July 1, 2025 • 19 mins
There’s no shortage of AI tools for project managers these days—and they can be pretty amazing. But using them? Often a frustrating, disjointed experience. In this episode, Galen Low is joined by Devin Mahoney, CEO and Co-founder of QTalo, to unpack why AI can feel more like a burden than a boost in our day-to-day project work, and how to fix that.
They dive into how AI can truly serve project leaders: from cutting down on context switching to surfacing what actually matters, and building systems that fit into the real workflows of PMs. Devin also shares why privacy matters not just for compliance, but for preserving the creative space we need to do our best work. If you’ve ever felt like AI is both magical and maddening, this one’s for you.
Resources from this episode:
- Join DPM Membership
- Subscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcasts
- Connect with Devin on LinkedIn
- Check out QTalo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Galen Low (00:04):
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withThe Digital Project Manager.
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you wanna hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
And if you're into futurelooking conversations and
(00:24):
practical insights arounddigital project leadership,
consider subscribing to theshow for weekly episodes.
Okay, today we are talkingabout the plethora of frankly
amazing AI tools out there tohelp you manage your projects,
and the absolute abysmal userexperience of copying and
pasting between them just toget the results you need for
your project communications.
With me today is Devin Mahoney,CEO and Co-founder of QTalo,
(00:49):
but above all, a project managerhell bent on easing the pain
of project management using AI.
Devin, thanks forjoining us today!
Devin Mahoney (00:56):
Galen, thanks for having me.
I'm super excited to be hereand talking to this audience.
Galen Low (01:00):
I thought maybe what I'd do is just kinda like start
by zooming out because you andI, we've known each other for
I guess like over a year now.
When QTalo was in its, babydays, I guess I would say.
And what I love about whatyou do at QTalo is that
you've got this like reallyspecific focus on zeroing
in on challenges relatedto project communications.
(01:21):
You've been talking to reams ofproject managers doing the jobs.
And the pain and thechallenge that they're
running into, and you've builtyour product around that.
Everything from adaptingproject communications for
their intended audience tostreamlining the proverbial
communications coming fromeverywhere problem so that
project leaders like don'thave to be burdened by that.
That like they don't havethat friction in their day
(01:42):
that we accept as like normal.
But you've said, listen, that'sdoesn't have to be the case.
Like we can use technologyto help us around that.
Really what struck me isthat like QTalo has, like
AI in its DNA, you set outto figure out how AI can be
used to solve these problems.
I'm just wondering what wasit that made AI the right
(02:02):
ingredient for your missionof fostering a more efficient,
more engaged, and more effectiveproject management workforce?
Devin Mahoney (02:08):
Galen, it seems obvious to us project
managers, but it's not obviousto everybody else who's
working on one thing at a time.
Wouldn't that be crazyjust to work on one thing?
For a project manager,your data is living in
dozens of different places.
It's in Slack, it's inemail, it's in Jira,
it's in your documents.
The context for your project isfragmented across all of these
(02:31):
different places, and so thereason that we have AI here is
'cause AI can help us in justall of these streams in real
time, stitch them together andsurface what matters to the PM.
We are trying to automatethat, finding the
needle in the haystack.
Work so that dms can focuson planning, they can focus
(02:51):
on risk, they can focus ontheir stakeholders instead
of just chasing steps.
Result here is lesscontext switching.
It's faster decisions andit's a consistently informed
team without adding aton of new manual steps.
Galen Low (03:07):
I love that.
It's like that there's somuch like trauma that's like
kind of bubbling up in myhead as you say that because
I very often do this where I'mlike switching between apps.
I'm like looking for that thingand I'm like, gosh, I wonder how
much of my life has been spentjust like trying to remember
what TAB I'm trying to go to,or getting distracted by that.
Slack pops up andI'm like, oh yeah.
Like I can solve that quickly.
And meanwhile that reallyimportant thing I was
(03:28):
supposed to do, like itgets pushed further and
further into the future andit's like such a reality.
And there are, there'sjust so many tools.
Like one of the things that youand I had chatted about leading
into that I should mention thatlike the working title for this
episode is AI is Wonderful, sowhy does it suck so much to use?
Which is like our way ofribbing, the sort of usability
(03:50):
of the tech right now.
Can you like talk to me abit about what you mean when
you say that AI sucks to use?
Devin Mahoney (03:57):
Yeah.
Galen, I love AI.
I'm in here every day.
It's helping me with everything.
And so I just love using,it's just this magical
thing for a project manager.
It shows up in two places.
It can show up as anadd-on into your apps.
So if you're using Trelloand Clickup, it's oh, here's
our little AI fairy and it'sgonna do something for you.
