I am new to ASANA and loving the idea of it… however, feeling a little lost in setting up my work. I am wanting to track the development and implementation steps of building a policy library. I have approx 120 policy documents to schedule and create. The creation will generally follow the same steps.
My initial thoughts:
This is a Deadline Bound project
Set up a Portfolio called “Policy Development”
Create a template Project that captures all the steps.
Create a new Project, based on the template for each new policy document that needs to be created.
Where I’m getting stuck:
Based on the policy type, the approval authority and accountable officer can be determined (I am thinking to set this up as a rule). Do I add a Field in the Project template? This would then have the same option selected on each of the 40+ tasks in the project… this seems messy). Is there a way to capture the detail at a higher level, e.g., create another project for managing the high level detail of the policy development, e.g., the title, policy type, status of the project?? If yes, how do I link these? (My previous experience in using MS Database suggests this could be possible??)
If I set a Milestone at the end of each phase in the Project template, can I link this back to the higher level reporting?
Others might disagree, but I feel an effort of this scope and complexity requires an interactive discussion in order to give meaningful feedback and avoid potentially giving incorrect feedback.
It seems like you’ve already determined the need for 120 or so projects (and maybe another higher-level one if I understood correctly), and now that’s creating complexity in and of itself.
One of the early questions I try to suss out with clients is where to “anchor” work in Asana–using which Asana work object. A project may be the right call, but we can’t determine that with a Forum post.
I gave a workshop on this one question (with a bunch of related info), and you can check out the video if you think it might help:
Thanks Larry, this has been thought provoking information. I’ll be revisiting the drawing board to ensure that I can get the workflow and reporting right ��
@Annmaree_Jackson I agree with @lpb; we probably need more context before making decisions. That said, here are questions & thoughts you may want to consider:
How much work will be needed for each policy document? Is it 5-10 tasks or 100 tasks?
If it’s 5-10 tasks, maybe you can use a task template with subtasks.
Is there a natural grouping of the 120 docs? Could you organize them into fewer projects and group the work by tasks, milestones, or sections? (As Larry implied, determining the Asana work object will be key.)
Will there be an overseer of the 120 docs to help track progress and minimize messiness?
Are you foreseeing major changes needing to be made to the projects? If yes, does your license have the bundles feature to help make changes to existing projects?
You may already know this, but you can use global custom fields, which can be shared in project templates and across multiple projects to give you more accurate reporting.
I share these questions not to overwhelm you, but to help you proactively plan this undertaking. I hope you find this useful.