November 9, 2023

Trello vs. Asana: Which Helps Product Design Teams Stay Organized?

Learn how Trello and Asana compare for keeping product design teams organized, with pros and cons of each tool discussed to help determine the best fit.

Cam Velasco

5 years of Experience

Empowering marketing agencies with top-tier offshore talent from LATAM. Passionate about bridging the gap and redefining global hiring for growing companies.

Expert in

Marketing

Introduction

Staying organized and enabling seamless collaboration are crucial for product design teams looking to maximize efficiency. With so many moving parts across research, design, development, and testing, having tools to structure workflows and tasks can make all the difference.

Two popular project management tools – Trello and Asana – both aim to help teams stay coordinated. But with different interfaces and feature sets, how do you know which one is the right fit?

In this post, we’ll provide an in-depth overview of Trello and Asana’s capabilities and use cases to understand their strengths. By comparing factors like interface, integrations, pricing, reporting, and more, product teams can evaluate which tool best matches their needs. With the right task management platform in place, product designers can focus their energy on optimizing and launching innovative products.

Detailed Overview of Trello

Trello takes a highly visual approach to task and project management using kanban-style boards. Each board contains lists representing stages of work, and within those lists live cards that can represent tasks, features, or project steps.

Team members can collaborate by assigning cards, adding comments, attachments, labels, due dates, and more. Boards can also be shared with other teams or clients, with granular permissions to control access.

Some of Trello’s powerful integrations include Slack, Google Drive, Jira, GitHub, Figma, and more. This allows seamless connections with other tools product teams already use daily.

Key Features of Trello

Drag-and-drop interface – Easily move cards between lists to represent workflow changes. Rearrange lists themselves for more customized process views.
Customizable workflows – Trello allows teams to create multiple boards with different list structures to match varying product development needs.
Card details – Cards can have descriptions, attachments, due dates, labels, checklists, and more to provide context. Cover photos also bring visual clarity.
Power-Ups – These plugins allow integrations with hundreds of other apps including Zapier, Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Calendar, and Jira.
Butler bot – This automated bot can create and update cards as notifications come in from tools like Slack, Twitter, Google Drive and more.
Business Class features – Priority email support and advanced administrative controls help optimize larger product team workflows.

Use Cases for Product Teams

Trello gives product teams flexible ways to structure their complex workflows:

Map out product roadmaps where each card represents a feature item or launch milestone.
Break down product launches into granular checklists and tasks assigned to owners in the development team.
Build sprint backlogs by adding wireframes, prototypes, and other design files to relevant cards.
Track progression of features from idea through research, design, and development stages via list structure.
Log UX research findings, customer feedback, and QA reports as comments on relevant cards.

Trello Pricing

The free version of Trello allows for unlimited personal boards, lists, and cards.
Trello Business Class costs $10 per user/month. It adds priority email support, advanced security, administrative controls, and integration management suitable for product teams.
Trello Enterprise costs $17.50 per user/month. It includes 24/7 phone support, advanced permissions, and controls tailored for large organizations.
Volume discounts are available for companies with 100+ users.
For small product teams, Trello’s free version often provides their core needs.

In-Depth Overview of Asana

Asana focuses on list-based task management for teams. Projects within Asana can have multiple tasks and subtasks that team members organize into sections.

Tasks have details like descriptions, assignees, due dates, attachments, and comments to enable collaboration. Projects also have board, calendar, timeline, and other views to visualize workflows.

Notable Asana integrations include Slack, Office 365, Gmail, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more.

Key Features of Asana

Multiple views – Asana offers list, board, calendar, and timeline layouts to match different tracking needs. The calendar view is particularly useful for product launch planning.
Robust tasks – Tasks can have subtasks, dependencies, start/end dates, recurring schedules, and custom fields for additional data.
Powerful search – Find tasks by project, tag, assignees, text, and more across entire workspaces. Easily locate tasks and track progress.
Dashboards & reports – Gain insights into workload, cycle times, throughput, and backlogs with interactive dashboards. Identify bottlenecks.
Workload management – Review team capacity across projects and distribute tasks accordingly with workload features.
Custom fields – Tailor task details to product team processes like adding "sprint" and "priority" fields.

Use Cases for Product Teams

Asana enables structured project execution for product teams:

Map out a product roadmap with tasks for each feature launch and assign owners.
Break down launch task checklists into granular subtasks with due dates for developers.
Tag tasks by priority to guide what gets included in each sprint and release.
Log research findings as tasks and tie them to relevant feature items.
Pull reports on cycle times and backlogs to identify areas for efficiency gains.
Use custom fields to tag bugs, new features requests, and dependencies.

Asana Pricing

Free version supports up to 15 users with core features.
Premium plan is $10.99 per user/month and adds dashboards, custom fields, advance search and more.
Business plan for $24.99 per user/month has additional workflow automation and admin controls.
Enterprise pricing available for large organizations.
Free version meets basic needs for small product teams starting out.

Comparing Trello and Asana

While Trello and Asana both organize teamwork, they have some key differences:

The free versions of both tools can support small product team needs.
Trello’s boards better suit ongoing agile workflows, while Asana excels at structured project execution.
Asana has superior reporting and analytics capabilities to extract productivity insights.
Trello offers a more visual interface, while Asana focuses on robust list management.
Trello seamlessly integrates communications via Slack, Teams and Gmail.
Asana has greater functionality around calendars, recurring tasks, and schedules.
Both have mobile apps, but Asana’s timeline view uniquely suits remote collaboration.
Trello is easier to onboard and learn quickly, while Asana has more advanced features.

For product teams, choosing between the two depends on current stage, team size, workflows, and management style required. Trello suits early discovery, while Asana aids execution at scale.

Choosing the Right Tool

When selecting a task management system, product teams should consider these key factors:

Team size and growth plans to determine features and pricing needed. A free tool like Trello can serve a small team.
Remote access and communication requirements. Trello readily integrates with Slack and email.
Desired workflow structure from agile boards to structured roadmaps. Pick the tool that matches existing processes.
Integration needs with programs like Jira, Figma, Slack, and Google Drive to maximize efficiency.
Onboarding ramp up for the team to quickly get them collaborating effectively. Trello has a faster learning curve.
Reporting needs around cycle times, backlogs, and bottlenecks. Asana has robust analytics.
Budget limitations, especially for early-stage startups. Trello has a very generous free version.

For product teams specifically, Trello likely better suits ideation and discovery phases with its flexibility, while Asana benefits structured execution at scale with features like custom fields and calendars.

Conclusion

Smooth collaboration and organized workflows are essential for product teams to deliver. Both Trello and Asana present capabilities to plan and manage tasks across the product lifecycle.