(04:18):
Or it's a standalone ChatGPTstyle of okay, I am gonna chat
with my friend, the AI andit'll help me with something.
So those are thetwo kind of flavors?
No.
When AI is a feature insideof an individual app.
The problem, the frustrationis they can only see a
small slice of the project.
Remember, you're gettingslacked about all these things.
You're getting emailsfrom your customer.
(04:39):
They're not inside of thesespecialized apps, and so
you still have to copy andpaste stuff into these tools
to give the model the fullcontext for what's going on.
It's even worse whenAI's in a central chat.
And again, I love using ChatGPT,like it's, I love the prompting.
It's so much fun tocraft the perfect prompt.
But you have to do it.
(04:59):
You have to getthe prompt right?
You have to get thefollow up, right?
You have to do the manualcleanup, and now you have
50 chat threads to go alongwith your 72, browser windows
and you're now you've turneda project manager into a
copy paste monkey again.
Instead of being the strategicleader that we were meant to be.
Gosh, like really I have 50different ChatGPT things and
(05:23):
I don't know which one is theone I'm supposed to working on.
And then the output.
It's really good.
It's better than I am, butit's 90% of it is right
and 10% of it is wrong.
And you gotta be, yougotta put all this time
into fixing that last 10%.
And so does it save you time?
Yeah, it saves you time,but it's you still have
to put that effort in.
So this is like themost magical technology.
(05:46):
And you use it once, youuse it occasionally, but you
put it into your day-to-dayworkflow and all of a sudden.
So the thing that you weredoing consistently is now
clunky and it's not thesame experience every time.
It's not that same magicalexperience unless you get it.
So it's getting fed thedata that it needs from this
(06:07):
unified cross tool context.
So I love AI, but mandoes it suck today.
We're gonna make that better.
Galen Low (06:15):
It's very relatable and like I,
my ChatGPT is a mess.
It's like very disorganized.
I was even just taking thePMI prompt engineering course.
Lovely course.
And it's kinda hey, likejust create a spreadsheet
of all your prompts and howthey're working for you.
I'm like, that's a good idea.
Also, that thing you said aboutbeing a copy and base monkey
and getting lost in all theprompts that I wanted to test
(06:35):
and all the data because I needit in a central spot because
I'm using all these differentLLMs 'cause I'm testing them.
There's actually a lot morein common with onboarding
a new team member.
Woo.
Who has their blinders onfor whatever reason than
actually like using softwarebecause it's like, cool.
Let me give you the context.
Lemme describe the thingthat I'm trying to do.
Okay.
Yeah.
Not that we need to refine.
It's not exactly like a toolworkflow, it's an interaction.
(06:58):
It's a sort of colleaguestyle interaction, right?
To kinda get the results andfrankly, a lot of us just
aren't great at that or haven'tbeen trained at that, and it's
a bit of a different thing.
The other thing is just yes,like we're still figuring out.
All of the tools in tech, likethere is a myriad of tools
out there right now and thecurrent guidance is try 'em
(07:18):
all and see what works bestfor you and then keep refining.
And the last thing that Iwanna do when I'm adding all
this time to figure all thisout is okay, how am I gonna
shuttle this information backand forth between some of the
tools, some of which have AIfeatures, like models that
don't know what conversationsI had with ChatGPT.
Like you mentioned, itis just it's clunky.
It's amazing andit's clunky, right?
(07:40):
It could be two things at once.
Yeah.
And I think it's I think it'simportant because I think we're
very impressed with the output.
It's fair that we areimpressed by the output.
A, it's not the end, it isjust we haven't reached the
like final goal standardof what AI looks like
for project management.
And also it's like the waywe're using it today is
not necessarily how we'regonna use it in the future.
(08:02):
Like even just the usability.
Devin Mahoney (08:04):
I totally agree and I can't wait for that
future, but also you have thetool you have now and yeah, I
gotta figure out how to use it.
Galen Low (08:11):
And the other thing I was gonna say we need to
build it as well, which is whatyou're doing, which I love, I
wonder if I could take a bitof a side quest and I for folks
listening, I will tie it back.
But one of the things, Devin,that I notice about QTalo is
that like you've got a reallystrong focus on privacy.
You have a bit of anunorthodox take on the matter.
I was wondering if you couldjust like talk to me about
(08:32):
like why privacy is importantto you and why it should be
important to people who leadprojects, not just sensitive
data, but just the way we work.
Devin Maho (08:43):
Okay, good question.
And Galen, I'm a cybersecurityguy and so like privacy is,
it's in my DNA and I could talkyour air off about SOC two,
which I'm not gonna do becausethis podcast is only so long.
