On my main menu is this fun thing…
I.E. PORTFOLIOS—something I cannot use based on my company’s subscription type. Then why is it there?
My visual space + attention are sacred, esp. at work where time is money, friend. I do NOT appreciate such premium space being taken up by something I can’t even use—AS AN AD.
I’ve felt this way since it first arrived on my menu, and I’m resenting it more and more.
At first I was excited! I thought these were the long-awaited overview features I’d been waiting for. I was extremely disappointed to find I had no access to these features, despite being a “PREMIUM” user. As it continued to be on my menu, seeing it started to piss me off. Even more when I log in every day to find it’s been “Updated!”—continually drawing my valuable, difficult-to-magage-in-the-first-place attention (ADHD tyvm) and taking up more space.
If I can’t use it, I don’t want to see it!
Asana already has an attention problem. For example, looking at the My Tasks page is a paralysing act (LITERALLY, I GET PANIC ATTACKS) due to 1) the sheer amount of tasks one can see as a result of a full team using Asana and 2) very little customizability or organization available for the My Tasks page (a suggestion for improvements to this is another, much more optimistic, feedback post I’ve been drafting—but I’m clearly more motivated to write this one because I’m extremely cross about the Portfolio/Workload feature bait-and-switch). I’ve had to make my own workarounds to make Asana funcitonal for me, such as making special focus projects that I have to manually add tasks to (a pain which has kept me from using my workaround consistently) but ultimately have more control over.
To add insult to injury, Portfolios are a core project management feature Asana has always been lacking in my book (at least for paid users). Asana is an overwhleming project management tool because it’s SO in the weeds (see above paragraph). There are very few—and minimally functional—overview features available even to my team to actually manage projectS (plural). Without them, it’s effectively a suped up to-do list.
Granted, the gant charts were a REALLY nice add for flow—but that still doesn’t give me an informed overview of my projects. The Dashboard doesn’t count—it’s a useless card version of my favorites list on the left menu. Looks pretty, but pretty useless. There is no useful overview information given for Dashboard projects.
This lack of this KEY project management function (multi-project overview) has resulted in difficulty using Asana, and I’ve had to find ways to adapt. Namely by turning my projects into tasks, which is a difficult way to manage large projects. All this extra work just makes me avoid using Asana. I already have enough on my plate.
I do like Asana to a degree—but these limitations make it much less effective as a PM tool, and it’s ridiculous project overviews are a high-tier feature. I don’t need all the other bells and whistles of the Business tier, I need an affordable, easy-to-use (i.e. doesn’t take a ton of work to maintain) effective (i.e not overwhelming) PM tool for my team.
Probably