Smoothest way to merge two organizations?

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Hi there!

The company I work for is becoming a “blended family”: we have a few mini-sized companies joining one bigger company under a single umbrella brand. The problem is… we don’t know the most efficient way to manage that transition.

We have two “instances” of Asana. The mini companies have been operating together in one Asana org, and the big company has been operating solo in another. To keep it simple, I’ll refer to the companies as MINI (mini-one, mini-two, mini-three) and HUGE.

We currently have multiple email domains, which is complicating things as a few MINI early-adopters are showing up as “guests” with limited access on HUGE’s Asana. Sidenote: I hope that in the future, we’ll be united under one umbrella email domain, but for now that is postponed. Here’s the gist of the current domain structure:

Asana Org #1:
@mini-one.com
@mini-two.com
@mini-three.com

Asana Org #2:
@huge.com

Would love to hear how others have prepared for an organization merge, and the order of the steps you took. We want to unify our workflows, retain our legacy projects/data, and reduce company-wide frustration as much as possible.

Here is my VERY tentative plan:

  1. :books: Audit projects: Clean up and/or archive projects on the MINI Asana
  2. :hammer_and_wrench: Audit process: Meet with primary stakeholders of each department to see how MINI and HUGE’s current Asana approach has been working (or not working) for them
  3. Initiate Data Migration request with Asana
  4. :bell: Notify: Alert company of migration timeline and expected impact/disconnects: ie which forms and integrations will be de-activated
  5. :pencil2: Review any HUGE forms and form-fields, and then add MINI info/tags where needed
  6. :honeybee: Based on department stakeholder discussion in Step 2, adjust and integrate HUGE Team boards and workspaces to unify working styles
  7. :broom: Clean up accounts: Delete and/or archive the early-adopters’ HUGE guest accounts to reduce confusion / accidental tagging.
  8. :warning: Send final warning via Slack (Step 4 repeat)
  9. Migration of data occurs! :tada:
  10. :speech_balloon: Communicate: request that department leaders update their team members of changes to work flow, links to new forms, links to workspaces/relevant projects
  11. :brain: Iterate and learn from mistakes. Send surveys and meeting requests to discuss what needs to change or improve

Are there any steps I’m missing, or things you suggest changing? Would also love any tips for implementation and discussions around unifying Asana working styles.

This is a big adjustment and I want to make it as smooth as possible, knowing there will probably be some bumps along the way. Hoping this convo will help others who might be in a similar boat as well! :man_rowing_boat:

Appreciate you reading this far, and apologies for the novel!

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My approach would be to contact support :slight_smile: they do this kind of things often. My guess is:

  • declare the mini domains into the huge one
  • ask Asana to migrate the entire mini orgs into the huge one

You might indeed want to clean up things first. But you can improve/unify processes once everyone is in the same org, don’t you think? Because this way they’ll have access to the same custom fields for example.

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Thank you so much for the response!

I see what you mean. My concern with unifying post-migration is that people will go in and start creating things before structures and guidelines are in place, which would then require more clean up.

Maybe a middle ground is to set some ground rules for the first few weeks of the newly migrated Asana while we figure out the best approach for everyone. That might mitigate the higher-energy/rogue users at least a little bit :laughing: Thanks again!

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I am usually more concerned about people not using Asana then people going crazy and using it too much :sweat_smile:

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