What Is An Asana Expert?

If you’re googling or searching on YouTube or even browsing through the Asana forum you’re likely going to see people throwing around the word “expert”.

So, what exactly does it mean to be an Asana expert?

There are varying levels of different expertise when it comes to Asana consultants just like any other profession. In this article I break down exactly what you should be looking for when engaging or looking for an Asana expert?

What does it mean to be an Asana Certified Pro?

Being an Asana Certified Pro involves having knowledge of the technical features of Asana by completing a course and certification. At the moment anybody who wants to invest the time into the resources can become a Certified Pro.

While being an Asana Certified Pro gives you a knowledge advantage it doesn’t necessarily make you an expert. A big part of understanding how Asana can work for specific industries or businesses is practical experience and applying that across small, medium and large teams.

Lesson #1 when looking for an Asana expert. Being a Certified Pro is great, but it’s merely just a starting point.

Business analysis is a critical skill that is overlooked

Having a technical foundation in understanding Asana is crucial when providing consulting, implementation and training advice. Being able to adapt this knowledge to specific problems and unique challenges experienced by a range of different businesses is an entirely different skill set.

Ideally you should be looking for an expert that can adapt Asana to meet your needs and not fit you inside a predefined way of doing things. Some different ways you can get an understanding of the analysis skills of an Asana expert you are engaging include…

• Asking questions about what type of industries they’ve worked with and what their process involves.
• Get access to specific case studies in key industries and ask about the different approaches that were taken based on the client’s circumstances.
• Ask about what tools or activities are undertaken outside of Asana to understand your business.

Business analysis is a necessary skill inside an Asana expert’s toolkit and should be as strong as their technical skills inside Asana. Without the analytical skills to dissect your challenges, workflow and business processes it will be difficult to implement an effective structure inside Asana.

How important is years of experience?

Work management software like Asana changes rapidly. As a technology company they need to stay ahead of changes to the way people work and to respond to competitors in the market. An Asana expert should have a decent amount of experience using the software in practical and real world environments.

This could come in a variety of forms…

• How they are using or have used Asana in their own businesses.
• Have they worked inside an organisation that used Asana.
• Them being responsible for the organisational use of Asana

Having a variety of experience opens the expert up to the different ways Asana is used in real life organisations where there are problems related to scale, communication & collaboration.

While years of experience isn’t the ideal metric you should be focusing more on analysis of how they’ve obtained the experience and that has been applied to other situations, organisations and workflow challenges.

Validation by clients

There is always something changing and something to learn. This is especially true when it comes to workflow optimisation, workflow productivity, training and consulting. A good test of the expertise of an Asana consultant or professional is to gain some insight from previous clients.

Ask for some references or recent clients to talk to and start to dig into how the process worked for them and what steps were involved. This can help with understanding the level of expertise the consultant has with not only Asana, but also tackling business challenges and turning problems into solutions to achieve organisational goals.

While everyone might consider themselves an expert there are distinct differences between being technically skilled in Asana functions and being a true workflow consultant that utilises Asana as a tool to achieve your organisational workflow goals. Use these tips the next time you’re engaging an Asana professional to find the best fit for your needs.