Portfolios vs Teams as Top-Level Organization

Hi folks. I’m currently working on re-organizing our Asana Teams/Projects. Right now we’ve got about 12 teams and 60+ projects. The Teams represent various departments, as well as some large-scale cross-department initiatives.

As I was working on re-naming and consolidating some Teams, I suddenly wondered if it might make more sense to stop organizing by Teams and use shared Portfolios as our top level of organization instead. I know I’d lose Team Conversations and Calendar (which we don’t really use anyway.). Any other major drawbacks? Anyone tried this? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Hi,
I understand that you will leave one “big team” where you put all users. Is it right? I see one quite big inconvenience. You have to be very carefull with project sharing and permitions. Teams allows you to define which person have default access for “opened” (public to “big team” projects. If you create (or someone else) “opened” project everyone in organisation have to full access to it.

2 Likes

What would be the issue to leave the team as it is? I agree on the permission issue!

1 Like

No issue, really. Just thinking out loud and trying to understand when it’s best to group projects by Team and when a Portfolio is a better option.

The permission issue is a valid one. Not a huge deal for our particular company, as we are highly transparent. But I probably would need to have separate “HR” and “Upper Management” teams at the very least, to be extra sure sensitive projects stayed private.

1 Like

@Jill_Schoff,

I think it’s important to use Teams, and if you find you need/want Portfolios too, then by all means use them, but not to the exclusion of Teams. Permissions, appearance in sidebar, and other benefits aside, this is what Asana recommends, and doing so will likely put you in a better position to benefit from future Asana additions/changes.

Also, maybe some of this answer to another question might be helpful too:

Larry

2 Likes