Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Both PESTLE analysis and PEST analysis are research tools that help you analyze the surrounding political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological environment that can affect your business. Learn how these tools can help prevent risk and inform your team’s future business decisions. Change can be scary. Oftentimes, the best way to deal with change is to understand it.

If you’ve ever struggled with mapping project tasks or keeping track of dependencies, we have the perfect solution for you. A PERT chart, also known as a PERT diagram, is a tool used to schedule, organize, and map out tasks within a project. PERT stands for program evaluation and review technique. It provides a visual representation of a project's timeline and breaks down individual tasks. These charts are similar to Gantt charts, but structured differently.

Workcations are a work and travel trend that combine working and taking a vacation. They’re on the rise, thanks in a large part to the increased location flexibility and rising worker burnout. Taking a workcation might be just what you need to destress, recharge, and get motivated—as long as you plan it the right way.

A request for information (RFI) is a document a company sends to vendors to gather information on vendors’ available services, qualifications, and products. RFI documents can include everything from general goals and objectives to evaluation criteria and submission details. An RFI template makes it easy for your team to find the best vendors to help you complete new projects. Learn how to create an effective RFI process and when to use one.

Action items are follow up tasks that you create from a meeting. They should be clearly defined with a description and a deadline, and help bring the conversations you have in meetings to life. Here, we’ll show you the benefits of creating action items, how to create them, and potential mistakes to avoid. It's the end of a successful project kickoff meeting and your team members are ready to move forward to execute everything that was decided in the meeting.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) is a phenomenon that states that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. In this article, we break down how you can use this principle to help prioritize tasks and business efforts. When you get into the office in the morning, what's the first thing you do? Most people grab their caffeinated beverage of choice, check their email, and prioritize their tasks for the day. But what techniques do you use to identify what needs to get done first?

More collaboration isn’t always better. In fact, research from The Work Innovation Lab, a think tank by Asana, shows that too much collaboration can actually hold workers back. In a survey of over 1,500 workers, 29% of leaders said that the expectations put on employees to collaborate prevented them from completing their work. But while too much collaboration is bad, teams still need to work together to achieve business goals.

Project constraints are the general limitations of a project, including time, costs, and risks. Understanding project constraints is important because they affect project performance. In this piece, we’ll discuss project constraints in detail and explain how to manage them. Have you ever been to the circus and watched the performers do a balancing act? They somehow manage to hold multiple plates up in the air so gracefully that it feels like they must be using magic.

Studies have shown that the four-day workweek, which allows employees to work fewer days without a change in benefits or pay, can increase employee productivity and overall happiness. But it’s not the right fit for every company or team. Here’s how to know if it will work for you. The four-day workweek is no longer just a radical idea—it’s becoming a serious consideration for businesses looking to rethink work schedules, productivity, and employee mental health.

Today’s IT leaders are no longer just operators. They’re strategists
and deal-makers. According to a recent report on the state of today’s IT leader published by The Work Innovation Lab, a think tank by Asana, there’s been a dynamic shift in today’s IT environment away from traditional IT roles toward strategic partnership roles.