But let me talk about privacyfor a project manager,
because for a project managerto do their job, we keep a
private working memory andsome of us use our notes app.
(09:07):
Some of us use our spreadsheets,some of us use actual paper.
This is, these is my notes asa project manager, and this is
where your half-baked ideas go.
This is where you're scribblingyour notes before you actually
write an email or commitsomething to your system of
record like Jira or Salesforce.
(09:27):
There's no cost to use itbecause it's just for you.
You don't have to worryabout whether it's tagged.
You don't have to worry aboutwhether it's even correct.
It's a liminal workspace.
It's gotta stay private.
It's where yourcritical thinking goes.
It's where yourrough drafts happen.
It's where the realrisk planning begins.
And our goal at QTalo isto honor this liminal zone.
(09:50):
We help you pull insight.
From these drafts withoutprematurely publishing them,
it gives you this opportunityto think aloud safely and
still benefit from this sharedcontext of what's going on
in your system or record.
So we're projectingthis creative buffer.
We're helping bridge thisgap, and our goal is to
yield cleaner, accurateupdates for teams, for your
(10:13):
leadership, for your customers,all your stakeholders.
Galen Low (10:16):
I love that so much because there's
yeah, there's stuff in mynotebooks I don't really
want anyone else to see ever.
And I love that notion thatprivacy, we always think
of like sensitive clientinformation or, sensitive
financial data or, personalidentifiable information
from, like in healthcare.
But I really like thisnotion of me as a user.
I want to benefit, I want thatnotebook that is an LLM, right?
(10:39):
Where I'm like writingstuff and it's okay, cool.
Do you want me to likecorrelate that for you?
How about this?
Asking me questions.
But that's my likeworking context.
It's not mypresentation context.
And I would love to know thatthe broader model in my tool
is not training on all ofmy like rough draft nodes.
And then someone'sgoing Hey, what kind of
project manager is Galen?
They're likescatterbrained really?
(11:00):
Like it's a loose cannon.
He starts sentences andhe doesn't finish them.
Like it's wild.
Like I don't want thatentering the ether, of my
tool and like coming as a layperson in this conversation
where I'm like, I don't know.
It seems like all thesemodels are training on
pretty much everything.
I don't really have thatmuch line of sight without
getting into the sort ofcompliance side of things.
(11:20):
I don't always haveline of sight of what's
being shared where.
Honestly, I'm not likecommitting to memory all the
terms and conditions for all thetools that I've signed up for.
I probably should, but I'mokay I'm taking for granted
the idea that I should probablyapproach it with caution, but
that it's for the greater good.
Whereas I think what I likeabout what your your angle
is yeah, like there shouldbe this layer where you still
(11:42):
benefit from what you'retraining your personal sort
of model on within your tool.
Ideally not just jumpingaround to all these things.
That should be likea thing that's known.
It's don't worry, you're inthe zone where like this won't
get shared with your colleaguesand you're like, cool.
And then it's would youlike me to print this
to your colleagues?
I was like, yes, now.
Now it's fully baked.
Let's go.
Just that level of clarityI think is just, it
(12:03):
demonstrates that well,to pay you a compliment.
It demonstrates thatyou understand the way
project managers work.
You're not just buildingsoftware, which I think
is like the real IT thing.
The thing that gets me excitedabout what you're doing.
Devin Mahoney (12:15):
Thanks Galen.
Really appreciate it.
Galen Low (12:16):
I'm gonna pay you a compliment and then I'm
gonna backhand you with thedevil's advocate thing, which
is we've been talking abouthow there's so many like
productivity tools out there.
There's so many AItools out there.
Part of your criticism, if I'mpicking up correctly, like part
of your criticism of modernefficiency is that we are
using too many disparate tools.
So my devil's advocatequestion is like.
Why did you feel like the worldneeded one more tool in QTalo?
Devin Mahoney (12:40):
It's a great question, and everybody asks
that question of every tool.
These productivity tools,these communication tools, they
multiply faster than anybodycan possibly integrate them.
And the budget that a companyhas for these new tools, it
hasn't kept pace with thetool acquisition budget.
So what I mean islike we got all these.
(13:02):
This information that'sspread out across all these
tools, but there's no budgetfor consolidation, and so
where does it have to happen?
It's on the project manager,and so now we are having to
do this consolidation by hand.
Thankfully, it's a lot easierto implement because of AI.
It's a lot easier forus to do this by hand.
It's almost worse.
It's almost worse because it'spossible for us to just copy,
(13:23):
paste everything into ChatGPT.
Now it's our job to do thatinstead of thinking through
like where all the data is.
So QTalo isn't just oneanother task application.
