Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Every stakeholder report I've written that actually changed a decision had one thing in common: it was built for the person reading it, not the person writing it. That sounds obvious, but in practice, most professional services teams default to a single report template and blast it to everyone from the CEO to the client contact. The result? Leadership skims for the one number they care about. Clients get anxious about details that don't concern them.

Every agile team I've been part of has gone through the same cycle with metrics. Someone proposes tracking velocity. Someone else adds cycle time. A third person builds a dashboard with fifteen charts. Within two months, nobody looks at any of them. The problem is not a lack of data. It's a lack of clarity about what decisions the data should inform.

Here's a number that still stops me mid-conversation: 57% of agency professionals spend more time reporting on work than doing the actual work. That's from our Sprint to AI report, and every time I share it, the response is the same slow nod of recognition. I've lived that reality.

Just in time for summer, we're rolling out a brand new look and feel—shaped by your feedback—alongside some helpful updates to the way you plan, quote, and manage work. Whether it's building out project plans before staffing is confirmed, locking in exchange rates that match your finance team, or a cleaner Task Details experience on the horizon, this month's releases are all about giving you more control and less noise. Let's dig in!

Most marketing agencies don't have a tool problem. They have a "too many tools" problem. I've seen it over and over across Teamwork.com customers. An agency starts with a project management app, bolts on a time tracker, and adds a separate invoicing tool. Then nobody can tell whether a retainer is profitable until the quarter ends. According to Teamwork.com's Sprint to AI Report, 58% of professional services teams juggle three to five separate tools just to manage their work.

I've spent the better part of a decade managing marketing campaigns for agency clients, and here's what I know for sure: the tool you pick to manage that work matters more than most people think. Pick the wrong one and you're duct-taping spreadsheets to Slack threads. Pick the right one and your team actually ships work on time, on budget, and without the 11 p.m. "where's that deliverable?" panic.

Agile project management tools are software platforms that help teams plan, execute, and deliver work in short iterative cycles. They support sprint planning, Kanban boards, backlog management, and real-time progress tracking, giving teams the flexibility to adapt as priorities shift.

I spent the better part of a decade juggling client projects across spreadsheets, email threads, and at least three tools that never talked to each other. One Monday morning I realized I'd burned two hours just pulling together a status update for a single account. That was the moment I knew the tools were the problem, not the process.

I've spent the better part of a decade inside professional services operations. First running delivery at agencies, then joining Teamwork.com to help people learn about the platform I wished I'd had. The pattern I kept hitting was the same: a CRM held the client record, a spreadsheet tracked the budget, and a project tool held the tasks. None of them talked to each other. Every Monday morning started with a frantic reconciliation ritual that ate hours and still left blind spots.

I get invited to compete against custom builds almost every week now. Not against competitor vendors. Against a team of developers, or increasingly against an AI coding tool and a founder who is good with prompts. It usually starts the same way. A services firm has a workflow that no off-the-shelf product covers perfectly. So they get a quote from a dev shop, or they spin up a build themselves over a weekend.