Asana consulting
Ready to tackle your challenging projects
Hire an Asana expert to join your team
Sometimes training isn’t enough. We’ll work with your team to fast-track your Asana deployment or fine-tune your workflows and processes.
Hire an Asana expert to join your team
Sometimes training isn’t enough. We’ll work with your team to fast-track your Asana deployment or fine-tune your workflows and processes.
Case study
Project Management Pros helped a retail chain rapidly deploy Asana and boost productivity, transparency, and organization
Situation
Brightwood Hardware* is one of the oldest family-owned and managed chain of hardware stores in America, operating over 100 neighborhood hardware stores throughout the northeast US as well as a significant e-commerce property. Project Management Pros was hired because Brightwood was looking for a new solution that would provide a central organizational system and better task management across functions and management levels.
Some of the steps that needed to occur included:
- Train over 80 staff spanning various departments such as HR, marketing, executive, and more.
- Design and implement end-to-end operations and processes.
- Transition from multiple disparate project management and communication tools to a single source of truth in Asana.
- Assist with the communication and change management of the Asana rollout to maintain alignment and increase employee buy-in.
Approach
Project Management Pros held an executive training first to help the company’s top leaders understand Asana’s benefits and to aid the mutual creation of a deployment strategy.
A rollout plan was devised to train each department separately so that every employee was in a small enough group that it was both easy to ask questions and receive instruction customized for the department’s needs. Several Project Management Pros consultants provided a series of trainings over the course of a month for each department covering topics such as:
- General task management principles
- Running better meetings
- Organizing projects for success
- Managing others more efficiently with real-time reports and dashboards
As each department became proficient with Asana, the sessions adapted to focus on incorporating real workflows into Asana and solving specific obstacles.
Project Management Pros also worked with the executive team to develop a series of “Asana conventions” covering issues like using email with Asana, color-coding, use of tags, privacy, file-sharing, and more. These conventions were distributed company-wide to promote alignment and unity across departments.
Results
Project Management Pros successfully trained over 80 employees and rolled out the Asana project management platform on-time and on-budget. The systematic training and consulting sessions ensured quick adoption and minimal unexpected business disruptions. Managers were excited to have unprecedented levels of insight thanks to valuable custom search reports and real-time dashboards.
Overall, Brightwood Hardwood experienced new levels of productivity, transparency, and organization.
*Name changed for privacy
Case study
Project Management Pros helped unify the silos and simplify cross-functional projects in a university’s marketing department
Situation
American Research University* is the flagship university of its state education system. Over 10,000 employees work as part of the university with over 37,000 students attending. Project Management Pros was hired because the Division of Communications & Marketing at ARU was dealing with a number of issues stemming from intradepartmental silos. Each unit adopted its own process to schedule projects, allocate resources, share files, and communicate information. An example of this was 5 separate editorial calendars that were not visible to other units. The executive team was frustrated with the lack of transparency and cross-functional conflict.
Some of the steps that needed to occur included:
- Train nearly 50 staff spanning various units such as HR, marketing, photography, publishing, social media, development, and more.
- Transfer or build workflows into Asana.
- Build a system for requesting work from shared resources (like the Creative or Design teams).
- Transition from multiple disparate project management and communication tools to a single source of truth in Asana.
- Assist with the communication and change management of the Asana rollout to maintain alignment and increase employee buy-in.
Approach
Project Management Pros designed a two-phase approach for a successful Asana deployment at ARU. Phase I started with a series of surveys and discovery meetings held with eight key units, such as “Brand Strategy” and “Photo/Video Services.” This surfaced each unit’s most important workflows and helped them understand Asana’s benefits.
Next, an on-site workshop sped up adoption by quickly training employees in a 1-day “Asana bootcamp.” Several additional days were spent on-site with each unit identifying pain points and designing workflows. As Phase I concluded, each team member understood how to use Asana and could start using it in everyday work.
Phase II provided continued support for the deployment. Project Management Pros participated in virtual meetings to give input on Asana conventions, policies, and continued implementation. We also developed extensive documentation around university Asana policies and guidelines, including the creation of custom video lessons.
Project Management Pros spent additional time with each unit, refining templates, organizing projects, and building search reports. Every unit had the support they needed to ask questions and solve issues before they became critical.
Results
Project Management Pros successfully onboarded nearly 50 employees and deployed the Asana project management platform on-time and on-budget. The thorough rollout process avoided costly delays and helped build consensus across numerous silos. Other benefits included:
- Managers were excited to have unprecedented levels of insight thanks to valuable custom search reports.
- A new editorial calendar system allowed each unit’s editorial calendar to roll up into a Master Editorial Calendar that could be used for department-wide planning.
- Resource planning was much improved as shared resources were no longer overbooked by unfiltered requests for work.
- Template tasks standardized common cross-functional workflows that touched every unit, ensuring nothing fell between the cracks.
- A scheduling system, complete with automated emails, was developed using 3rd-party tool Zapier for the Photo/Video team’s complex needs.
Overall, ARU experienced new levels of productivity, transparency, and organization.
*Name changed for privacy
