Yes, it would make a huge difference if users had a choice to view sub-tasks from the main screen. Like an outline where each sub-task was visible but indented.
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Hi Spencer,
If you (or anyone else reading this thread) are on Windows and would like to try a beta of Desksana which gives you exactly that - a true multi-level outline of your Asana tasks/subtasks - send me a direct Message and I can get you a beta version. (A Mac version is planned but Windows is first out of the gate.)
I vote yes for sub-sections! and subsections that collapse!
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@Todd_Cavanaugh , I’m just getting started with Asana, and this post saved me a TON of time and wasted work. Thank you so much!
You seem to have a lot of experience with the platform, so maybe I can ask you this: Do you have any tips to make sure that Asana is helping an organization accomplish the most important work, not just the most urgent? It just seems that this platform makes it easy to prioritize what’s easy, because it’s difficult to break down stickier work items into actionable tasks.
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Hi @lynsaymillsfabio, glad it was helpful!
Asana is a great platform. I’ve found Asana allows more than adequate ways to break down work between projects, sections, tasks, and subtasks. It’s a great question, and I do cover some important related concepts in some of the lessons in the Asana Training Masterclass (like the one regarding My Tasks). That might helps!
Todd Cavanaugh
Consultant on Asana
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I’m in complete agreement here. I think the 1st thing you listed is really the biggest factor. Subtasks are great for listing step by step requirements of a task or something like that but beyond that they aren’t very useful for me. Trying to convince our organization to move towards using Asana as intended.
We do Agile development so we have a new project every two weeks that’s a new sprint and has all the tasks on it. The only problem is that sometimes we end up with a project that is a multi-tiered endeavor that will actually last months and it’s on there as a task when it’s anything but.
I recently learned though that any task can be assigned to multiple projects so I’m going to make the recommendation that larger endeavors be their own projects and tasks on those projects can be added to the sprint when needed. This will make it much easier to manage the larger projects, track their progress and schedule development time on them into the sprint.
I’m fairly new to Asana (actually just recently returned) but have used dozens of other task and project management tools. Many of the points raised about subtasks seem to me to be shortcomings in the way Asana handles subtasks and data structures (not that subtasks are generally less desirable in and of themselves), but rather most are limitations of Asana.
Same goes for the ‘Boards vs. Lists’ post (i.e. if better sorting and filtering were available then boards would be more useful).
I’m hopeful that Asana will address some of these issues to make subtasks and boards more useful.
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@Todd_Cavanaugh great points - Similar to how a task dependent on another task has a little icon on the task indicating something extra with this task - we would LOVE to see tasks with subtasks be called out/pronounced more in the project main task list. This would help solve someone completing a task not realizing there are sub tasks associated. The only way to see if the task has sub tasks now is to click it, then scroll down on the task detail view to the right to find/see subtasks. If the main task had an indication (like an arrow, asterisk, heck even a smiley face!), that would be sweet and helpful.
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I think Asana should revise the subtask implementation to enable a lot of the features that Todd mentioned above. Basic features like inherit assignee, appear on reporting, and calculating Task due date from subtask due dates should be implemented by default. The last few related to custom fields, export, recurring tasks, and task/subtask templates are power-user features that probably won’t affect most common users who just want to get work done.
One reason I don’t care much for sections is because (unless I was using sections wrong), sections are just visible labels that can be moved at any time. Tasks aren’t locked in a hierarchy to sections like they are to subtasks. Also, sections don’t apply to Kanban boards, where I spend most of my day. I find myself using a combination of Kanban columns, task/subtask assignment, and due dates to organize and schedule my work.
And I’m getting by with just the free implementation. I’d like to invest in a premium account sometime to use task dependencies. But the cost is prohibitive for a fledgling part-time business like me.
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Hi @TonyChung,
A couple of points…
While this is currently true, Asana is about to roll out a change to the way sections work such that tasks WILL be “attached” to sections; when you move the section, its tasks will move with it.
