Evaluating Asana vs MS Project - task constraints

Like many no doubt, I’m evaluating Asana vs MS Project. Adan is out in front on many fronts which is a good start.
I note that you can set Task Dependencies and that a task is waiting on another which is great.

Can anyone confirm if (and if so how) you can set constraints like Task must start before ?

Cheers!

(PS comments on anything Asana might not be able to do in relation to MS Project also welcome in response).

Asana only has a due date field. It does have custom fields in the Premium addition. You can add a custom field called Start Date, have it be a numeric field and use a consistent syntax, ie. 08172017. Their will be no drop down calendar but from my initial testing you can use the advanced search less than, greater than etc. Not perfect but doable and of course it will not show up on any calendar.

As far as features I think it depends on the team that is using it. I think the biggest question by far is will you get “buy-in” by your Team. That depends on a lot of things including features that you just have to have. Anytime I have talk to people about Microsoft Project being a collaboration tool it always is that it is to complex and it never takes off. Asana needs improvement in a number of areas like anything you compare to, but one thing for sure is I believe “onboarding” and “buy-in” is much better than most of the competition especially for the price.

You will have to use a third party software like Instagantt if your have to have Gantt charts.

The Advanced Search is very powerful for reports in Asana as well as the fact that it integrates GTD on the personal management level. There are definitely a lot of positives but again it depends on the nature of the team. What type of work will you be organizing with Asana and are you using other Microsoft Office products? Depending on the type of work you are trying to organize other members may be able to give you more color.

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@Lance_Macdonald
I don’t think Asana and MS Project are targeted to be used in the same way or for the same purpose.

MS Project - Is mainly setup for a Project Manager to establish a plan of what should happen during a project life cycle at a specific point in time and then they manage people/resources to deliver the outcomes of each tasks.

Asana - Is mainly setup for a team of people to collaborate and deliver a set of outcomes together. An those outcomes are grouped into Projects to make it easier to collaborate on a single set of ideas at a time.

So the set of functionality each product have is geared to different outcomes. So things like constraints, levelling, fine grained estimates and scheduling methods are in MS Project but not in Asana. Whilst Conversations, comments, Feedback options, notifications are in Asana.

There are tools like Instagnatt which helps make Asana look like a Gantt chart similar to MS project. Asana does not really play in that space.

Hope this helps.

ps. I would use Asana in a heartbeat over MS Project.

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HI @Lance_Macdonald,
I have used MS project for large[ish] engineering projects and it quickly gets cumbersome. A lot of stake holders use it and are familiar with what its Gantt charts show. The issue I have had with it is that it gets too detailed and resource levelling splits and breaks things all over the place. I am no expert with it, but to get people to use it and understand it gets out of hand quickly.

Instagantt is awesome. It has a few quirks/limitations to get used to but for overall big picture planning it works great. And Asana adds the collaboration and simplicity [yet powerful] to move a project through it’s stages. Instagantt could stand on it’s own as a valuable Gantt software for many companies.

I hope that offers some help in making an informed decision.

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