Projektportalen scales smarter with AI driven product development

Scaling beyond headcount with an AI first mindset

As a growing organisation, Projektportalen faced a familiar challenge: how to scale without simply adding more people. This is where AI became a strategic lever for scaling.

The development team had already been using AI in their day-to-day for several years. However, usage was ad hoc and lacked standardisation. By late 2025, a clear shift occurred. The team recognised that AI tools had matured enough to deliver real, consistent impact.

That insight triggered a deliberate move towards an AI first development model, enabling scalable business growth.

From coding to defining: a new way of building products

Today, Projektportalen uses tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to generate code, combined with separate AI models dedicated to reviewing output. This ensures no model validates its own work – strengthening both quality and control.

Within a few months, the team transitioned to a spec driven development process, where nearly all code is generated by AI.

The developer role has fundamentally shifted. Rather than writing code, developers now focus on:

• Defining clear specifications
• Translating customer needs into precise requirements
• Reviewing and validating AI generated output

This shift has had a direct impact on product quality.

“Before AI, writing specifications was a small part of the job. Today, developers spend significantly more time on it – and it shows. We see clearer thinking, sharper scope and better outcomes.” – Alexander Grahn, Head of Engineering at Projektportalen

Another important benefit is documentation. What was previously deprioritised due to time constraints is now automatically generated and continuously updated – improving both internal efficiency and long term scalability.

The challenge: Balancing speed, security and customer value

While AI has removed a significant portion of the development workload, Projektportalen is clear on one point: human ownership remains essential. All code is reviewed by developers before being released into production. AI accelerates execution, but accountability stays with the team.

“Developers still own both the problem and the solution. AI supports execution, but humans define the scope, set the requirements and approve the outcome.” – Alexander Grahn, Head of Engineering at Projektportalen

Another emerging challenge is maintaining focus and discipline. With AI enabling rapid development, it becomes easier to expand beyond the original scope. The risk is building more without delivering more value. Projektportalen addresses this by keeping a strict focus on customer needs. Every suggested feature or enhancement is evaluated through a simple lens: does this create real value for the customer? 

“The real challenge now is getting new functionality to market. AI accelerates development — but it’s still people who use the product. Going forward, we need to focus more on driving customer adoption.” – Martin Ahlström, CPO at Projektportalen

The results: faster delivery and stronger customer focus

The impact of the transformation is already clear. Development capacity has increased significantly, but this has not led to a reduction in headcount. Instead, Projektportalen has rebalanced its organisation to invest more in product management, customer success and business-oriented development roles. This ensures that increased development capacity translates into meaningful customer value.

What’s next: extending AI across the organisation and product

Projektportalen is still early in its AI journey, with a clear focus on scaling impact across both technology and business functions. On the development side, the next step is to strengthen quality metrics and performance tracking – enabling continuous optimisation of AI driven workflows.

At the same time, the company is expanding AI usage internally. The ambition is to equip all functions with tools that reduce manual work and unlock better decision making. The development team plays a key role here, enabling data access and building internal AI capabilities.

Since the new AI-driven development was introduced, the internal dynamic has also shifted. Where sales and marketing previously depended on development for new releases, the situation is now reversed. Faster product delivery creates new demands on go to market teams. To address this, Projektportalen is exploring how AI can support internal handovers and customer communication with the goal to increase adoption of new features.

For customers, AI is already part of the experience. Through an MCP integration, users can access platform data in their own AI tools to support planning, forecasting and reporting within the systems they already use. Looking ahead, Projektportalen will continue to introduce new AI functionality – selectively and with clear intent.

“There’s a lot of noise around AI. Our focus is simple: we build functionality that creates real value for our customers – tools that genuinely help them in their day-to-day and that they are willing to pay for.” – Martin Ahlström, CPO at Projektportalen

Advice to SaaS companies starting their AI journey

Based on Projektportalen’s experience, Martin and Alexander share five practical lessons for SaaS leaders:

1. Start with a champion. Identify someone who can explore the tools in depth, demonstrate value and build internal momentum based on real results.
2. Standardise early. Put structure and governance in place before scaling usage to ensure quality, control and security.
3. Focus on real use cases. Start where AI can deliver immediate, tangible value. Then, expand step by step.
4. Stay adaptable. The AI landscape evolves rapidly. What works today may change within months, so be ready to adjust both tools and ways of working.
5. Balance human and AI workforces. Analyse where AI can make most impact and where human intervention is still critical.