Wellington-based project management tools company Psoda has applied machine vision AI to automate one of the most common frustrations with Agile project management – synchronising physical and digital kanban task boards.
Kanban boards tracking tasks with colourful sticky-notes are now commonplace in most software and project management offices, but after each team stand-up meeting one unfortunate team member is often left with the job of manually updating the project management software.
The PsodaVision app lets Agile teams upload a photo of their kanban into Psoda’s project management software where computer vision algorithms automatically identify cards in the photo and detect which column and position they are in now. The user confirms this is correct and enters the description of any new cards while AI automatically handles any overlaps, rotations or background noise on the cards.
Psoda’s cloud-based portfolio, programme and project management software is used by large corporate and government clients such as Ministry of Education, Land Information NZ, Hutt Valley DHB and Countdown. For large projects, Psoda estimates that kanbans that previously took nearly an hour to update can now be done in five minutes.
Psoda’s CEO Bruce Aylward says using computer vision to bridge the gap between physical and electronic kanban boards this way is a world-first. “Different development teams have different preferences for whether their Kanban boards are physically on a wall in their office or purely online, but with PsodaVision we’ve made it easy to take advantage of both approaches.”
“When we first set out to add this to our suite of project management tools, we thought we might be able to plug-in an existing tool. We were surprised to find that no one had already done this so we decided to build it ourselves.” Alternative systems required pre-printed cards or printed QR codes rather than a photo of just sticky notes.
Massey University’s Strategic Project Management Director Blair Schmidt believes PsodaVision should make a big difference to their technology and continuous improvement teams’ work.
“It offers developers the best of both worlds. Teams get the benefit of face-to-face interaction as they move stickies and discuss processes as well as project management software benefits such as links to additional detail, reporting or their expanded backlog,” says Schmidt.
PsodaVision is available now for Psoda’s existing users and anyone can sign up for a free one-month trial of Psoda’s Project Portfolio Management suite including PsodaVision.
The Psoda suite of cloud-based portfolio, programme and project management software is used around the world to manage in excess of $10 billion worth of programmes and projects.
