In this blog series, we are working through creating a project management system for your online business.
In part 1, we discussed the 5 steps to project management and how to get your project and tasks under control
In this blog, we will expand on these five steps and show you the best project management tool, Asana. This will allow you to organize your projects in a collaborative, online environment.
Let’s get started!
The Best Project Management Tool
Asana is a collaborative workspace that allows you to manage projects and tasks across internal and external teams. With Asana you will have clear communications, reduced emails, and total project and workflow tracking in one place.
The Asana environment is simple and easy to use regardless of geographic location and device.
The 5 Steps to Project Management
Create Your Project
Open your Asana workspace, over on the left-hand pane, you have a section that’s labeled projects.
Click on the + icon (1) and then select Blank Project. Once you do this, you will be prompted to name the project, before selecting the create project button.
Asana provides a variety of pre-made project templates; everything from building a website, to tracking marketing efforts to managing work requests.
Go ahead and create a few different projects using either blank projects or templates.
(If you’d like to see the full Asana template library, click here!)
Prioritize Your Projects
Once you have your projects created, you can then set up priorities for them so that you and your team knows exactly what is most important.
In Asana, I put the projects in order of greatest priority to lowest priority (top down) in the left-hand pane.
To do this, just hoover over your project name with your mouse, select the … and drag and drop your projects in order or priority.
Define Your Tasks
With your projects and priorities setup, you can now begin to input the tasks of your project.
Select on a project to begin. With the project open, enter each of the tasks of your project (1).
Note: if a task has multiple subtasks to complete it (for example: writing a blog may contain sub-tasks such as researching keywords, outlining and then writing) you can create sub-tasks under the main task (2).
Define the Time to Complete Each Task
With each task defined, you can now set the estimated time to complete each task. While I love integrating Asana with Everhour for time tracking, you do not have to choose this approach. You can work directly in Asana by adding an additional field.
In Asana, select the + icon (1) next to the last field column. Select the number field (2).
Give the field a name and then select create field.
The new field is added to your project and you can now input all of your time estimates.
Schedule Your Tasks
The last, and final step is to assign and schedule your tasks to the appropriate team member.
For each task, enter an assignee and due date.
Additional Tips on How to Organize Asana
For more tips on the best free project management software check out:
