Project or Portfolio in a Multibrand organisation?

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1

Hello, I am new to Asana and to my team and I am not sure the current set up is the best. I’d like to see how others would tackle this:
I work for a parent company who rolls out IT tools and infrastructure to multiple subsidiaries. The average IT tool would be rolled out to 15+ brands. so here comes my question:

Would you organise the roll out of a new IT tool as 1 project, with every subsidiary as a subsection, or as 1 portfolio with every subsidiary as its own project?

The teams in each subsidiary are different, but the process is very much rinse and repeat.

Thank you in advance for your help!

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Hi,
How many tasks involved in rolling out to one subsidiary?

3

Hi Bastien,
For the first one - many many. For the following probably between 10-15.
Thanks!

4

I would also consider reporting needs. eg. do you want to report on the status of each roll out with detailed status updates or is just a status field enough?

There are many other nuances to making such a decision, that a live engagement with a Solutions Partner like Bastien and myself, would resolve much quicker and easier.

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Welcome, @Rebecca_Goodchild,

You might be interested in my workshop video that addresses how to make decisions exactly like this one:

Thanks,

Larry

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I have a similar sort of dilemma, I am rolling out Asana to my team and one major project we are currently in the thick of is planning a companywide in-person event. It is currently in one project with close to 200 tasks and 20 focus areas. I am trying to make the case to my team whether or not we should keep it as one project, or a portfolio with project “buckets” to capture the focus areas.

For splitting it into multiple projects, I think my team would appreciate having an “all” view with every task for a bird’s eye view, and I could automate rules so that when tasks are added to the main project they would be multihomed based on the focus field. Also, the status update feature for these individual projects would be useful…

Aside from that, I need some talking points for why it would be best to divide it into multiple projects (or not). I am unsure how this would benefit tracking progress, and if it would just create more clicks, more noise, and more friction. Not everyone on this team is used to Asana, and we also have some external partners involved.

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Hi @Alena_K , I feel your dilemma. When it comes to ‘mega-projects’, deciding on whether it should be in one single project or broken into various ‘bucket’ projects usually has to do with the following factors, which some you have already covered.

Custom fields and purpose: what is the purpose of each ‘bucket’ project? would each one require (completely) different custom fields? would they benefit from having their own particular ‘Status’ field, for example? Are they perhaps completely different in nature? For example, is one bucket used for form intakes, another is used as a CRM to capture all contacts working on the project and another for a particular deliverables list?

Amount of tasks: will the ‘bucket’ projects have a substantial amount of tasks? Anything less than about 15-20 tasks may not benefit being an actual Asana project, instead perhaps a Section within a project or even 15-20 subtasks within a task…?

Status updates: is it beneficial to post status updates for each of the ‘bucket’ projects? Even so, if you want one status update to rule them all, that could be a status update of the portfolio that would contain all the ‘bucket’ projects, or you could designate the main ‘bucket’ project as the one that will have Status updates posted, on behalf of the entire project.

Gantt / timeline: would it be beneficial to have a view of all tasks of the project in one Gantt view? You could still breakup your project into buckets and multi-home all tasks into one ‘master’ project list (using Rules, as you mention). Alternatively, you could combine multiple projects into one Gantt view using instagantt.com

Privacy/access: would it be beneficial to hide certain aspects of the project from other stakeholders? For example, do you have any sensitive tasks with financials or non-client facing data that would be best to be kept in a separate, private project, accessible to a few select members? Sharing one master project with everyone could be great for visibility, but perhaps not for Guests or the external partners that you mention.

In conclusion, I believe if the answer is ‘yes’ to perhaps ANY of the above factors, I would support your reasoning for going down the route of breaking the project into numerous ‘buckets’ or initiatives.

I encourage others to weigh in, in case I’ve missed any other factors.

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