Asana
Asana, the task manager software, is the baby of both Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, Facebook’s Cofounders. This software’s goal is to help manage tasks for groups, whether it be for class projects or small business group assignments. Asana hopes to help small business’ productivity by cutting time spent on typing reports about completed work and messy group organization through a single shared task list. Asana is not the first attempt at such a program, however these two Facebook geniuses believe that they’ve learned from the mistakes of previous attempts and have truly created the perfect task manager to date. Lets take a look.
Asana | The Birth of an Idea
Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein created this prototype while working at Facebook and at the time it was an internal project. Here’s what Mashable describes as their primary objective behind Asana:
While still at Facebook, Asana co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein developed a prototype task manager that helps groups cut down on email chains and meetings. After watching the prototype take off within Facebook, they left the giant social network that Moskovitz helped found and continued developing what would become Asana. Now they’re introducing that collaboration tool to the world by opening it to the public for the first time.
Asana, which has been in private beta for about a year, is a free, single-shared task list for groups. It helps everybody on a team keep track of what they and others are working on without what the startup has termed “work about work,” or unnecessary logistical conversations.
“People ask us, ‘Is this a to do list?’” Rosenstein says. “We’re like ‘No, this is the to do list.’”
We’ve all experienced email chains and its no different than having reports scattered across your desk and piecing together the puzzle to quantify each of your team member’s contributions. Its a counterproductive hindering process, so I’m hoping that Asana scratches this itch.
Asana | What Sets it Apart from the Rest
As mentioned Asana is not the first attempt at a task manager software, but its founders say that what really sets Asana apart is its real time updates among other features:
What sets Asana apart from dozens of other task manager programs, he says, is real-time updates, flexibility to fit any project’s work flow and simplicity that makes updating Asana quicker than updating a Word document. That, and the fact that Asana wants to be seen more like email than corporate software: a go-to organization method for everything from class projects to small companies.
http://mashable.com/2011/11/02/asana/
If you’re not convinced, then maybe this will sway your opinion: According to its founders, Asana is still being used by Facebook to manage all of their teams projects. If the top social enterprise in the world is using Asana, obviously something is working right.
Asana | Will You Use It?
If you’re worried that you may not be computer savvy enough to operate the Asana task manager, you may have thought correctly when the program was first developed, however its creators say that they’ve been working feverishly to make it more user friendly. As a matter of fact they say that practically anybody can pick it up in a few minutes or less.
I’m a user of Google Docs, but I’m willing to give Asana a try, as quirks in Google Docs and user friendliness is not always up to par. Now that Asana is public, go ahead and check it out for yourself here, Asana.com.