Guiding Principles Here

• Largely drawn from these two resources:
• We don't want you to have to bend over backwards to use Asana
• Some basic alignment in workflows helps facilitate collaboration
• Knowing when something is actually complete makes it more achievable
• Basically, these processes are designed to avoid a few failure modes:

A good task description is clearly defined and can be uncontroversially completed

• When is the task done? Some tasks you'll never finish, like...
• Tasks should be obviously complete-able for all the stuff you can complete:

Basically:

1. include an action verb (e.g., review, send, find)
2. it stops where your control ends (like 'submit/request' not 'get approval/publish') Note: if you don't want to lose the loose end, keep it in 'waiting on others' or create a follow-up task in Asana

Simple Rules for Alignment

• These processes stop orphaned tasks (#1) that are unplanned (#2) and unconnected to a project so they never get reviewed (#3).
• How do I do these three? Takes exactly 7 seconds after writing a task

Assigning Tasks to Others

Help others help you. If you need someone to do something:

1. Make sure your task follows the Rules for Alignment (assigned person, date, project).
2. Make sure your task is clearly defined. It should have a clear verb. If the "definition of done" isn't obvious, clarify it in the comments.
3. If the task is for the current sprint, it should be marked as unplanned. If it's for the following sprint, put it in the backlog. Unless it is urgent and could not have been predicted to occur in the sprint, it should always go in the next sprint. A simple heuristic might be to allow 2 weeks for people to complete tasks that take ≥ 1 hour.