In fact, our goal is to getyou into QTalo and get you out
of QTalo as soon as possible.
We're making this theconnective tissue so that
your existing stack canwork as a single system.
(13:44):
I actually think there's plentyof room for other consolidation
tools besides QTalo.
We, we need more of thembecause efficiency is
really about every, makingeverything work together.
And so by sitting next to allthese other tools it eliminates
this like swivel chair work.
It reduces the sprawl oflicenses all over the place
'cause it's really only thePMs who need this and it pays
(14:05):
for itself in recovery time.
You something because a lotof s who work with engineers,
there's this concept oftechnical debt that accumulates
during the engineering process.
There's operational debt too.
Every time we add a tool,every time another team
is using a new tool.
We're adding to theoperational debt and this
consolidation effort helpsus pay down that operational
(14:28):
debt so that we can have ourcommunication channel focused.
That's the goal.
That's why the world needsQTalo and other tools
that do consolidation.
Galen Low (14:37):
I love that notion of operational debt,
like it's so true, but Ialso love that sort of like
clarity of recognition that.
We're gonna have tools, butalso that it's not that all
of our tools need to stringtogether into one sort of
big brain tool that's thetool to end all tools.
It's kinda tie it all together.
It's like a web.
You have to make sure thatlike your important tools that
are related to one anotherconnect to the same node.
(14:59):
That Node could be QTalo.
Doesn't mean it's youronly piece of software that
you're opening every day.
It just means that, yeah, thisis a node that is strategically
stringing together.
Some of the software that you'reusing, because like you said,
we can't integrate with everytool as it comes out, maybe
Zapier and Make, but even then,like that is that must be such
a severe, intense process totry and keep pace with every
(15:21):
API versus okay, I. Here, we'vemade a decision on these tools.
We don't want to incur alot of operational debt, but
we do need them talking toeach other better so that
we can do our jobs better.
Otherwise, we're really bluntingthe like overall advantage that
we have, where AI's gonna comeand take over all the admin
and you're gonna be strategic.
Just kidding.
You're copying and pasting.
Like it's a, it, you know it,it's a bit of a bait and switch
(15:44):
actually how it works right now.
It is.
It is.
I'm wondering, maybe you couldjust talk to us about like
what's coming up for QTalo.
In what ways are you likeattempting to solve this
problem and just whatyou're excited about?
I'm
Devin Mahoney (15:56):
actually pretty excited about this
command center that we'rebuilding, you said at the
top of the podcast Galen, butlike we are project managers.
We are building for projectmanagers and that let us have a
very narrow focus on only thingsthat project managers need.
For instance, we've got AIprioritization, so like a PM
you just started your day.
(16:17):
Other people have beenworking in other time zones.
You wanna know whatis on fire today.
What signals do I need topay attention to across email
and chat and ticketing thatI need to work on right now?
This is my day.
I need summaries.
'cause like lotsof stuff happens.
I'm not on top ofeverything all the time.
I need automatic summaries ofall the key facts, the next
(16:37):
steps, the links to the sourceso I can get right back to it.
I need a unified search 'causeI can't tell you Galen, how
often this literally happenedthis morning where somebody
sent me something, it wastrying to find it, and I didn't
know if it was an email orin some random Slack channel.
And the unify searched isthe thing that saved me
because it, I'm getting all myinformation all over the place.
I need workflow checklists, PMs,like when we get a notification,
(17:02):
it's like a lot of work.
And so like normal people youget an email, you're like,
okay, fine, I'm gonna respond.
I'm done.
A PM gets an email.
You gotta do five toseven different things.
It is such a lot of work andno one really appreciates that.
And so these, the workflowchecklists allow you to build
a list of tasks and your lifekind of sucks because you have
to do the seven things becauseat least you can enumerate the
(17:24):
seven things and you can checkthem off your list so you can
finally get rid of that email.
You can take it.
Out of your world andwe're providing context
that all the timeline, thefiles, all the decisions.
So PMs can get up to speed.
They're just switching contextinto it and you don't have
to scroll through all theseapps to in order to get there.
So that's exactly whatour command center does.
(17:45):
It's really focused on the PMwe're getting you in, telling
you the things you need todo next and getting you right
back into the work that you'redoing in the other apps.
Galen Low (17:53):
I love that.
And yes, very relatable.
The number, like if you lookat my search history across
tools, it's the same search.
It's just, I waslike, where was this?
Where said, yeah, soI'm searching the same
keyword across multipletools to find it.
That sounds really exciting.
I love what you're doing.
Devin, thank you somuch for this chat.
It's been a lot of fungetting your perspective
on just AI, our AI clutter,AI usability in the future.
