Tool Shop: Asana

Dr. Andrew Makar is an IT program manager and is the author of the Microsoft Project Made Easy series. For more project management advice, visit the website TacticalProjectManagement.com.

  Agile   ProjectsAtWork  

Free to teams up to 30 people, a new collaboration and task management tool allows each team member to prioritize and create tasks needed to complete delivery. Here’s a look at how it can be used on a distributed Agile project, from product backlog to release to detailed iteration planning.

In the Agile project management domain, there are a lot of tools that can be used to manage an Agile project ranging from basic index cards to full collaboration systems. If the index card approach doesn’t suite your co-located or distributed Agile team, consider managing your next Agile project with Asana — a fast collaboration tool that helps project teams deliver projects better. Instead of a typical “command and control” project management model, Asana provides a more Agile view allowing each team member to prioritize and create tasks that the team needs to deliver.

Every team member assigned to an Asana project can create and prioritize tasks while following each other for instant notifications. Task commenting by team members, file sharing and note taking are all integrated into the application as well as project task views and individual task assignment views. These features and Asana’s speed make it a useful tool to manage a product backlog, develop a release plan or a detailed iteration plan. The following screen shots illustrate how Asana can …

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