Eliminating status meetings with AI-powered insights

It was an all-too-common scenario. IBM Systems Assurance project leads estimated that they were spending roughly two to four hours weekly preparing and participating in recurring status meetings. Engineers and testers often waited through lengthy calls or in-person meetings to deliver brief updates, while project leads manually consolidated information from spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, Mural boards, and multiple tracking tools. Despite the effort, leaders still may have lacked timely, consistent insight they required. Status reports could be outdated, heavily summarized, and inconsistent by the time they reached executives. IBM needed a simpler, real-time way to understand project health, reduce administrative burden, and improve transparency across teams.
 

Outcomes described reflect IBM’s internal deployment of GPS reporting across the Hardware Compliance organization within IBM Systems Assurance and reflect those participants’ own estimates. Individual results vary and are not necessarily typical. 

A grassroots team of technical experts within IBM Systems Assurance first identified the need for a more effective, AI‑enabled solution for project tracking and visibility. Recognizing that IBM® watsonx Orchestrate® offered the capabilities required, they entered the corporatewide 2025 IBM watsonx® Challenge, gaining visibility and additional resources to develop the idea. The result was an AI-powered global project status (GPS) reporting application that provides real‑time, structured insights across complex project portfolios through natural‑language queries.

The GPS application entered production in October 2025 and has expanded to approximately 45 users in the Hardware Compliance organization within Systems Assurance. Team members, which continue to expand across IBM organizations, create and submit project updates directly within GPS, which automatically notifies stakeholders through Slack. Executive team leaders, project and program leads can quickly review project health through dashboards, filters, and AI-generated summaries tailored to different needs, including verbatim updates, risk-focused summaries, 3Ps (Plan, In-Progress and Problems) views, and custom prompts. This approach replaces many manual status collection activities that previously relied on meetings and email follow-up.

The team selected IBM Cloud® and IBM watsonx Orchestrate® as the foundation for the GPS reporting solution. The team concluded watsonx Orchestrate was the best choice to build the solution because it provides advanced large language models that significantly elevate the AI agent’s ability to generate high‑quality, context‑aware content. It also provided a clear pathway to evolve the GPS reporting solution from a simple conversational assistant into a more autonomous agent designed to execute multi‑step workflows, integrating with enterprise systems, and delivering end‑to‑end automation.

To ensure the solution addressed real operational needs, the team brought together experts from Systems Assurance leadership, AI engineering, program management, and user‑centered design roles for feedback. Executive and peer input shaped governance and scalability, while UX/UI specialists created an intuitive, IBM‑standard experience. Targeted internal communications-built awareness and accelerated adoption, helping move the solution from concept to production. Initially developed as a proof of concept during the Challenge, the GPS solution quickly demonstrated the practical value of AI‑driven project intelligence.

Project reporting through GPS is now mandated within IBM’s Hardware Compliance organization and is expanding to additional teams inside the Systems Assurance organizations and throughout IBM. Many status meetings have been reduced, eliminated, or reimagined, giving engineers more time to focus on critical work. Leaders now access insights, enabling them to address risks, have strategic meetings focusing on the most critical issues, and prioritize discussions based on business impact rather than reporting cadence. George Fax, Vice President, Systems Assurance at IBM said, “What the Systems Assurance team accomplished through GPS reporting is a testament to their drive and determination. They challenged the status quo, stayed grounded in real business needs, and delivered results that are already changing how we work.”

The GPS initiative also reflects a broader culture of AI-driven innovation within Systems Assurance. The team’s commitment to continuous innovation extends beyond GPS itself. Beginning in December 2025, by incorporating IBM Bob™ into its development workflow, the GPS team uses an agentic AI development environment that supports tools, flows, skills and MCP servers, which can be embedded directly into the agent.

IBM Client Zero teams serve as internal innovators, piloting emerging technologies to improve productivity, agility, and business outcomes across IBM. Successful solutions often become blueprints for enterprise-scale transformation.