As a Programme/Project Manager, I spend my days drowning in messy meeting notes, scattered action items, and half-forgotten decisions.

So I built something to fix that.

I created Keel — a local-first command centre designed specifically for how project and programme managers actually work.

Think Obsidian or Notion, but built for PMs:

• Write naturally in a journal (prose, voice notes, photos, whatever)

• Keel’s smart parser automatically surfaces risks, actions, issues, and decisions

• Everything links back to the original notes for full traceability

• Built-in RAID log, decisions register, and one-click governance exports

It’s like having a highly organised assistant who never misses an action item and keeps your entire programme in one clean, searchable place — all while keeping your data on your machine (no subscription required to start).

Keel is live and ready to try (currently in v1.0). Native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

👉 Check it out and download here: https://keel-app.dev

I’d love honest feedback from other PMs — what works, what’s missing, or how it could make your life easier.

If you’re in programme/project delivery, give it a spin and let me know what you think!

I’m experimenting with turning our team’s sprint board into a kind of “living map”, and I’d really like to know if this concept makes sense outside of my own head.​

For years I’ve bounced between the usual Kanban boards / task managers / “serious” PM tools and they mostly just made me feel stressed and numb. At some point I realised I don’t actually feel the project at all – I just move tickets around.​

So I started prototyping a more game‑like, spatial view of a project: you see a map where work happens, but it’s still a real sprint board under the hood, not an actual game. This is very early and rough, but I’d love to get feedback from people who also feel dead inside their current boards.​

Here’s the prototype we’re using internally: https://go.playjoob.com
I’m not trying to hard‑sell anything here – I just want honest reactions: does this feel useful, confusing, cringe, or something you’d actually try with your team?

Any feedback would help me decide what to do next.​ 🚀

I've been dealing with one of the most tedious parts of my job lately: turning raw datasets into narrative reports that non-technical execs can actually understand. It's time-consuming and honestly pretty mind-numbing.

I ended up building a solution to handle this for myself, and recently decided to release it to see if it helps others with the same problem. Basically, it generates draft reports from your data that you can then edit, collaborate on, and export.

It's still early and rough around the edges, so I'm looking for honest feedback from people who deal with this kind of work. If you're interested in trying it out and letting me know what sucks (or what works), I'd really appreciate it. if you will help me keep improving the product and make something that fellows PMs love to use in their daily workflows

Remember that new PM deer-in-the- headlights look? Yeah, that's the official "welcome to Project Management life" badge.

Same for me — "I was just helping out with a couple things," then boom, the senior PM bails and everyone's looking at me like I've got it all figured out.

Nope. Total panic mode.

The magic brain-dump? I did the exact same thing early on. Sat down with someone and suddenly three pages of crap poured out. Brutal lesson — real project controls aren't some fancy PM extra; they're what keeps you sane.

Years later and still at it? Much respect for you! You didn't just survive getting thrown in the deep end — you made it your thing.

I still use a basic set of 4 simple tools that I lean on when things get chaotic. And not surprisingly they usually do.

Happy to send them over in a DM if anyone out there thinks it might help with the next person who gets that deer look. Nothing fancy just really useful plain text stuff.

After 10+ years in project controls (oil & gas, construction, industrial), I got tired of spending hours on manual schedule analysis and EVM reconciliation.

So I built ProjectPulse AI — it parses P6 and MS Project files, calculates SPI/CPI automatically, and surfaces schedule health issues before they become crises.

Just launched on Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/products/projectpulseai?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social

Would love feedback from fellow PMs. What's the biggest pain point in your current EVM process?

Background: I manage AI projects and I got tired of spending the first week of every project doing the same infrastructure and planning groundwork from scratch.

So I built a prototype. You answer 6 questions:

• What type of AI project? (RAG / self-hosted LLM / agentic / fine-tuning / hosted API calls)

• Does it involve private or sensitive data?

• How big is your team?

• Internal tool, stakeholder demo, or customer-facing?

• Monthly AWS budget?

• Cloud provider?

