LeanKit Adds Robust Forecasting Functionality to Platform

FRANKLIN, Tenn., Aug. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- LeanKit, a visual collaboration platform for project and portfolio management, today announced the addition of a powerful forecasting tool. With LeanKit Forecasting and Risk Management, project managers are able to automatically harvest historical project data to accurately predict delivery dates for future projects. In contrast to the "educated guesses" that often define project timelines, this capability also goes one step further to identify specific process bottlenecks – including process steps and associated roles - that require attention to complete projects more quickly. LeanKit Forecasting and Risk Management benefits nearly every stakeholder from developers to senior executives by helping them to visualize the full project, offer reliable delivery forecasts, and identify issues that could impede the delivery of value to the customer.

"Recent research by McKinsey & Company showed that on average, large-scale IT projects are 45 percent over budget, but deliver 56 percent less value than predicted," said Chris Hefley, chief executive officer, LeanKit. "Gaining early insight into project work is critical to not only the project's success, but also to keeping a company on track.  With LeanKit Forecasting and Risk Management, we're giving project managers the power to accurately predict project costs and delivery dates.  This allows them to have more meaningful dialogue with all project stakeholders."

When it comes to project oversight, most managers are concerned with three things: time, cost and scope. With LeanKit Forecasting and Risk Management, project managers can set project expectations confidently with senior management knowing that their messages are supported by real data. C-level executives can also benefit by tracking portfolio progress in real time, and evaluating future projects and business decisions based on the findings. This ensures maximum value on the project investment, and enables highly efficient work groups.  

"We created LeanKit to make working together uncomplicated," continued Hefley. "Part of making projects flow efficiently is setting realistic and achievable delivery dates.  LeanKit Forecasting and Risk Management is another step in our commitment to make work easier.  We're not just providing charts and grids, we're offering data-driven insight into the projects themselves in a way that no one else is.  We're providing insights on things such as whether you have enough developers to make your expected delivery date.  We also allow you to evaluate how many more developers you need or whether that money would be better spent in Quality Assurance or both and which to hire first."

With this newly added functionality, team members are able to focus on core job tasks, and not waste time producing estimates that change frequently. By having accurate assessments of completion dates, work can be planned and finalized with more fluidity, rather than rushed through frantic 'fire drills' to meet impossible deadlines.

LeanKit is based on Kanban principles. In Japanese, kanban means "signal card", and it provides a visual cue to initiate work and the mechanism to track work through a process.  Visual management is core to the LeanKit platform, allowing any project stakeholder, even those who are unfamiliar with the detail of the project, to quickly see what is going on and understand it. LeanKit allows project teams to see their work from start to finish.

About LeanKit
LeanKit is recognized by the Agile and Lean IT community as the most flexible and powerful tool available for implementing visual project management based on Kanban systems. The company is also making a name for itself beyond IT with customers who use their tool to manage and collaborate on projects in fields as diverse as engineering, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, technical support, etc.

Since its founding in 2009, LeanKit has grown rapidly to serve more than 170,000 users around the world at companies such as Adobe, Siemens, NBC Universal, HP, GlaxoSmithKline and Spotify. For more information, visit www.LeanKit.com

LeanKit Media Contact:
Patrick Gevas
Phone: 408-200-3761
[email protected]

SOURCE LeanKit