually a mistake!
Often, when someone gives him an example, we realize that the two “assignees” don’t exactly have the same action to perform.
Result: we end up creating either two distinct tasks or subtasks.
The responsibility then becomes crystal clear!
What about you? Are you team “single assignee” or team “multiple assignees”? And most importantly, why?
Hard disagree. I frequently have two people partnering on a task, and Asana fails at this for my use. Having two assignees does NOT mean no one takes initiative. But it does mean that the same task will be visible to them equally, and not fall off of their radars. Wrike is much better about this than Asana. As a user, I should be allowed to make choices based on my preferences. NOT my tool’s.
Assuming Asana allows you to still choose two assignees. A lot of people will use the feature, and then things will fall through the cracks, and they will for sure blame the tool. Multiple assignees is a pandoras box I hope Asana doesn’t open for at least a few more years!
I can see how multiple assignees could definitely cause problems.
But I have been thinking about this for a while and realize that if NEEDED you can always have everyone as a collaborator and then interchange assignees for any reason, when moved across the board, or when/if it’s moved across different projects. And you’re right. Creating different tasks or subtasks is also a valid option as well.
I do see how multiple assignees could be beneficial, but overall agree that if it ultimately causes problems within businesses or organizations, the tool (Asana) will be blamed.
I agree with one assignee in principle, but I agree with others that listing additional parties as Collaborators makes the task easy to fall off their radar as they don’t see it in their My Tasks. Maybe add a Collaborator section to My Tasks that tasks you collaborate on (but are not the principal owner of) live.
I understand your point @Bastien_Siebman. However, I think WE should have the option on how we want to run our projects. Asana should give us this feature, and people can decide to use it or not. My approval process is a messy because of this limitation.
This sounds like multiple collaborators. Asana can give multiple people the same visibility to the same task no matter who it is actually assigned to. When multiple people are equally responsible for a task getting done, there should be one individual who is making sure it won’t drop off their radars.
Multiple collaborators does not solve @Connie_Zima’s need because collaborators don’t have the same visibility as the assignee has–specifically, the assignee has the task in their My Tasks, but not the collaborators.
Asana recommends you use the task Assignee field for this person. To address the reduced visibility issue for others, a common approach that a number of us recommend is to add a subtask assigned to each additional person working on the task. The subtask will appear in each person’s My Tasks list with the parent task’s title appended (after a “<” character) for context. I’m suggesting this as a workaround, not trying to change anyone’s mind about multiple assignees.
Everyone seems to be having a very positive discussion.
My personal comment is that we’ve only been talking about tasks and My Tasks, but why not add in the features of projects and portfolios?
If we also utilize project and portfolio summaries, we’ll be able to understand the relationships between tasks and those around them, and I feel like we’ll have a better answer than just asking who is responsible for a task, is it best to have one person, or two, three, or five people?
Oh, I forgot about the most important thing. I think it’s a good idea to use multi-homing.
In my opinion it could be the option for a project, so you have to switch on “multiple assignees” to make this assigments possible in ceratin project. Only for “aware” users and projects managers.
What is more - you always can add additional button “assingn exlusively to me” if your are one of “multiple assignees” to show others that you will take care and others can skip it.
We see it - for exaple - in onboarding projects where many people can proceed one task.
Mainly I see it in the tasks based on templates.
Some tools allow multiple assignments, but we think that’s actually a mistake!
What about you? Are you team “single assignee” or team “multiple assignees”? And most importantly, why?