Project Insight

In the present-day project management space, the idea of having one, monolithic tool for an entire company to get different types of work done is falling by the wayside. For instance, it’s common to have an IT manager using Jira and another working in Azure DevOps. For project managers, it creates difficulties inside organizations when several different teams use varied technologies instead of just one management tool. To address a lack of project data visibility and team collaboration, California-based Project Insight (PI®) introduced its online project management software solution. By utilizing PI®, project managers can seamlessly manage projects across an organization without forcing employees to learn a new tool.

Project Insight has been able to garner the interest of project managers, stakeholders and team members due in part to the flexibility of their software. In fact, the project management software integrates directly with other project management tools like Jira, Azure DevOps and Trello so that the project management office can get a portfolio of projects across all departments in Project Insight.

With these out-of-the-box integrations, PI^® becomes a hub, automatically aggregating data in and out of other project management tools in addition to running projects in its own system. In fact, the Jira user doesn’t even know they’re ultimately feeding into Project Insight. “By connecting teams and aggregating project data within a centralized hub, we’re automating workflows and multiplying team productivity,” says Steve West, co-founder and CEO of Project Insight.

As a way of introducing AI into the project management space, Project Insight has built teams of virtual project managers (VirtualPM^™) with distinct personalities to interact with users in modern messaging platforms. For instance, Slack and Microsoft Teams are replacing email, which was traditionally the vehicle for companies to communicate internally. The VirtualPM combines task management and communication, helping to automate the project manager’s job by prompting team members for status updates and allowing team members to add time and comments to tasks. Using conversation-style communication, the VirtualPM actually “talks” to team members to engage them. “Today, texting or messaging has become a whole new interface for building programs, which is why project management naturally needs to go into that space,” says West.

A key feature that sets the company apart is their unrivaled flexibility that the experienced Project Insight team offers for companies of all sizes. To exemplify the company’s configurable software operations that are the most flexible in the marketplace, West discussed how they were able to help one of their clients achieve project visibility across their organization. The medical company was dealing with little to no communication in their departments, with a list of 35 to 40 projects at any given time. With Project Insight, they had a foundation to improve their project selection and approval process. Their PMO was able to save time and money by using Project Insight to automate all their project tasks and data.

It was nearly a year ago that the company introduced a free version of its enterprise-grade project management software called PI#team^™. Users can easily upgrade to the full-feature solution as their company grows without losing any of their project data. Project Insight plans to expand the messaging platforms that VirtualPM^™ is available on, Microsoft Teams and text messaging being first on the list in 2019. In fostering their vision of automating the project manager’s job and making project management accessible for everyone, PI^® recently launched their mobile app to empower teams everywhere.