Asana Goals measure completion, not outcome
An Asana goal is updated one of two ways. Automatically, where progress is derived from the projects or subgoals underneath it, which means the number rises as tasks get checked off. Or manually, where somebody types the current value in. The first is precise about the wrong thing and the second decays the moment people get busy.
The distinction those two options blur is output versus outcome. "Ship the onboarding redesign" completes at 100% the day the last task closes, whether or not a single additional user activated. An outcome-shaped key result - activation rate from 22% to 35% - cannot be completed by finishing tasks, which is precisely why it is worth stating and precisely why an automatic roll-up of task completion can never measure it.
WorkThroughLine keeps the two separate on purpose. Annual goals break into OKRs; OKRs directly under an annual goal carry key results with a start, target and current value that someone owns. Delivery links to the OKR without being mistaken for it, so a sprint report can show that four items closed against an OKR whose key result did not move - the honest and useful state that a completion-derived progress bar reports as success.
Where discovery goes to be improvised
Asana is deliberately unopinionated, and product teams fill the gap the same way everywhere: a custom field called Opportunity or Problem, a project named Research, a task per interview with the notes pasted into the description. It works, in the sense that the information is technically stored somewhere a search can reach.
What it cannot do is answer questions across that information, because none of it is an entity. A text field holds a string, not a link. So "which interviews support this problem" has no answer, "this bet failed, what else did we know about the underlying need" has no answer, and an insight that turned up in one conversation can only strengthen the one task it was pasted into. The evidence exists and the relationships between pieces of it do not.
Modelling them as real objects is the whole difference. Interviews and analyses produce insights; insights reinforce opportunities; opportunities carry solutions; solutions are tested by experiments that conclude as succeeded, failed or inconclusive and can be promoted into delivery with their links intact. Second-order questions become answerable because the second-order structure is there, rather than being reconstructed by whoever remembers the conversation.
Breadth is a real advantage, and a real cost
The case for Asana is genuine and it is not about features. If marketing, operations, HR and product all live in one tool, everybody learns one interface, requests move between departments without a translation layer, and the finance conversation is one line item. Portfolios, forms and workload balancing exist because coordinating many teams is a real job, and Asana does it better than a specialised product tool ever will.
The cost is that a tool built for every workflow cannot take a position on any of them. Product work has a specific shape - a bet, its evidence, the experiment that tested it, the outcome it was supposed to move - and a generic task model cannot encode that shape without every team inventing its own conventions. Then the conventions drift, because nothing enforces them.
So the decision is not which tool is better but where your hard problem is. If it is coordinating departments, breadth wins and this is a bad trade. If it is that nobody can say which evidence justified the last quarter of shipped product work, breadth is exactly what has been in the way, and running Asana for the company while product runs on a system that models the product loop is a normal outcome, not a failure.
How your data maps across
There is no dedicated Asana importer yet - the CSV importers cover Jira, Productboard, Aha! and Linear - so treat this as the conceptual map rather than a migration script. It is also the honest way to size the move: the delivery rows transfer mechanically, and the two rows above delivery are where the actual thinking happens.
| Asana | WorkThroughLine | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolios | Annual goals and product goals | A portfolio groups projects for reporting; a goal states an intent that work can be measured against. |
| Goals | OKRs with key results | The row that needs rewriting, not mapping: a completion percentage becomes a start, target and current value. |
| Projects | Parent work items (epics) | Direct enough; sections become statuses on the board. |
| Tasks and subtasks | Work items | One table with a type field and parentId, plus nullable links to OKR, opportunity, solution or experiment. |
| Custom fields | Custom fields | Supported natively - but discovery belongs in real entities rather than fields. |
| Forms | Intake and the public portal | Submissions carry stages and assignment and can be pushed straight to delivery. |
| Rules and automations | Webhooks and hosted MCP | The largest genuine gap: no rule builder. GitHub/GitLab webhooks and MCP cover developer workflow, not general automation. |
Pricing
Asana Starter is $10.99 per user/month (annual), Advanced $24.99. WorkThroughLine has a free plan (up to 3 makers, unlimited stakeholders and guests); Team is 17,900 RSD/month for up to 10 makers and Growth is 34,900 RSD/month for up to 30 makers - and everything is free during early access (registration requires no credit card).
Pricing as of July 2026; check vendor sites for current plans.
Frequently asked
Is WorkThroughLine an Asana alternative?
For product teams - yes. For company-wide work management across all departments, Asana is the broader tool; WorkThroughLine is deliberately specialized for the product loop.
Does WorkThroughLine support goals like Asana Goals?
Yes. Annual goals break into OKRs, and work items can be structurally linked to an OKR, opportunity, solution or experiment. Work that is not yet goal-linked remains visible as development outside a goal.
Can non-product teams use WorkThroughLine?
They can (work items and maintenance categories fit ops-style work), but the product shines for product organizations - that is what the discovery and trace layers are for.
WorkThroughLine is our product. Competitor information comes from public sources and is reviewed when vendors change their products or pricing. Last updated: August 2026