Gantt View in Asana – a new way to visualize your work

Effective project management is the key to success in modern business. Asana, one of the leading project management platforms, offers its users a variety of ways to visualize projects, from a traditional task list to a calendar view. Recently, this extensive collection was expanded with a new type of project view – the Gantt Chart. In this article, we’ll look at how this feature can help you manage complex projects.

What is a Gantt Chart in Asana?

The Gantt chart in Asana is a project visualization tool that helps teams manage tasks and deadlines more effectively. In Gantt view, you will have access to a list of tasks, their delivery dates and duration. On the right is a visual of your project’s schedule. The Baseline feature provides a reference point for comparing your actual project progress to your original plan. 

Gantt or Timeline: which view to choose?

Both Gantt and Timeline views provide valuable tools for effective project management with a focus on key dates. Let’s discuss in what cases you should opt for Timeline view versus Gantt view.

Gantt view

• For the management and planning of complex structured projects with a strict schedule.
• When it’s crucial to compare actual progress with initial plan and regulate task durations to keep your team going. 
• When dealing with intricate dependencies or multiple deadlines. 

Timeline:

• For iterative projects, where adaptability in planning is essential, and you need to visualize various work components as you progress.
• When it’s vital to view swimlanes and apply sorting and filtering.
• When some dependencies exist, but you have the flexibility to make changes as needed.

Benefits of Gantt view in Asana

Improved project visualization. Visualizing your project in chart form makes it easy to identify potential delays, dependencies between work components, and tasks that require additional resources.

Transparent management. The Gantt chart offers a precise breakdown of work schedules, subtasks, and interdependencies among project components. This visual clarity enables managers to maintain a constant watch over progress from project initiation to completion, promoting seamless coordination throughout the process.

Progress monitoring. The Gantt Chart allows project managers to scrutinize deviations from set deadlines. Through continuous comparisons of current progress with the established baseline, project managers can gauge the extent to which the project aligns with its initial objectives, enabling informed decisions to keep the project on track.

Improved features for large projects. In project management, task complexity often grows alongside project size, presenting a challenge. The Gantt view addresses this issue with its user-friendly interface, consolidating tasks, deadlines, and dependencies in one accessible hub, particularly beneficial for overseeing large projects and facilitating comprehensive progress tracking. 

Real time update. The Gantt chart in Asana is updated in real time, which allows you to always work with up-to-date data.

How to Use a Gantt Chart in Asana

• Start by creating a project or select an existing one. Inside your project, click on the View button and select Gantt.
• You can filter the view to show All tasks, Completed tasks or Incomplete tasks.
• Data sorting by Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters, Half-years and Years is also available.
• You can change the bar colors to match your custom fields using the Color feature in the top right corner. The selected color will apply to all tasks in the project. For example, if your custom field represents different teams (marketing, product, design, or development), coloring the bars accordingly will allow you to immediately see which team is working on what.
• A baseline represents a project plan (including tasks, dates, duration, etc.) at a specific point in time. It can be used to visually compare projected and current progress to show how the project has deviated from its original path over time. To add a baseline, click Gantt options in the top right corner.
• Add a date to the Compare baseline section. This date is the day you want to view the previous status of the project. When you add a date, the Show baseline toggle button will automatically turn on. You can click the button to disable this feature. The bars with the diagonal hash pattern show the original plan, which you can compare to the current progress shown with the solid bars.

• Asana streamlines project structure creation in Gantt view by automatically assigning dates to new tasks. When creating tasks, they will come with default consecutive date ranges of 1 day, which extends to 5 days by default when zooming out to a half-year or year view, enhancing planning flexibility.