My Asana Revolution: How I Saved 667 Work Days Yearly
My personal experience of transforming my organization using disorderly spreadsheets to structured work management.
Not so long ago I was totally overwhelmed at my place of work. My projects were dispersed indefinitely on my numerous spreadsheets, emails, and other platforms. I kept on alternating the tools, locating the updated version of documents and wasted critical time in status update meetings. Then I found my Asana solution, and it happened otherwise. In this paper, I shall tell you specifically how the use of Asana has changed my workflow, saved my company hundreds of work days, and made my work life sane again.
How my Asana journey began
As most organizations that have scaled, we were no longer satisfied with our haphazard system of productivity tools. Jira was used by our technical teams and entirely different systems were used by our business teams and this put an invisible wall between those departments. I would be forced to be in scramble launches due to the lack of visibility of engineering schedules by the marketing department, and the inability to update at all on the project status since I would have to manually assemble slide decks that were obsolete almost instantly.
My limit was reached when I found out that we were taking more time to organize our work than working itself. It is at this point that I found a more appropriate solution and found Asana. I liked the fact that it was very flexible and could be integrated with tools that we were already familiar with, such as Jira. The best part? I did not have to begin with blank slate because a number of my colleagues were already using Asana on their own, which made the eventual formal adoption so much easier.
The astounding worldwide use of Asana.
I am not the only Asana unsuccessful. Asana has a customer base of more than 169,000 companies operating in more than 200 countries and territories around the globe today. The results are self-evident, as well as big companies such as Palo Alto Networks save their operating expenses by 40 percent, or Accor manages to increase the efficiency of their global marketing team by almost 100 percent.
At Zoom, our beloved video communications tool that is utilized by everyone, Asana saved unbelievable 133 working weeks annually by automation and optimizing processes. In the meantime, European media company We Are Era saves about 90 workdays in a year as well as enhancing customer satisfaction with better creative project management. These are not some abstract figures, they are real time, which teams can reclaim to work on something significant instead of coordination overhead.
The way Asana made my workflow better.
I used to be trapped in the so-called coordination trap: I spent more time monitoring a work than performing it before I have found my Asana solution. The following difficulties were encountered in our team:
Isolated systems: Jira was used by engineering, and other departments did not, so it was almost impossible to see the view of the future releases.
Spread out requests: The work requests were in different teams with no centralized system to receive them through email, chat, and informal discussions.
Manual reporting: manual updating of slide decks to display the results of executive reviews took us hours per week.
The introduction of Asana altered the situation. Our initial state was comprised of 5 major departments, and as managers transferred projects to the platform, they are automatically joined by their teams. What was beautiful about it was that people did not even need IT hand-holding to start using Asana which was promoting organic adoption.
I was most surprised by the fact that Asana turned into our classroom where we could develop a better work habits. According to the explanation given by Gregory Daniels of Zoom, Asana served as our classroom that assisted individuals in learning a new approach to project management. We apply it to impart the basic project management knowledge and how to work in a repeatable, scalable manner to generate results” . This is exactly my case- Asana did not simply provide us with a tool, it also enlightened us on how to do things better.
The unbelievable saving of time I did.
The greatest effect of the introduction of my Asana system is the time savings that have been dramatic. They are also saving an estimated 667 work days per year at Zoom on features of Asana such as forms, comments and templates. That is over two years of average 40-hour working weeks!
So, where are such savings in my case?
Forms: Now we have standardized requests in Asana Forms, which is done without e-mails back and forth. The Zoom employees fill almost 900 forms every month, which saves approximately 335 working days per year.
Templates: Project templates saved me up to 15-20 minutes of planning time instead of spending one hour and saved me half a kickoff meeting.
Automation: Rules are the automated repetitive processes such as work assignment that occurs as work approaches a due date or workflows.
Eliminated duplication: Now that we could see all work in one location, we have saved tremendous time that was lost in multiple work.
In my organization, time savings increased 200 percent annually as an increasing number of teams embraced Asana and the value is compounded with the wider use.
Boarding the plane: My adoption strategy.
The implementation of any new tool may be a difficult task, yet I discovered that there are a number of tricks that made our adoption of Asana incredibly easy:
Build willing teams: We started with five enthusiastic departments instead of compelling everybody simultaneously.
A non-threatening leadership buy-in: Migrating our monthly business review to Asana made the executives experience the worthiness of Asana at a glance.
Build master minds: We had experts of Asana in every department, train new employees, and provide them with best practices.
