Looking for some help/tips on how we could manage our project tasks better.
I run a design studio as part of a large retail corporation that manages multiple brands. We produce artwork for basicly every online advertsing platform imaginable, so the types of tasks we work on can vary greatly. Everything from social camapigns, Google ads, Youtube ads, EDM campaigns, web page designs etc.
Weve been using Asana successfully for years, but the types of tasks we work on is growing and diversifying.
How our workflow works is
Stakeholder submits a brief through an dynamic online form, and it comes into our workflow. A task could be simple, it could be a huge campaign with many assets required.
Task is acessed bya manager, tweaked/corrected then moved into a separate workflow for a designer to pick up.
After a designer is assigned to a task, they work with stakeholders through the concept/draft, review, export processes. It gets quite crazy at times.
Ive attached a screenshot example of a “moderate” sized advertising camapign we would work on. They definitely get bigger than this! We could end up with anything between 30-90 comments in the chat section of the task, with the task description changing very often. Its just the nature of our business.
Im wondering if anyone has suggestions on how to make this work more efficently. The task itself can get very overwhleming and hard to manage. Id love to be able to have some sort of excel style task list that links to, or is inside Asana, where we can manage mutliple deadlines of a task, update details etc, instead of it being a giant wall of text and coments.
It would appear the only real option is using subtasks? These arent ideal as it get a bit like “task-inception”. With tasks inside of tasks, and its really easy to get lost or not add the right collaborators to a task. Things get missed easily as you need to constantly check your inbox for comments, instead of having your eyes on a single workflow.
ANy thoughts/suggestions?
Anyone work in a similar industry?
@Dan_Pullar - I also work in a studio and we have a very similar intake process. For more complicated asks (e.g., multi-channel campaigns with many assets), we convert to a templated project and use a portfolio to manage these (so we basically have 2 workflows: 1 for quick single- or few-asset requests and 1 for complicated work). The general rule of thumb I’ve heard is that when you hit 10+ subtasks (so likely in this case 8-10+ unique creative assets), you want to consider using a project instead.
Some advantages:
Projects give you access to status updates, messages, notes view (new) and other tools to empower your team to work more flexibly
Less likely to lose stuff in a project w/ tasks than a task w/ subtasks
Disadvantages:
Split workflow may have a learning curve and cause some admin work
Two processes = separate management/oversight (this can be covered w/ dashboards)
If you’re set on maintaining a task-subtask approach, would it be feasible to split conversations into the relevant subtasks? E.g., if you have a concepting phase, put all comments on a concept subtask, then for execution and review of individual assets, move comments there instead of the parent task. Basically, you’d be “threading” comments to their relevant work (since there are no threads in Asana comments; you could simulate this with messages/replies in a project if you went that route).
Im going to do some research and testing on using projects instead of tasks for larger briefs. Its mainly when we get into “campaign” territory, where we actually end up producing up to 150 individual assets in some cases. But a task like that might only be going for a few days, and then be completed. A lot of the examples I see online for projects seem to be for “slower” tasks that take a while to complete. But I could be wrong.
Currently we are using a project as a workflow to manage all our task statuses (screenshot below). It’s a pretty simple process, but seems to be working fine for us. But its inside the individual tasks where it just gets a bit much to manage. And I dont think wed be able to put a project inside a project either
Having multiple projects could potentially be a big can of worms. Specially since it could be up to 80 projects a month for a small team Stakeholders (non-designers) also need to be able to edit descriptions and tasks too, which might be difficult if we split the task into its own Individual project. I can imagine all the manually adding of collaborators!
@Dan_Pullar - this is totally dependent on the workflow and team, but projects won’t necessarily need to be long-term engagements. Using project templates and the “convert task to project” functionality can be good ways to accelerate that.
If you decide to preserve your current structure but just want to organize comments more cleanly, I do think subtasks is your only route (encourage people to comment on specific asset subtasks or create new ones for smaller functional tasks. You could also upvote this thread, which would probably make your tasks a lot easier to digest:
I believe Asana is designed for the Asana Inbox and My Tasks views to both be integral parts of every single workflow. So I wonder if we see this differently; that is, if your statement means that you’re trying to keep your users in this project/task/comment thread rather than leaning on Inbox and My Tasks to take some of the burden off of this project.
With clients, I regularly run into attempts to do everything in projects and see the frustration that results; it’s asking too much, I feel.
Yes, there are downsides to subtasks, but for complex workflows, I feel there’s no other way. If you haven’t already, please consider taking a look at this:
Also, for times when you have a lot of subtasks, you can improve the appearance and structure with this:
@Stephen_Li Yes, im leaning towards subtasks. Ive actually just built a bit of a rule system that a certain subtask and sections list will appear based on the type of task. Probavbly the best step forward.
Can also look at making additional Project boards if things need to get spread out/separated.
Yes ive only just discovered Subtask Sections and its a game changer. It certainly makes things far easier and we will start using these.
I had previously seen subtasks as quite crude and a limited kind of tasklist – potentially just more opportunity for stakeholders to spread their comments far and wide and make things more unmanagable. But I am rethinking the purpose of them now after doing some research and seeing how others use them. Will watch your video too!
Yes, the inbox is still very useful ofcourse, but it can get a bit “crazy” if your collaborating in many many tasks/projects being a Studio Manager. I find its good for notifications/keeping updated with minor things.
We are probably pushing the limits of what a task board is designed to do, trying to make it do more than it can. Our workflow has worked well for some years, but as things grow, of course you have to evolve with it. Therefore will consider redesigning the system in future.
Yes, it’s always important to evolve as your needs/volume changes as you say, and also as Asana evolves; the velocity of feature development has been extraordinary in the past several years.
