Case Study

At a Glance

Company	Audience	Format	Result
Asana	Product Management Org	Full-Day On-Site Workshop	Software Shipped Within Days

Executive Summary

Asana had already defined the future of its product management organization. Leadership introduced a new success guide and a clear direction: PMs would evolve into builders — capable of contributing across the full software development lifecycle, and having more responsibility for commercialization.

What was missing was execution.

Across a globally distributed team, capability was uneven. Some PMs were experimenting with Claude Code, but many did not yet have access. The pace of tooling hadn't yet matched the pace of the vision.

021:Events provided the forcing function to close the tooling, configuration, and builder gap.

Within days, PMs were shipping actual production changes and prototyping features that had been stalled for months.

The Challenge and the Approach

The future of product is not incremental. It requires a shift toward PM as GM: end-to-end ownership, commercial thinking, and contribution beyond specifications into actual execution.

One product manager had already taken a 021:Events public workshop and was able to take these new concepts through validation with customers in weeks. Their work was visible across the organization. Colleagues and leadership noticed output had quickly aligned with their envisioned future. The question was how to make this mindset and capability accessible across the entire organization.

That internal signal revealed three structural challenges:

• Tool access was a point of friction. Different teams had access to different tools. Few had end-to-end tooling permissions.
• Capability was uneven. Most PMs had not yet started experimenting with Agentic AI for product development. Many could not imagine building — let alone delivering — working software on their own.
• The disparity created internal pressure. Early results were generating demand. Colleagues saw what individually capable PMs were producing and wanted the same access and opportunity. The desire for training was growing across a team spanning San Francisco, Vancouver, New York, and Warsaw.

Asana was not looking for a generic AI tools training program. They needed practitioners who had operated at the level they were asking their PMs to reach. That distinction drove the decision to bring in 021:Events.

Phase 1: Pre-Work and Tool Alignment

Before the workshop, 021:Events partnered with Asana to resolve the tool fragmentation that had been blocking the team, pairing with leadership and engineering. A recommended toolset was established, internal alignment with IT was accelerated, and every participant arrived ready to build. Outstanding decisions were resolved in a few focused days. Specific tool gaps — like a design system accessible to PMs for agents to build on-brand UX — were built alongside the workshop content.

Phase 2: Framing the Role Shift

The workshop opened with a focused framing session covering how the PM role is changing, what builder-level contribution looks like, and why the shift is happening now. For a high-performing, data-driven team, external validation from practitioners with deep product leadership experience carried weight that complemented internal messaging.

Phase 3: Hands-On Building

The core of the day was execution. Each PM brought a personal project. The group also worked through a shared build exercise tied to a real feature in development. Participants worked side by side, and those who solved a problem in the morning were teaching colleagues the same solution by the afternoon. At conclusion, the 021:Events material provided participants with detailed references and ongoing step-by-step guidance for their projects.

"We know the future of product management is builders. What we needed was a partner who could make that real for every person on the team. Our team left with tools, frameworks, and a fundamentally different sense of what their role can be. Within days, they were shipping."

— Arnab Bose, Chief Product Officer, Asana

What Happened in the Week After

The measure of a capability program is not what happens in the room. It is what happens after. Within days, Asana PMs began applying the workflow to real product work and shared outcomes directly in internal channels.

The examples varied in scope, but they shared a clear pattern: PMs moved to direct execution.

"Got my first feature out to customers ... and no engineer had to write any code."

"I am the end consumer for these events, the person on our team best positioned to know what is missing. I felt like I was helping myself."

"I used Claude to build a working prototype of a bulk feature that was sitting in our backlog for 6 months. It is an incredible feeling to actually build something functional with my own hands in a single day."

"The joy of just doing it versus coordinating to get it staffed was very real."

These were not exercises. They were real contributions to product, analytics, and customer experience.

Outcomes and What This Proves

• Tool fragmentation resolved before the workshop began, unlocking end-to-end workflows.
• A globally distributed PM team reached a shared execution baseline — a culture change — in one day.
• PMs began shipping without waiting on traditional staffing and prioritization cycles.
• A six-month backlog item became a working prototype with customer insight attached.
• Strong adoption and positive feedback across all levels, from entry-level ICs to VP leadership.
• Immediate demand from adjacent teams: product design, user research, pricing and packaging, strategic partnerships.
• Continued access to the 021:Events portal extended learning beyond the session.

"This is meaningfully different from any training we had done before. There was far more pre-work to make the live day productive, the depth of the hands-on work was unlike anything we had experienced as a PM team, and we walked away with resources we could use for an entire year. The day after, our product design team was already asking when they could do it too."

— Victoria Chin, Chief of Staff to the CPO, Asana

What Made the Difference

• Alignment in advance. Pre-work removed tool friction and created a shared starting point, making the live session productive from the first hour.
• Frameworks over tools. Participants learned workflows and judgment patterns that transfer as the tooling landscape evolves — not just how to use a specific product.
• Practitioner-led delivery. The experience was delivered by operators with deep product leadership experience. For a data-driven, high-performing team, that credibility drove adoption in a way traditional L&D cannot.
• Intensity by design. The pace was high. The pre-work was demanding. Participants consistently report, in retrospect, that the intensity was the point. Shallow exposure does not produce capability shifts. Deep immersion does.

How This Scales

The Asana engagement did not conclude with the workshop. Within days, four adjacent teams had identified themselves as the next cohort. A two-way design partner relationship is now forming: 021:Events brings cross-company pattern recognition, Asana contributes direction on where agentic workflows are heading.

This is the pattern 021:Events sees across enterprise engagements. A single high-impact session with one team creates internal demand that expands across the organization. The workshop is not the end state. It is the first forcing function in a longer transformation.