Highlight successful stories: I frequently posted success stories of teams that successfully used Asana, such as the organization of our Security team.
They created an Asana Task Force at We Are Era of enthusiastic employees who test each new feature and assist other employees. This bottom-top strategy contributed to the spread of adoption.
The key lesson I learned? Underestimate the pent-up demand of a work management tool as Greg of Zoom referred to it. After we had made Asana official, the usage went through the roof since individuals naturally gravitated to a superior method of working.
The way my Asana system is applied by different teams.
The flexibility to suit various needs of the departments is one of the strengths of Asana. The following are examples of how different groups in my company have made Asana their own:
Marketing team
Asana allows our marketing team (distributed across the world) to plan campaigns and other events, as well as coordinate inbound requests (by other departments) via standardized Forms. This has removed the anarchy of random requests coming out of various channels.
IT and security
Our IT department has been able to handle global deployments such as the Bring Your Own Device initiative that had an enrollment rate of more than 90% using Asana as a change management tool. One of the Zoom managers mentioned that it is possible to trace every minor subtask that the employees have to know about the program. A spreadsheet could not work due to too much that was going on.
Cross-functional collaboration
It has been especially the engineering-business relationship that has been transformative. Day to day activities in Jira are handled by engineering teams but synchronized with Asana to give visibility to business teams without having to have regular updates. It has totally unscrambled the scramble with us, said Greg of Zoom.
The strong capabilities that work with my Asana.
Although Asana has dozens of useful features, the following will add the most value to my day-to-day work:
Single source of truth Projects.
Every project has everything required to get work moving, including work, documents, conversations, and deadlines. The Project Overview gives the background information on objectives, scope, and time frame hence no one would always have to seek updates with the project manager.
Leadership visibility portfolios.
We have eliminated manual updates of executive slide decks to Portfolios that provide leaders with a macro picture of all initiatives. This also assists in identifying when groups are undertaking similar projects in order to conglomerate the efforts.
Integrations Uniting our tools.
The original Jira application maintains both technical and business teams in touch. The Zoom integration is also used to take notes in Asana tasks during a meeting, and Google Drive is used to attach files to pertinent projects.
Standard operating procedures.
It is in templates that whether we are starting a new marketing campaign or introducing a new employee to the company, there is no chance that we are going to leave out any steps to follow and using the templates we would be in position to have projects going in a few minutes instead of taking hours to get started.
Future planning using my Asana system.
Since we are getting increasingly advanced with Asana, we are looking into new avenues of connecting day-to-day work with strategic plans. Similar to We Are Era, we are starting to store Asana Goals feature with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and corporate objectives. This brings out the understanding of how individual projects and tasks of everyone relate to the bigger company objectives.
The greatest transformation that I have undergone since discovering my Asana solution is not really efficiency-related, but rather transparency and alignment. Having all tasks, schedules, and communications in a single place, team work becomes smooth irrespective of the location of team members.
Thinking back to my experience with disorganized spreadsheets and the orderly work management, the greatest victory is not necessarily that hundreds of hours were saved, but I got the psychological space back that I should have lost when I knew that something was going to fall through the cracks. The latter is what makes me enthusiastic about my Asana system and why I want all frustrated professionals to find their own solution to Asana.
What You Ask Me For My Asana.
What is the time saving of Asana compared to other tools?
Asana helps in saving time by automating, providing standardized processes and lessening the amount of time spent between applications. Such features as Forms, Templates and Rules streamline repetitive tasks. These efficiencies will save 667 work days per year at Zoom.
Is Asana hard to deploy in an organization?
Not necessarily. Begin with inspired teams and allow adoption to occur naturally. In the case of Zoom, when Asana was officially established, pent-up demand in the work management tool slopped over and its use increased naturally. The presence of Asana champions in respective departments aids in training other people.
Is Asana suitable with both technical and non-technical teams?
Absolutely! It can be used to integrate technical and business teams because of the flexibility and integrations (such as with Jira). Jira allows engineering to work and Asana to launch marketing plans keeping everything in sync.
What does Asana do to assist in remote work?
Asana establishes a core home to all projects and location does not matter. At We Are Era, the employees are in a position to work anywhere, whether they are in the office or at home since all information stored in Asana is available anywhere.
How can Asana be best learned?
The majority of individuals are intuitive to Asana, and the presence of internal specialists, official training of complex projects, and an introduction of working team structures contribute to learning faster. Onboarding of new users at we are era is only 15-20 minutes.