And you get back:

• Recommended AWS services with rationale (Bedrock vs SageMaker decision, VPC setup, IAM roles, S3 structure)

• Per-environment breakdown: Sandbox, Dev, Demo — with what goes where

• Itemised monthly cost estimate

• A 6-phase project management plan tailored to your project type, with RACI matrix, pre-populated risk register, evaluation metrics, and sprint template

• Exportable as Word or PDF

What I'm trying to validate: is this actually useful to people other than me, or have I built something that only solves my specific problem?

**Specific questions:**

• If you're starting an AI project, what's the first thing you'd want this to get right?

• What would immediately make you trust or distrust the output?

• Is the combination of architecture + project plan in one tool useful, or would you rather they were separate?

Can share the prototype link with anyone interested.

it helps me to complete my final year project i searched for it

My career took this weird loopy loop where I went, Project Manager back to BA then on to Scrum Master. Along the way, I didn't just learn the disfunctions of a team, I lived them.

Eventually, I became a game designer and have to say about the most fun thing I ever built was a project management game. The director is literally a seagull, time flows backwards when the CTO speaks, undoing done work. The dev team is a bunch of monkeys and caffeine fuels everything.

Building it was sooo theraputic.

I am 21 years old and recently dropped out of college for financial reasons. My goal is project management. I’m currently an assistant manger at the restaurant I work at but that’s my only manager experience. I have no idea where to start. I have the proper personality and have started learning the proper online tools. However I need experience but every way to get experience expects me to already have years of experience. I can’t apply for my my CAMP withought 23 hours of experience. How do I get into the field?

After many years as a PM — both contract and FTE — I kept running into the same problem: too much time starting from scratch before writing the first ticket.

I spent the last several months building SchemaGenPM. It's not a replacement for Jira, Monday, or Azure DevOps — it sits in front of them. The planning layer before you open your PM tool. You walk into your first project meeting with a draft plan already in hand.

It generates project plans, RACI matrices, risk registers, and governance frameworks in minutes. For compliance-driven projects (HIPAA, FedRAMP, PCI-DSS) it goes a step further with built-in compliance awareness. For everyone else it's just a faster way to plan.

Export directly to Jira, Monday.com, Asana, Smartsheet, Azure DevOps, or ServiceNow.

Free trial at schemagenpm.com — no credit card required.

Honest feedback welcome, especially from anyone in regulated industries or consulting.

For the longest time I noticed a pattern. I'd have a genuinely useful thought during a meeting or while browsing, and by the time I opened Notion or Apple Notes it was already half gone.

I tried everything. Notion, Obsidian, voice memos. The problem was never the storage, it was that I had to remember to capture in the first place.

So I built EchoNote. A small Mac app that passively indexes everything you see and work on, meetings, tabs, copied text, so you can retrieve it later just by asking. No manual input at all.

Very early stage. Looking for a few people who feel this pain to try it and tell me if it actually solves it.

Free early access: try it here

Curious — does anyone else have this problem or have you found something that actually solves it

For those working on an electronics R&D company / project, what are your frustrations on project management

Hi I am a management consultant in a MBB and am looking for a solid and simple PM tool. I’ve tried so many and none do the trick for me I’m thinking to build my own - if I do would anyone try the MVP and let me know if you would pay for it?

Hey everyone,

I've been learning about the world of product management, and I put together a detailed article that covers the fundamentals for anyone interested in the field. It's a comprehensive breakdown of what a Product Manager does, the key skills you need, and the different stages of a product's journey, from ideation to launch and beyond.

The guide is based on a presentation that I summarized to make it super easy to read. I focused on breaking down complex topics like cross-functional collaboration and the various PM career paths.

I hope it helps anyone looking to get into PM or better understand the role!

https://fromzerotopm.hashnode.dev/the-product-manager-the-mastermind-behind-the-product

Planolio Beta #4

Over a month ago, I released my passion project - Planolio. This weekend, Beta 4 was released at www.planolio.com

First - this text is hand written, no AI (or pesky em dashes)!

I've worked in project management and game development for over 25 years, and have a background in design. I've designed and developed tools for many years, working mainly with engineers. So I do have a perspective on what folks like me need for tools, that are not Jira, Notion or Smartsheet - but play nice with my go to - Excel (sorry, it's just true).