Devin Mahoney (18:17):
Thank you, Galen.
It's been a pleasuretalking to you.
Galen Low (18:20):
Alright folks, there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
thedpm.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
Until next time,thanks for listening!
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in.
My name is Galen Low withThe Digital Project Manager.
We are a community of digitalprofessionals on a mission
to help each other getskilled, get confident, and
get connected so that we canamplify the value of project
management in a digital world.
If you wanna hear moreabout that, head on over
to thedpm.com/membership.
And if you're into futurelooking conversations and
(00:24):
practical insights arounddigital project leadership,
consider subscribing to theshow for weekly episodes.
Okay, today we are talkingabout the plethora of frankly
amazing AI tools out there tohelp you manage your projects,
and the absolute abysmal userexperience of copying and
pasting between them just toget the results you need for
your project communications.
With me today is Devin Mahoney,CEO and Co-founder of QTalo,
(00:49):
but above all, a project managerhell bent on easing the pain
of project management using AI.
Devin, thanks forjoining us today!
Devin Mahoney (00:56):
Galen, thanks for having me.
I'm super excited to be hereand talking to this audience.
Galen Low (01:00):
I thought maybe what I'd do is just kinda like start
by zooming out because you andI, we've known each other for
I guess like over a year now.
When QTalo was in its, babydays, I guess I would say.
And what I love about whatyou do at QTalo is that
you've got this like reallyspecific focus on zeroing
in on challenges relatedto project communications.
(01:21):
You've been talking to reams ofproject managers doing the jobs.
And the pain and thechallenge that they're
running into, and you've builtyour product around that.
Everything from adaptingproject communications for
their intended audience tostreamlining the proverbial
communications coming fromeverywhere problem so that
project leaders like don'thave to be burdened by that.
That like they don't havethat friction in their day
(01:42):
that we accept as like normal.
But you've said, listen, that'sdoesn't have to be the case.
Like we can use technologyto help us around that.
Really what struck me isthat like QTalo has, like
AI in its DNA, you set outto figure out how AI can be
used to solve these problems.
I'm just wondering what wasit that made AI the right
(02:02):
ingredient for your missionof fostering a more efficient,
more engaged, and more effectiveproject management workforce?
Devin Mahoney (02:08):
Galen, it seems obvious to us project
managers, but it's not obviousto everybody else who's
working on one thing at a time.
Wouldn't that be crazyjust to work on one thing?
For a project manager,your data is living in
dozens of different places.
It's in Slack, it's inemail, it's in Jira,
it's in your documents.
The context for your project isfragmented across all of these
(02:31):
different places, and so thereason that we have AI here is
'cause AI can help us in justall of these streams in real
time, stitch them together andsurface what matters to the PM.
We are trying to automatethat, finding the
needle in the haystack.
Work so that dms can focuson planning, they can focus
(02:51):
on risk, they can focus ontheir stakeholders instead
of just chasing steps.
Result here is lesscontext switching.
It's faster decisions andit's a consistently informed
team without adding aton of new manual steps.
Galen Low (03:07):
I love that.
It's like that there's somuch like trauma that's like
kind of bubbling up in myhead as you say that because
I very often do this where I'mlike switching between apps.
I'm like looking for that thingand I'm like, gosh, I wonder how
much of my life has been spentjust like trying to remember
what TAB I'm trying to go to,or getting distracted by that.
Slack pops up andI'm like, oh yeah.
Like I can solve that quickly.
And meanwhile that reallyimportant thing I was
(03:28):
supposed to do, like itgets pushed further and
further into the future andit's like such a reality.
And there are, there'sjust so many tools.
Like one of the things that youand I had chatted about leading
into that I should mention thatlike the working title for this
episode is AI is Wonderful, sowhy does it suck so much to use?
Which is like our way ofribbing, the sort of usability
(03:50):
of the tech right now.
Can you like talk to me abit about what you mean when
you say that AI sucks to use?
Devin Mahoney (03:57):
Yeah.
Galen, I love AI.
I'm in here every day.
It's helping me with everything.
And so I just love using,it's just this magical
thing for a project manager.
It shows up in two places.
It can show up as anadd-on into your apps.
So if you're using Trelloand Clickup, it's oh, here's
our little AI fairy and it'sgonna do something for you.
(04:18):
Or it's a standalone ChatGPTstyle of okay, I am gonna chat
with my friend, the AI andit'll help me with something.
So those are thetwo kind of flavors?
No.
When AI is a feature insideof an individual app.
The problem, the frustrationis they can only see a
small slice of the project.
Remember, you're gettingslacked about all these things.
You're getting emailsfrom your customer.
