The B4 Index · Sample Scorecard
One complete scorecard.
On the house.
The rest of the site shows you how to think about building versus buying, then asks you to pay for the answer. This page is different. Here's one category, scored in full — the verdict, all five dimensions with the reasoning, and exactly where it lands. No paywall, no email gate.
It's the whole thing you'd otherwise unlock in Pro, on a single category, so you can see what you'd be buying across all 1,606.
How a scorecard is built
Two axes decide the call. Five dimensions, scored 1 to 5, do the deciding. The full framework goes deeper — this is the short version.
X-Axis
Strategic Differentiation
How much does owning this matter to your business? The blend of how specific it is to you and how much competitive edge it carries.
Y-Axis
AI Feasibility
Can AI actually build 80%+ of this category's value today, in production? The dimension that shifts fastest as models improve.
BUILD
Own it, iterate fast
High differentiation, and AI can build it. This is where your advantage lives. Your processes become your software.
BUY
Commodity, buy cheapest
Low differentiation, AI can't shortcut it. Vendor scale is justified. Buy the best value and move on.
BRIDGE
Buy now, build later
Strategic, but AI can't build it yet. Buy the platform, then customize the parts that are yours.
BEWARE
Stop overpaying
Low differentiation, high feasibility. You're paying a premium for a commodity AI is quietly absorbing.
On the house · full record
The Project Management scorecard
Collaboration · People & Workplace. Everything below is the complete Pro record for this one category.
BEWARE Stop overpaying High urgency
$50-500K/yr for task tracking most teams underutilize.
Lean PM tools (Linear/Plane, Type B) + AI agents that auto-generate tasks from meetings, track progress, and surface blockers (Type C). Premium PM suites are overpaying.
Beware Build Buy Bridge Project Management
Low diff.High diff.
X · Strategic Differentiation
2.5 / 5
Below the 3.5 threshold. Not where you win.
Y · AI Feasibility
4 / 5
High. AI handles most of the generic workflow.
Low differentiation plus high feasibility lands it in the top-left: BEWARE. You're paying a premium for a commodity AI is busy absorbing.
The five-dimension scorecard
Specificity How unique is this to your business? X-axis
1 · Universal commodity5 · Uniquely bespoke
Project management patterns are mostly generic — tasks, milestones, dependencies, boards. Vendor defaults work for 80%+ of teams. Custom workflows exist but add modest differentiation.
AI Feasibility Can AI build this today? Y-axis
1 · Can't help5 · Fully solved
Multiple independent teams run self-hosted alternatives (Plane with 31K+ GitHub stars and 500K+ Docker pulls, OpenProject, Redmine, Taiga) covering 80%+ of core PM needs; building on OSS or low-code bases (Airtable, Retool, Baserow) as PM systems is a documented mainstream choice.
Vendor Value Are you getting your money's worth? Urgency
1 · High utilization5 · Massive waste
Most companies use 20-40% of project management platforms. Boards and basic task tracking are active; portfolio management, resource planning, time tracking, and reporting go unused.
Strategic Control Differentiator or table stakes? X-axis
1 · Table stakes5 · Competitive weapon
Emerging strategic value. Project data is becoming AI input for capacity planning and velocity prediction. But project management itself isn't a competitive weapon.
Cost Trajectory Which way are the economics heading? Urgency
1 · Vendor wins on cost5 · Build is far cheaper
PM SaaS pricing has dropped with AI bundled in ($7-20/user/month for Asana, ClickUp, Hive, Wrike with AI included). Retool documents real $200K/year savings from custom AI tool builds replacing automation software. DeepSeek V4 and similar OSS models make AI-assisted internal tool development genuinely cheap at 5-25x lower inference cost than closed models, creating a viable build path for narrow PM workflows.
The read
Task and project tracking is one of the most widely bought and most widely underused categories in software. Jira, Asana, and Linear are excellent at what they do, but organizations routinely pay tens to hundreds of thousands a year for capabilities a fraction of the team actually touches. The case for buying is real. Shared visibility, mature integrations, and a format people already know, and it's strongest where coordination across many teams is the actual problem.
What complicates the picture is how light the underlying workflow is, and how good AI has gotten at the generic version of it. Status rollups, planning, and updates are increasingly automated, and lightweight or internal alternatives are more viable than they were. So the question is whether you're buying genuine coordination value or paying a per-seat tax on a commodity workflow, and what the category looks like once AI absorbs the busywork it was sold to manage.
Representative vendors & pricing
- Jira (Atlassian) $8-16/user/month
- Asana $11-25/user/month
- Linear $8/user/month
The full vendor field for every category, with pricing and positioning, is part of B4 Pro.
B4 Pro
That scorecard, on every category
You just read one complete record. B4 Pro gives you the same depth across all 1,606 categories — the verdict, the five-dimension scorecard, the full vendor field, the Continuum, and a live MCP your own AI can query.
The Verdict
Build, Buy, Bridge, or Beware on every one of the 1,606 categories. The call the public Index holds back.
The 5-Dimension Scorecard
Specificity, AI feasibility, vendor value, strategic control, and cost trajectory, each scored 1 to 5 with the reasoning behind it.
8K Vendors, With Pricing
The full vendor field for each category, with pricing and positioning, well past the two names everyone else sees.
The Continuum
A live, longitudinal read on AI's progression across the software landscape. Where the ground is moving, how fast, and why.
A Live MCP Server
Query the Index from Claude or your own tools. Re-scores flow straight in, so your agents always get the current call.
API, SDK, and Export
Pipe B4 into your stack, or pull the whole index to CSV and JSON whenever you need it.
Get the call on every category
$249/month. Every verdict, the full scorecard, vendor pricing, the Continuum, and the MCP. Cancel anytime.
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The Build Report
Bi-weekly analysis of software categories through the B4 Framework. What to build, what to buy, and how to use AI to make better decisions for your company.