Software project management platform provider Zenhub today revealed details of its artificial intelligence roadmap and the first features to launch under that initiative.

In addition, it said it’s creating an early-access program for select customers that will not only get to use the new features first, but also collaborate with Zenhub’s team to help refine them.

Zenhub, officially known as Axiom Labs Inc., launched in 2014 to focus on streamlining developer’s efforts to build software in GitHub. It’s a project management tool that’s used to manage software development projects, natively integrated with GitHub to help teams collaborate, plan and execute on software development through a user-friendly interface.

The company said its Zenhub AI initiative is all about simplifying day-to-day processes and easing operational overheads for development teams in order to help them ship faster.

The first new tool, available in beta to all customers today, is AI Labels, which uses AI algorithms to help teams sanitize and ensure the accuracy of their reporting. When a user starts entering data into Zenhub, AI Labels will automatically suggest possible labels for that information. Labels are a crucial tool for reporting and analytics across the Zenhub platform, the company explained, and the new feature will help to reduce cognitive load for developers while improving accuracy.

AI Labels

Zenhub also has a host of new AI features currently under development, including AI Estimations. It’s described as an “industry-first feature” that provides insight into how challenging a particular project may be.

Using this feature, teams can work together to agree on which aspects of the project are more difficult or simpler, and then decide what resources should be dedicated to that particular assignment. Each task is categorized using an AI-powered “Zenhub estimate” that gauges how difficult it will be, and it will improve over time as it learns, helping it to estimate better the amount of work required to get each task done.

Other new features on the way include an AI Prioritization tool that will perform the role of accelerating backlog refinement by leveraging past behavior as a guide for prioritizing unfinished tasks. The AI Daily Feed, meanwhile, will provide daily insights into what each team or individual has accomplished, what they need to do today, and what their priorities should be in the near-term. According to Zenhub, it will provide teams with a 360-degree view of exactly what’s happening now, using sentiment analysis to understand and surface where team members might be blocked or stuck.

AI Daily Feed

A new feature for reviewing work, called AI-Powered Sprint Demos, will use AI to automatically summarize the work performed by a team over the course of a week, providing an update on the project’s overall progress. Finally, the AI Retros tool will provide recommendations on how teams can improve their processes. According to Zenhub, it will work by analyzing what went well for the team in recent weeks, the issues they faced, and the ways in which they were able to improve.

Zenhub Chief Executive Tyler Gaffney said the company’s approach to building AI is notably different from most other companies, since it’s building all of its new tools in a very public way, with complete transparency and also participation from its users.

“Our objective is to thoughtfully build AI for real-life use cases by actively collaborating with end users and customers,” he said. “This is just the beginning but we’re excited about the potential to positively impact the day-to-day activities of software teams.”

Images: Zenhub