How Do I Microwave Green Beans

reinvents collaborative tools

Knowing that Asana was created by Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, it gives a good reason to be interested ... And the solution that is cooking up the startup gives a second ... His

original idea comes from a realization that we all do: Most of our jobs involve working in groups, but despite the number of collaborative tools at our disposal, we continue to manage our tasks into tools "personal" (spreadsheets, notepads and other post-its, real or virtual ...). Unfortunately, when the need arises to synchronize the team, these tools are not a great help and much energy is expended to ensure that all participants have the information updated, as are necessary.

The situation is the same in all organizations, including Google and Facebook, where the founders of the Asana themselves have experienced, the frustration that drove him to seek a solution. To do this, they began by trying to understand the motivations of people who prefer personal tools for work group. Answer: simplicity and speed of use . And their proposal becomes obvious: the platform Asana should be as easy and responsive USE THE a notebook, while offering the features essential to collaborative work.

This concept results in a relatively interface "stripped" extremely reactive (as far as software installed on the workstation), where (almost) all possible actions are available in one click: add task, change priorities, allocation, comments, adding tags ... Information can also easily be reorganized to move from a "personal" view of a team, a support group meeting (which will be updated in real time) ...

The solution is currently in private beta and is designed for management tasks and projects . While starting as a modest ambitions Asana said already, considering adopting a "universal" in its platform for multiple uses (management of support tickets, followed by recruitment process ...), with its docking flexible software.

I can already hear some comments ("a collaborative tool again!") And I must say it is not yet totally convinced myself. I still think that ideas developed by Asana are hit the mark of common sense and limit the choice of this first version of the task management can overcome some resistance (to the tools that "do everything" and "intimidate" the most users). The novelty deserves a test in real conditions ...