Will project managers be replaced by AI?
At an increasing rate, the phrase Artificial Intelligence pops up in our daily lives. And not so strange, as it is making its way into things we all have in our lives. Take for example robotic vacuum cleaners, or Siri and Alexa. Recently I also had my 1st experience in a restaurant, where food to the table was delivered by a robot. Can we stop this trend? No, and although AI can be scary for many, we should embrace it, and see it as a positive change. Sure, it might come across scary to some, but it also creates a lot of good opportunities.
A good statement of what AI is, is “Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.”
Take for example, AI in project management. Many ask us, will Artificial Intelligence replace me as a Project Manager? The answer is simply no. The skills of a project manager, the interpretation, and responsiveness of a Project Manager and its team are still needed. But AI should be seen as an extension or complementation of the Project Manager. Removing for example repetitive tasks completely, and provide intelligent data, suggestions and recommendations, aiding the project manager in doing his work more efficient and faster, and creating time to perform other tasks which he or she today typically never gets time for.
Artificial intelligence is gradually entering the world of Project Management. Thanks to its unique capability of processing a large amount of data, finding and monitoring specific patterns and then forecasting possible scenarios, and taking over repetitive tasks, AI seems to represent the perfect ally for every project manager. As AI has gradually entered the project management field, there has been a great discussion about the benefits and the risks of these new tools, despite the positive results obtained. As a matter of facts, using artificial intelligence in project management has shown to bring numerous benefits to the organization, where optimization is the keyword. The most important ones encountered are related to:?
Artificial Intelligence can act as an assistant for project managers. Indeed, AI’s tools analyze data from for example current and previous projects, providing helpful real-time trending insights capable of improving the decision-making process. This higher data accuracy can help you deliver better results.?
AI will be able to take over the tasks related to fetching information on project status and use data trends to recommend for example your project forecasting, by processing high volumes of data, not possible by humans.
A good example of this, is to be able to search for the entire "catalog" of resources, AI can make you save time when planning and allocating the work, especially for what concerns large and complex projects, where the process might be complicated and time-consuming.??
By providing real-time updates, AI’s tools allow you taking conscious decisions about every aspect related to a project status or duration, cost or strategy. This leads to better prioritization of critical tasks and easier management of projects, following on-time schedules.? By comparing real-time data from post projects that are similar, calculate in surroundings and influencing factors, AI can suggest the optimum schedule
AI can provide a more accurate prediction of risk probabilities and how they are going to impact the company, also thanks to a continuous monitoring process alerting when any type of risk arises. This includes the review of both historical and real-time data, combined together to generate multiple scenarios, evaluate them and rank achievable outcomes. But also the capability to use data outside the company and use this to discover risks and trends that might influence the project execution. And AI tools are capable of suggesting corrective actions when needed.
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Artificial intelligence can play an important role in assisting you in improving the quality of your work and avoiding errors, having a huge impact on team performance and project outcomes. By embracing this new technology you will be able to get more reliable results and it can help you guide individual team members more effectively.
Still,? concerns continue to rise about the artificial intelligence future and the role of project managers. Indeed, most of the debates occurred so far about AI in project management practices are in relation to the risks of eliminating the role of project managers, as highlighted by Gartner's recent statement. According to Gartner, by 2030, 80% of today's project management’s work will be automated, eliminating the discipline and replacing PM traditional functions with AI.?
But will AI really replace Project Managers?
Not anytime soon actually.??
The final goal of AI applied to project management practices has always been to automate and simplify low-value and repetitive tasks. Indeed, it is more likely that Artificial Intelligence will simply lighten managers' workload by eliminating annoying and repetitive work and making them an even more valuable resource to their organization.?
The relationship between AI-PM is based on the concept that both figures depend on each other and they will continue to do even in the future.
On one side, project managers need the right skills to manage Artificial Intelligence, while on the other hand, AI can’t perform without the input of high quality of information, typically gained from highly skilled project managers and their teams.
For sure we must be prepared for the new upcoming era where AI and humans will work even more closely together to deliver projects, complementing each other and work as one set of skills. Managers will need to learn a new set of flexible skills to be able to adapt, whilst the traditional leadership and management skills will remain. The work of a project manager and it’s team will see major changes, being for example able to spend more time on strategic and tactical thinking and focusing on more value-added activities.
Here at Uppwise we are more than anyone else, aware of what direction AI will follow in project management. Besides the fact that Uppwise is already working on AI prototypes in it’s R&D labs, we realize far to well, that for companies implementing AI in their project management organization will definitely result in organizational impacts that should not be under-estimated.
For this reason, we will be more than happy to support you through the choice of better and more tailored AI-based solutions, using our solutions, such as Strategy and Portfolio Managment, to Adaptive Project Management, to start on the path of finding the right solution that will follow you in your path towards implementing Artificial Intelligence within your company.?
?If you wish more information, please reach out at any time!?