Brainstorming meetings can take up lots of time. It can be a huge productivity win to brainstorm asynchronously with your team in Asana.
Do you brainstorm with your team in Asana? Which parts of the brainstorming process do you do in Asana and which do you do offline? Have you worked on creative projects from start to finish in Asana without having any meetings? All thoughts welcome!
We do project planning in stages. The first is define what we need to discuss and then we go off individually and work on it for a short period of time alone. This is called multi tracking . Then we get together and brainstorm as a group to discuss what we came up with individually. When we do the group brainstorm, that’s where we take each thought as an individual task in Asana. Someone is the designated note taker for this in Asana as we throw out ideas on the white board. By Multi tracking first, each person gets an opportunity to bring their unique spin to it first and we get more options. If we brainstorm from the start as a group, we all start to merge on one track too early which limits the creativity.
@Ginger_Bratzel I love the multi tracking idea! It seems to address the difficulty people often have speaking up in brainstorms and/or the challenge of certain individuals dominating a conversation. It sounds like your process celebrates each contributor’s creativity, as well, which can only mean positive things when the group gets back together. I’d like to try this!
Hello @Alexis
One of my companies is a distributed company, so we don’t share the same physical space. Our brainstorm meetings are organised via Google Hangouts. One of us (team leader) shares his screen and we work on the same project. The project contains a list of tasks (ideas) which the team leader analyses one by one. Everyone can, at any time, add comments, populate custom fields, new tasks, but it is the team leader that manages the organisation of the project.
In this way we start from the ideas which are not yet organised and understand their feasibility, priority and so on. When no new ideas are in the project, we start going back to old ideas, check if any of them needs to be re-discussed, which ones are ready to be worked on and which ones need a different prioritisation.
The project is always available, even outside the meeting, so that everyone can add or update the ideas.
The challenge is keeping people motivated while they sit alone in front of a computer, more than together in a room.
Carlo
@Alexis, Do you really think Asana is Productive Tool? and Are you satisfied with Asana?
@aloksubramanya In a word: absolutely! I commented to my colleague this morning that I almost feel too productive with Asana. When a team has a shared understanding of how to use Asana, work becomes much clearer, we reduce assumptions, and we eliminate unnecessary hoops to jump through. I believe we have this shared understanding here at Asana and as a result our use of the tool is very efficient. On top of that I feel it brings us a very healthy work culture. Stress is reduced when expectations are clear. I absolutely believe Asana is a productive tool and I am very happy with the positive effect the tool has had on my ability to collaborate and accomplish my work.