(04:39):
They're not inside of thesespecialized apps, and so
you still have to copy andpaste stuff into these tools
to give the model the fullcontext for what's going on.
It's even worse whenAI's in a central chat.
And again, I love using ChatGPT,like it's, I love the prompting.
It's so much fun tocraft the perfect prompt.
But you have to do it.
(04:59):
You have to getthe prompt right?
You have to get thefollow up, right?
You have to do the manualcleanup, and now you have
50 chat threads to go alongwith your 72, browser windows
and you're now you've turneda project manager into a
copy paste monkey again.
Instead of being the strategicleader that we were meant to be.
Gosh, like really I have 50different ChatGPT things and
(05:23):
I don't know which one is theone I'm supposed to working on.
And then the output.
It's really good.
It's better than I am, butit's 90% of it is right
and 10% of it is wrong.
And you gotta be, yougotta put all this time
into fixing that last 10%.
And so does it save you time?
Yeah, it saves you time,but it's you still have
to put that effort in.
So this is like themost magical technology.
(05:46):
And you use it once, youuse it occasionally, but you
put it into your day-to-dayworkflow and all of a sudden.
So the thing that you weredoing consistently is now
clunky and it's not thesame experience every time.
It's not that same magicalexperience unless you get it.
So it's getting fed thedata that it needs from this
(06:07):
unified cross tool context.
So I love AI, but mandoes it suck today.
We're gonna make that better.
Galen Low (06:15):
It's very relatable and like I,
my ChatGPT is a mess.
It's like very disorganized.
I was even just taking thePMI prompt engineering course.
Lovely course.
And it's kinda hey, likejust create a spreadsheet
of all your prompts and howthey're working for you.
I'm like, that's a good idea.
Also, that thing you said aboutbeing a copy and base monkey
and getting lost in all theprompts that I wanted to test
(06:35):
and all the data because I needit in a central spot because
I'm using all these differentLLMs 'cause I'm testing them.
There's actually a lot morein common with onboarding
a new team member.
Woo.
Who has their blinders onfor whatever reason than
actually like using softwarebecause it's like, cool.
Let me give you the context.
Lemme describe the thingthat I'm trying to do.
Okay.
Yeah.
Not that we need to refine.
It's not exactly like a toolworkflow, it's an interaction.
(06:58):
It's a sort of colleaguestyle interaction, right?
To kinda get the results andfrankly, a lot of us just
aren't great at that or haven'tbeen trained at that, and it's
a bit of a different thing.
The other thing is just yes,like we're still figuring out.
All of the tools in tech, likethere is a myriad of tools
out there right now and thecurrent guidance is try 'em
(07:18):
all and see what works bestfor you and then keep refining.
And the last thing that Iwanna do when I'm adding all
this time to figure all thisout is okay, how am I gonna
shuttle this information backand forth between some of the
tools, some of which have AIfeatures, like models that
don't know what conversationsI had with ChatGPT.
Like you mentioned, itis just it's clunky.
It's amazing andit's clunky, right?
(07:40):
It could be two things at once.
Yeah.
And I think it's I think it'simportant because I think we're
very impressed with the output.
It's fair that we areimpressed by the output.
A, it's not the end, it isjust we haven't reached the
like final goal standardof what AI looks like
for project management.
And also it's like the waywe're using it today is
not necessarily how we'regonna use it in the future.
(08:02):
Like even just the usability.
Devin Mahoney (08:04):
I totally agree and I can't wait for that
future, but also you have thetool you have now and yeah, I
gotta figure out how to use it.
Galen Low (08:11):
And the other thing I was gonna say we need to
build it as well, which is whatyou're doing, which I love, I
wonder if I could take a bitof a side quest and I for folks
listening, I will tie it back.
But one of the things, Devin,that I notice about QTalo is
that like you've got a reallystrong focus on privacy.
You have a bit of anunorthodox take on the matter.
I was wondering if you couldjust like talk to me about
(08:32):
like why privacy is importantto you and why it should be
important to people who leadprojects, not just sensitive
data, but just the way we work.
Devin Maho (08:43):
Okay, good question.
And Galen, I'm a cybersecurityguy and so like privacy is,
it's in my DNA and I could talkyour air off about SOC two,
which I'm not gonna do becausethis podcast is only so long.
But let me talk about privacyfor a project manager,
because for a project managerto do their job, we keep a
private working memory andsome of us use our notes app.
(09:07):
Some of us use our spreadsheets,some of us use actual paper.
This is, these is my notes asa project manager, and this is
where your half-baked ideas go.
This is where you're scribblingyour notes before you actually
write an email or commitsomething to your system of
record like Jira or Salesforce.
(09:27):
There's no cost to use itbecause it's just for you.