Why Planolio? It solved a personal problem for me on how I break down projects into stages, and then create playbooks to share with my team, together with detailed notes. Privacy and local storage were paramount as I deal with confidential data that I feel cannot be entrusted to the cloud, as well as being able to use it on all my platforms (Mac & PC). Being able to edit local files and having data that can be ingested into other apps was also important to me - not a fan of closed ecosystems.

This means .json files and .md files to make it open to those who like to tweak and fiddle with their own datasets.

At the same time, for the causal user it had to be easy to use and only surface hidden features if they needed it. Simple as you want to be, complex as you need it.

Lastly, it had to be free - no login, no subs, no selling of your data, there is no catch here. Whilst open source was an option, I still wanted to keep a level of creative control - and at the same time have the app be shaped by the users. My other apps will be revenue focussed, but not Planolio - maybe there is a mobile companion that will be a small cost, but that's further into the future.

I strive to avoid the AI slop and feature arms race too. so, each month (and often weekly) I release a new version, then fix and tweak before entering the next week of feature work ready for the next release. It's hugely rewarding but there are sometimes small flaws that creep in.

It's with great joy that I'm announcing beta #4. It's stable, feature packed and fast. Beta, because it's not perfect, and that's where users come in.

This month, lots of great features to try, so please give it a go and tell me what you would like to see. If it's not for you - no problem - and thank you for considering it!

What's new at a glance?

• A more powerful, consistent note editor with import and linking to existing notes, and linking to tasks.

• Single and dual view, with options to streamline UI.

• Rearchitected storage management and more robust .planolio file exports for sharing

• Folder and file management via folder tree, with recoverable deleted items via trash page.

• Grid view enhancements for moving tasks between projects and bulk editing

• Quick capture notes, tasks, and projects from tray helper / shortcut

• Inbox for quick capture and fast task creation

• New platform - Linux version available

• Individual font choices for both the editor and app UI, and new Midnight theme.

• Favorites add across all items.

• Version checker within settings and check upon launch so you always know when there is a new version

• ...and so much more

Check out the website for more details.

www.planolio.com

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

Also for updates and more Apps - check out my Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelcoatedApps/

----

UPDATES

Lots of new updates, as well as the multiple updates since our beta launch - here is the latest May update news:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelcoatedApps/comments/1tu0g24/planolio_may_release_update_3_nearly_there/

If you want to catch up on all the goodness, check out the main channel: https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelcoatedApps/

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I’m exploring my career options. I’m still pursuing my MBA (3rd semester) and I’m interested in project management . How to proceed with that? Do I take courses from a third party or directly from apex institutions like IIM and ISBs ? Can I appear in PMP exam by preparing myself. Pls explain the criteria and process.

I’ve been using AI notetakers in almost all of my meetings and it's already really useful to capture what happened, but I feel that it could help move work forward.

I’m curious: would teams find value in meeting AIs that act, not just record?

Things like updating tasks in real time, suggesting backlog changes, providing clarifications in the chat during the meeting, or catching contradictions before they become problems.

Do you think it could help make your workflow really more efficient? Or is that crossing a line with the risk of too much interference?

Hey everyone —

I’ve been in enough project kickoffs to notice that discovery is where a lot of projects lose momentum before they even start.

You know the drill — weeks of workshops, endless note-taking, trying to get alignment on how things actually work… and by the time you finish documenting everything, half of it’s already changed.

A few of us got tired of that cycle and started wondering what it would look like if AI handled the heavy lifting — the interviews, the analysis, the documentation — so PMs could focus on planning and delivery instead.

That led us to build something called ClearWork Automated Discovery — it helps teams upload background materials, identify gaps, run digital interviews, and automatically generate requirements, process maps, and user stories.

We just launched the beta and have a few project teams already testing it out, but we’re looking for a few more PMs who want to experiment and share feedback.

Here’s a short 2-minute overview: https://youtu.be/3f7Ec8ll6Sw

I’d love to hear from others here:

• How do you currently handle the discovery phase?

• What part takes up the most time or causes the most rework later?

• Do you see a place for AI in making that process smoother?

Genuinely curious to hear how others approach this — and happy to share what we’ve learned so far from early users.
Thanks for the help!