AtTask provides on-demand project and portfolio management software. Scott Johnson, CEO of AtTask introduces the company, and provides details of the new Enterprise version of @task. AtTask also launched Project Daily, a blog with the best thoughts coming out of the project management industry.

The following interview is a transcription of a vidcast published on RockyMountainVoices in October 2007.

Brad Baldwin: This is Brad from Rocky Mountain Voices and I'm here today with Scott Johnson, the CEO and founder of AtTask.

Scott Johnson: Hi, Brad.

Brad Baldwin: Let's talk a little bit about AtTask. You recently closed a round of funding and obviously something's happening over here at AtTask to get somebody to drop some coin in on you.

Scott Johnson: It's very exciting.

Brad Baldwin: What's going on?

Scott Johnson: Like you mentioned, we recently closed a round of funding, and AtTask has been around for about six years. We were founded in 2001 and up until this round we’ve been a self-funded, self-grown operation and have grown things very organically. With some recent technology advances, and product enhancements, we decided it's time to increase market share and ramp up the company in a big way. Hence, the funding in June.

Brad Baldwin: This isn't your first time in doing a startup. I mean, you’ve done this a few times and you've been involved in the start up thing.

Scott Johnson: Tried and failed.

Brad Baldwin:  You’ve been doing this since 2001, it's hard to consider this a startup. The space you play in is Project Management?

Scott Johnson: Correct.

Brad Baldwin: The market has changed in that area. The thing that I remember doing projects was always: Microsoft projects, something at my desk, I was all alone, and then I’d print out these gigantic Gantt charts. What is it that makes you guys different?

Scott Johnson: The term “Project Management” phrase tends to come with a lot of baggage. It sounds like you've experienced that baggage firsthand. Lots of Gantt charts, wallpaper, Gantt wallpaper, and lots of planning. What's changing is that there's a collaboration aspect of Project Management that's very important. It consists of users being able to get together and share documents, share conversations, transfer workflow back and forth, dynamically, so that the speed of business increases. People's efficiency increases and their productivity goes up. In addition to that, there is a whole layer of management intelligence that goes into Project Management now. It's not just for the guy who does the Project file, and calls people asking them where they are and prints up data Gantt charts. It's a very living discipline, where management looks at real-time data to make decisions, where users are constantly conversing, where good ideas flow quickly.

Brad Baldwin: I know "the report" was the big thing in the old days. It sounds like today it's “the dashboard.” You just login and there are your projects and status.

Scott Johnson: Exactly.

Brad Baldwin: It seems like the Web allows you to log in to more people within your organization. I know a challenge I was always having was getting people to update their "status." Is it easier now; is it just as hard as it always was?

Scott Johnson: One of the nice things about AtTask is that we believe that the work you do -- the updating and reporting -- shouldn't disrupt the way you want to work. So, whether you are using Outlook, or you're on the road using your iPhone, or you're sitting at your desk, we make it very non-intrusive for you to be able to get your assignments, to make up dates, and really converse in whatever media that you want to.

Brad Baldwin: How are you different than some of the other players? There are other players in this webspace with Project Management. What makes you different?

Scott Johnson: We see this space is really a three-part area. There is a management component to Project and Portfolio Management, which consists of high-level planning, time reporting, budgeting doing scratch that, doing the strategic activities. And there are several tools in our space that focus exclusively on that. There's also the collaboration component, where people are sharing and communicating, and there are a lot of collaboration tools out on the market as well. Whether it’s Outlook or some other online management tools. Finally there's an integration component of business intelligence. What AtTask does very well and uniquely is combine all three of those areas. We provide strong management tools, strong collaboration tools, and an ability to integrate into your processes, into your environment, and into your workflow.

Brad Baldwin: The space continues to evolve. I know that you guys have just released a new product, or a new version of this, which is Enterprise version. What does that entail? Does that include these three components you just described?

Scott Johnson: AtTask Enterprise is a step up for this organization and it’s opened some doors. There are two components to AtTask Enterprise: one is the ability to plug into additional systems within your organization, using soap APIs. Project Management doesn't just stand alone in an organization. There's human resources element, there are other systems, when you complete the task, you complete issues, it will fire off data to other systems. That's important for the Enterprise. Secondly, AtTask enterprise takes tools for management, to strategically plan and maximize capacity in human resource capability. We've got a great new tool that called the Capacity Planner within that task, which gives an executive or board-level team access to look at strategic plans, to play Tetris with all the proposed projects, to evaluate them based on risk and benefit and alignment to the organization, and then to make the proper decisions on what to move forward with, what to put on hold, and have some kind of understanding on what kind of value would add the most benefit to the organization.

Brad Baldwin: Cool. I want to see this Tetris, I want to see a project turned on its head. So what's happening in this space? I think the collaboration you talked about is really key. In fact, it's something that I've seen that people who've worked on my projects may or may not even be in my organization. So to be able to interface with them on a project in today's world is really a no-brainer. What else do you see coming? What are the trends? What will happen to Project Management over the next 18-24 months?

Scott Johnson: The exciting thing in this space is that, traditionally you think of enterprise tools as anti-picture in your mind very large, complex, and long implementation times, and expensive tools that take a lot of effort to learn how to use and really implement within an organization. There's a new way of offering software that gives companies access to these Enterprise functionalities without having to cough up $200-1000 up front. There's a lower risk, there's an easy way to implement, an easy way to get up and running. So what's happened is these Project Management tools and disciplines have now filtered down from high-end enterprise into the SMB space. Businesses that have 100-250 employees have the same exact needs as businesses that have 10,000 employees. They have the same needs for intelligence, they have the same needs for planning, they just haven't been able to buy off on these kinds of tools in the past. AtTask is bringing this capability to them.

Brad Baldwin: I know that you have a pretty impressive customer list. What are the some of the customers that you have that you can talk about on camera?

Scott Johnson: You know, we haven't signed anything that we can't talk about them... so we're good to go here. We have some great customers that have been involved in our feedback loop. They have been drivers in our strategy and innovation. So the customers that we have our Apple Computer, Amazon.com, Walt Disney, Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Sara Lee Corp., we have about 650 customers across various industries and verticals, all improving productivity.

Brad Baldwin: What's the smallest implementation or user base at an organization?

Scott Johnson: I think that the smallest that we have on our books is probably a three user implementation. The largest we have now is probably 10,000 users.

Brad Baldwin: Wow! Picturing about 10,000 people that used to have to install project and paint the walls with papers, it's more than I can even imagine.

Scott Johnson: It would be a nightmare.

Brad Baldwin: It was great catching up with you, Scott. Thanks for introducing AtTask.

Scott Johnson: Thank you very much.