Actually they do, although it’s understandable that you wouldn’t know it: columns actually ARE sections behind the scenes! Again, currently sections work differently in list and board projects, but after the upcoming change I mentioned, sections in lists and columns in boards will be interchangeable, and in fact you’ll be able to flip a project back and forth between a list and a board view; board columns will show as sections in the list view and vice versa.
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Thanks Phil. I think we are just missing a common definition of terms. It’s understandable that in its simplest form, Sections would map to Columns; after all, that is one way to use columns on a board, and I have a board like that, where my columns relate to different contexts, and I toss tasks under each column based on the required context.
However, there are also cases where a column would define a process step, as in my example of Backlog, To Do, Doing, and Done. This setup would benefit from sections that provide categorization or hierarchy.
In these cases Sections would be better considered as Epics that contain a list of tasks, and tasks could be defined with with dependencies and following tasks (if required). In workflows that schedule tasks in sprints, an Epic could contain tasks that would be plotted across several sprints.
(Yes, we can also use tags to categorize tasks! Just trying to relate Asana to similar project management tools; but lightweight simplicity and flexibility is the very heart of Asana!)
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You can also create a section (for subtasks) by using the shortcut tab + n.
Source: https://asana.com/guide/help/projects/sections#gl-subtasks
Hey @TonyChung, I agree with you that I’m not sure the decision to map Sections to Columns was the best option. In my opinion, Kanban boards are not the best layout for just dividing tasks by categories. That’s not why that layout was developed by Toyota, which was instead to watch things move through a process (exactly like what you’re doing with Backlog, To Do, Doing, and Done) and spot roadblocks/obstacles where things get hung up.
I think Asana would have been better off allowing you to map Columns in a Board Layout to a dropdown Custom Field, so that your Phase/Stage (or something else customizable) could be the columns but the sections would generally be more categorical. This is the way Wrike implements this concept and I think it makes more sense for project management.
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I definitely second this request. Showing subtasks in Timeline view is a major roadblock for our organization, and we’re considering ditching subtasks completely because of this restriction.
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Have a simple but urgent question about sub-tasks. I associated the same list of ‘sections & sub-tasks’ to multiple tasks on a project ( in board view ).
How we use the board:
- Columns show the progress of a proposal through the workflow
- Each task on my board was a the name of a Proposal my team was reviewing
- the sub-tasks were the screening checklist (same for every proposal)
In Sep 2018, I imported a .csv with one of the columns being ‘sub-tasks’ and the result was that each task in the board had the same checklist. Now that i am trying to use the same format this is no longer working. - help!
I have an issue with not having an easy way to move subtasks independently across the project board. I found a way to do this in list view, but only when selecting multiple subtasks. Then I get a pop up that allows me to edit project and section and I can move them from for example from “To Do” to “Doing” and only after having done that can I move individual subtasks across the board. But this is a very ineffective way of doing this, especially when you have a single subtask you want to move. If I am missing a different way of doing this I am all ears!
Hello,
Asana seems to have the ability to add a project to the subtask. If you do this then it will appear on the project:
You can then move it around in the columns.
Yes, this is true, @Stefan_Jenkins. The problem is usually you don’t want it also as a task (or else you could have just used a task in the first place) taking up space in the project view.
But I think the bigger issue is that type of hack isn’t scalable when you have a large team made up of people who may not be as tech savvy. Try explaining that the subtask can also be a task, and that normally a subtask isn’t part of the project but rather belongs to a parent task, and you will get a lot of confused responses.
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I use sub tasks to denote steps in a process for which I am the owner of the entire process. so I have a task “New Vendor Set Up” which entails a myriad of very specific steps to be taken. I list each step as a sub task so that I don’t miss one. I, in essence, use it as a checklist rather than tasks which need to be assignable.
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I’ve been having the same internal debate and we tweak our campaign management project template. It’s hard to capture the full picture when so much of the work being doing is tracking in subtasks. Love the idea of sections + tasks as an alternative.