You don't have to worryabout whether it's tagged.
You don't have to worry aboutwhether it's even correct.
It's a liminal workspace.
It's gotta stay private.
It's where yourcritical thinking goes.
It's where yourrough drafts happen.
It's where the realrisk planning begins.
And our goal at QTalo isto honor this liminal zone.
(09:50):
We help you pull insight.
From these drafts withoutprematurely publishing them,
it gives you this opportunityto think aloud safely and
still benefit from this sharedcontext of what's going on
in your system or record.
So we're projectingthis creative buffer.
We're helping bridge thisgap, and our goal is to
yield cleaner, accurateupdates for teams, for your
(10:13):
leadership, for your customers,all your stakeholders.
Galen Low (10:16):
I love that so much because there's
yeah, there's stuff in mynotebooks I don't really
want anyone else to see ever.
And I love that notion thatprivacy, we always think
of like sensitive clientinformation or, sensitive
financial data or, personalidentifiable information
from, like in healthcare.
But I really like thisnotion of me as a user.
I want to benefit, I want thatnotebook that is an LLM, right?
(10:39):
Where I'm like writingstuff and it's okay, cool.
Do you want me to likecorrelate that for you?
How about this?
Asking me questions.
But that's my likeworking context.
It's not mypresentation context.
And I would love to know thatthe broader model in my tool
is not training on all ofmy like rough draft nodes.
And then someone'sgoing Hey, what kind of
project manager is Galen?
They're likescatterbrained really?
(11:00):
Like it's a loose cannon.
He starts sentences andhe doesn't finish them.
Like it's wild.
Like I don't want thatentering the ether, of my
tool and like coming as a layperson in this conversation
where I'm like, I don't know.
It seems like all thesemodels are training on
pretty much everything.
I don't really have thatmuch line of sight without
getting into the sort ofcompliance side of things.
(11:20):
I don't always haveline of sight of what's
being shared where.
Honestly, I'm not likecommitting to memory all the
terms and conditions for all thetools that I've signed up for.
I probably should, but I'mokay I'm taking for granted
the idea that I should probablyapproach it with caution, but
that it's for the greater good.
Whereas I think what I likeabout what your your angle
is yeah, like there shouldbe this layer where you still
(11:42):
benefit from what you'retraining your personal sort
of model on within your tool.
Ideally not just jumpingaround to all these things.
That should be likea thing that's known.
It's don't worry, you're inthe zone where like this won't
get shared with your colleaguesand you're like, cool.
And then it's would youlike me to print this
to your colleagues?
I was like, yes, now.
Now it's fully baked.
Let's go.
Just that level of clarityI think is just, it
(12:03):
demonstrates that well,to pay you a compliment.
It demonstrates thatyou understand the way
project managers work.
You're not just buildingsoftware, which I think
is like the real IT thing.
The thing that gets me excitedabout what you're doing.
Devin Mahoney (12:15):
Thanks Galen.
Really appreciate it.
Galen Low (12:16):
I'm gonna pay you a compliment and then I'm
gonna backhand you with thedevil's advocate thing, which
is we've been talking abouthow there's so many like
productivity tools out there.
There's so many AItools out there.
Part of your criticism, if I'mpicking up correctly, like part
of your criticism of modernefficiency is that we are
using too many disparate tools.
So my devil's advocatequestion is like.
Why did you feel like the worldneeded one more tool in QTalo?
Devin Mahoney (12:40):
It's a great question, and everybody asks
that question of every tool.
These productivity tools,these communication tools, they
multiply faster than anybodycan possibly integrate them.
And the budget that a companyhas for these new tools, it
hasn't kept pace with thetool acquisition budget.
So what I mean islike we got all these.
(13:02):
This information that'sspread out across all these
tools, but there's no budgetfor consolidation, and so
where does it have to happen?
It's on the project manager,and so now we are having to
do this consolidation by hand.
Thankfully, it's a lot easierto implement because of AI.
It's a lot easier forus to do this by hand.
It's almost worse.
It's almost worse because it'spossible for us to just copy,
(13:23):
paste everything into ChatGPT.
Now it's our job to do thatinstead of thinking through
like where all the data is.
So QTalo isn't just oneanother task application.
In fact, our goal is to getyou into QTalo and get you out
of QTalo as soon as possible.
We're making this theconnective tissue so that
your existing stack canwork as a single system.
(13:44):
I actually think there's plentyof room for other consolidation
tools besides QTalo.
We, we need more of thembecause efficiency is
really about every, makingeverything work together.
And so by sitting next to allthese other tools it eliminates
this like swivel chair work.
