CRAFTED. | The Tech Podcast for Founders, Makers, and Innovators

Asana’s Head of AI on the Profound Ways Work Is Changing | Paige Costello (Head of AI & Co-Head of Product Management at Asana)

May 28, 2024

Paige Costello, head of AI and co-head of product at Asana, discusses the transformative power of AI in the workplace. She highlights how Asana is centralizing AI initiatives to enhance team dynamics and streamline workflows. Paige explains the challenges of integrating AI tools like SmartStatus while maintaining human insight. She shares amusing anecdotes about user research and emphasizes the evolving skills needed in product management in the age of AI. Expect insights on how AI can free up time from mundane tasks for more creative endeavors.

31:38

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Episode guests

Paige Costello

AI Summary

Highlights

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Asana's creation of a centralized AI team exemplifies a focused approach to implementing AI for enhanced communication and efficiency across projects.

The integration of AI in product management reshapes roles by automating tasks and prompting PMs to prioritize user experience and qualitative feedback.

Deep dives

AI-Powered Status Reports

The introduction of AI-generated status reports at Asana demonstrates how AI can enhance productivity and communication within teams. This feature allows users to draft comprehensive status updates not just for individual projects but also for entire portfolios, detailing progress, blockers, and next steps. By leveraging AI, Asana ensures that updates are high-quality and clear, significantly easing the reporting burden on team members. This capability exemplifies the blend of automation and human oversight, as teams report the percentage of AI involvement in updates to maintain transparency about the nature of the information shared.

Centralize AI for Clarity and Success

02:54

Embrace the Real: Understanding Users Beyond the Screen

02:30

Empowerment Through AI: Prioritization and Organization

02:25

Intro

4min

Navigating AI in Project Management

12min

AI-Driven Workflow Transformation

9min

Exploring Workflows: From Sticky Notes to AI Innovations

2min

Exploring AI's Future Role in Work Management

2min

The Shifting Landscape of Skills in the Age of AI

3min

Paige Costello is the the head of AI and co-head of product at Asana and on this episode of CRAFTED. we're exploring what it means to ship products with AI, how AI will change the way work gets done, and how to organize your teams for success in this brave new world.

We explore:

How the future of work – and communicating about work – is changing
Why Asana chose to create an “AI org” instead of a less centralized innovation approach
How Asana ships — and measures the success of — AI-powered features, e.g. SmartStatus, that aim to take the drudgery out of work
How product management is changing with the rise of AI
Why running an A/B test is harder when a non-deterministic (i.e. unpredictable by design) GenAI tool is involved
Why it’s so important to “get out of the building” and some of Paige’s favorite user research moments from doing so
The latest with “PaigeBot” and what Paige hopes AI can do for her

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CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where Dan Blumberg and team advise companies on product, discovery, growth, and experimentation.

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Key Moments:

[02:17] AI-generated status reports: How Asana summarizes a project – or many projects – using AI. And why it needs to do so carefully.

[05:00] How to organize for innovation: How Asana organizes its teams to integrate AI and the strategies they employ for effective AI implementation.

[09:06] How AI will change the role of product managers and why the stochastic nature of AI will be something we all have to get used to

[14:26] Challenges of prototyping and scaling AI

[16:07] How Asana uses AI internally and how it dogfoods its own products

[18:17] Profound implications of AI + the future of work

[22:20] Will AI really help product managers get out of the building more? Or do we just find new excuses not to? And what Paige finds so powerful about “being in someone’s space”

[25:32] An update on “PaigeBot” and what Paige wishes a bot would do for her

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