How AI could help project management
As technology constantly evolves, transformative innovations redefine how we approach various tasks. Among these advancements is generative artificial intelligence (AI), a branch of AI that utilizes algorithms to generate new content such as text, images, music and code. Unlike nongenerative AI or traditional AI that focuses on analyzing and understanding existing data, generative AI can create entirely new content. It can learn from vast amounts of data, identify patterns and extract knowledge, enabling it to generate output that resembles human-created works.This technology currently revolutionizes various industries, including project management. By harnessing the power of generative AI, project managers can streamline their workflows, enhance efficiency and foster innovation.
We asked Herleen Mortera, subject matter expert of Inquirer Academy on digital transformation, data and project management, for her thoughts on this.Leveraging generative AI can help project managers in several ways.
Automate repetitive tasks
Generative AI can automate time-consuming tasks that often hinder project managers’ productivity. For instance, it can generate reports, summarize project progress and draft emails, freeing project managers’ time to focus on more strategic aspects of project execution. It can automatically generate status reports based on real-time project data and generate meeting agendas and minutes based on project data and stakeholder input.
This helps ensure that meetings are productive and that key decisions are documented. AI can also help project managers create a work breakdown structure that will serve as their guide or basis in creating subtasks for each of the project management phases.Enhance risk assessment and mitigation
Risk management is a critical aspect of project management. It involves identifying, assessing and mitigating potential risks derailing project goals. Generative AI can revolutionize risk management by analyzing vast amounts of project data and identifying patterns that indicate potential risks. By analyzing historical data, generative AI can identify common risk factors and predict their likelihood of occurrence.
This predictive capability allows project managers to proactively implement risk mitigation strategies, minimizing the impact of unforeseen events and ensuring project continuity. They can also perform simulations to test the effectiveness of different risk mitigation strategies and assess their impact on the overall project outcomes. These simulations allow project managers to evaluate different approaches and select the most effective strategies for managing specific risks. For example, a software development project manager can use generative AI to predict the likelihood of software defects based on code complexity, developer experience and testing practices, and to finalize risk control strategies.Make data-driven decisions
Effective project management makes informed decisions based on data and insights. It can transform data into actionable insights by analyzing project data, identifying trends and generating reports that provide valuable information for decision-making. For example, generative AI can analyze project progress data to identify areas where tasks are running behind schedule or resources are being underutilized. By analyzing these anomalies, project managers can pinpoint the root causes of delays, cost overruns or quality issues and take corrective actions promptly. For instance, it can monitor project expenditure data and identify factors where actual costs deviate from the budgeted amounts. This information can alert project managers to potential cost overruns.While generative AI has the potential to automate many aspects of project management, it is important to remember that it is a tool, not a replacement for human expertise and judgment. Project managers will still need to exercise their judgment, decision-making skills, and most especially their interpersonal skills to ensure that projects are collaborative efforts of different stakeholders.
Generative AI is a transformative technology to revolutionize project management. By integrating it into their workflows, project managers can enhance their productivity, creativity and decision-making, leading to more efficient and successful projects. INQ
Mortera will facilitate a virtual workshop titled “The Generative AI Project Management Toolkit: Harnessing AI for Enhanced Planning, Execution and Delivery” on Jan. 29 to 31. The eight-hour course will be beneficial to organizations so that employees can be valuable contributors through planning, risk assessment and decision-making capabilities.For your other learning needs, Inquirer Academy could assist you in designing and facilitating a workshop, a webinar or a self-paced online course for your organization.
For more information, write to ask@inquireracademy.com or send an SMS to 0919-3428667 and 0998-9641731.The author is the executive director
of Inquirer Academy.