It reduces the sprawl oflicenses all over the place
'cause it's really only thePMs who need this and it pays
(14:05):
for itself in recovery time.
You something because a lotof s who work with engineers,
there's this concept oftechnical debt that accumulates
during the engineering process.
There's operational debt too.
Every time we add a tool,every time another team
is using a new tool.
We're adding to theoperational debt and this
consolidation effort helpsus pay down that operational
(14:28):
debt so that we can have ourcommunication channel focused.
That's the goal.
That's why the world needsQTalo and other tools
that do consolidation.
Galen Low (14:37):
I love that notion of operational debt,
like it's so true, but Ialso love that sort of like
clarity of recognition that.
We're gonna have tools, butalso that it's not that all
of our tools need to stringtogether into one sort of
big brain tool that's thetool to end all tools.
It's kinda tie it all together.
It's like a web.
You have to make sure thatlike your important tools that
are related to one anotherconnect to the same node.
(14:59):
That Node could be QTalo.
Doesn't mean it's youronly piece of software that
you're opening every day.
It just means that, yeah, thisis a node that is strategically
stringing together.
Some of the software that you'reusing, because like you said,
we can't integrate with everytool as it comes out, maybe
Zapier and Make, but even then,like that is that must be such
a severe, intense process totry and keep pace with every
(15:21):
API versus okay, I. Here, we'vemade a decision on these tools.
We don't want to incur alot of operational debt, but
we do need them talking toeach other better so that
we can do our jobs better.
Otherwise, we're really bluntingthe like overall advantage that
we have, where AI's gonna comeand take over all the admin
and you're gonna be strategic.
Just kidding.
You're copying and pasting.
Like it's a, it, you know it,it's a bit of a bait and switch
(15:44):
actually how it works right now.
It is.
It is.
I'm wondering, maybe you couldjust talk to us about like
what's coming up for QTalo.
In what ways are you likeattempting to solve this
problem and just whatyou're excited about?
I'm
Devin Mahoney (15:56):
actually pretty excited about this
command center that we'rebuilding, you said at the
top of the podcast Galen, butlike we are project managers.
We are building for projectmanagers and that let us have a
very narrow focus on only thingsthat project managers need.
For instance, we've got AIprioritization, so like a PM
you just started your day.
(16:17):
Other people have beenworking in other time zones.
You wanna know whatis on fire today.
What signals do I need topay attention to across email
and chat and ticketing thatI need to work on right now?
This is my day.
I need summaries.
'cause like lotsof stuff happens.
I'm not on top ofeverything all the time.
I need automatic summaries ofall the key facts, the next
(16:37):
steps, the links to the sourceso I can get right back to it.
I need a unified search 'causeI can't tell you Galen, how
often this literally happenedthis morning where somebody
sent me something, it wastrying to find it, and I didn't
know if it was an email orin some random Slack channel.
And the unify searched isthe thing that saved me
because it, I'm getting all myinformation all over the place.
I need workflow checklists, PMs,like when we get a notification,
(17:02):
it's like a lot of work.
And so like normal people youget an email, you're like,
okay, fine, I'm gonna respond.
I'm done.
A PM gets an email.
You gotta do five toseven different things.
It is such a lot of work andno one really appreciates that.
And so these, the workflowchecklists allow you to build
a list of tasks and your lifekind of sucks because you have
to do the seven things becauseat least you can enumerate the
(17:24):
seven things and you can checkthem off your list so you can
finally get rid of that email.
You can take it.
Out of your world andwe're providing context
that all the timeline, thefiles, all the decisions.
So PMs can get up to speed.
They're just switching contextinto it and you don't have
to scroll through all theseapps to in order to get there.
So that's exactly whatour command center does.
(17:45):
It's really focused on the PMwe're getting you in, telling
you the things you need todo next and getting you right
back into the work that you'redoing in the other apps.
Galen Low (17:53):
I love that.
And yes, very relatable.
The number, like if you lookat my search history across
tools, it's the same search.
It's just, I waslike, where was this?
Where said, yeah, soI'm searching the same
keyword across multipletools to find it.
That sounds really exciting.
I love what you're doing.
Devin, thank you somuch for this chat.
It's been a lot of fungetting your perspective
on just AI, our AI clutter,AI usability in the future.
Devin Mahoney (18:17):
Thank you, Galen.
It's been a pleasuretalking to you.
Galen Low (18:20):
Alright folks, there you have it.
As always, if you'd like tojoin the conversation with
over a thousand like-mindedproject management champions,
come join our collective!Head on over to
thedpm.com/membershipto learn more.
And if you like what youheard today, please subscribe
and stay in touch onthedigitalprojectmanager.com.
Until next time,thanks for listening!
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