Taking Projects to the Next Level: AI as Your New Sidekick

Written by Joe Houghton - Director of Project Management & Assistant Professor at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dublin

Artificial Intelligence and Project Management

Artificial Intelligence: It's not just about robots taking over the world. In project management, as in many other fields, AI is becoming the trusted sidekick we didn't know we needed. Let's explore how.

Although the emergence of ChatGPT has focused many people’s attention on AI for the first time, the reality is that artificial intelligence has been around for a few years now and is already in use in many project management scenarios.

Generating an outline project plan has for years involved, sitting around a table with a group of stakeholders of different backgrounds and experience and pulling together the different stages of a project depending on what methodology you are following. This has now been largely rendered redundant with the ability of the chatbot tools to create comprehensive outlines in a matter of seconds. The webinar that I’m running for UCD Professional Academy on May 31st will give a live demonstration of doing just this using ChatGPT & Bing Chat, and then expanding on the outline to further develop a project plan quickly and efficiently.

Now of course, developing a plan in this way will almost always produce a generic set of actions, but even that generic set can be extremely useful as a prompt to then apply to the actual situation at hand.

AI creating a communications plan

Communications has, for years been regarded as one of the number one causes of project failure, and this is very often due to project managers and other key team members forgetting or mistiming what should be communicated, and to whom and when.

The emerging tools powered by AI are going to integrate planning diaries, reminders and timetabling of communications in a way which will make projects run far more smoothly. We can take a leaf out of the influencer’s playbook – they’ve been using scheduled posts and communications for years now using tools like Hootsuite, and this is a very effective way of setting up a predetermined timetable of communications which can be adjusted on the fly as the project or campaign involves.  

Staying with communications, one of the abilities of the chatbot engines is to phrase and present work in different formats and also different tones of voice. This means that communications across a diverse set of project stakeholders can be tailored to suit the audiences that communications are aimed at, simply by giving instructions as to the tone or type of communication required.

Alignment with standards

If your project is using a specific methodology, say Prince2 or the PMI, then specifying that your project documentation and communications need to align with this methodology will facilitate standards across the project, being adhered to in a way that has never been possible previously. Let me give you an example.

I asked Bing Chat to “Give me a 200-word project plan outline for a sales conference, following the Prince2 methodology” – here’s what it produced:

• Business Case: Define the business case for the sales conference. This should include the objectives of the conference, the expected benefits, and the costs.

• Organization: Define the roles and responsibilities of the project team members. This should include the project manager, project sponsor, and other stakeholders.

• Quality: Define the quality criteria for the sales conference. This should include the quality standards for the venue, catering, and other aspects of the conference.

• Risk: Identify and assess risks associated with the sales conference. This should include risks related to attendance, logistics, and other factors.

• Plans: Develop detailed plans for each stage of the sales conference. This should include plans for marketing, registration, logistics, and other aspects of the conference.

• Change: Define how changes to the sales conference will be managed. This should include a change control process that outlines how changes will be requested, assessed, approved or rejected.

• Progress: Monitor progress against plans throughout the sales conference. This should include regular status reports and updates to stakeholders.

I then asked how this outline followed the Prince2 methodology – here’s what it came back with:

The project plan outline I provided for a sales conference follows the PRINCE2 methodology in several ways. First, it defines the business case for the conference, which is a key principle of PRINCE2. Second, it defines clear roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in the project, which is another key principle of PRINCE2. Third, it breaks the project down into manageable stages and develops detailed plans for each stage of the conference. This is consistent with the PRINCE2 principle of managing by stages. Fourth, it identifies and assesses risks associated with the sales conference, which is another key principle of PRINCE2. Finally, it monitors progress against plans throughout the sales conference and provides regular status reports and updates to stakeholders. This is consistent with the PRINCE2 principle of monitoring progress.

OK, so now let’s see how following the PMI PMBOK methodology might create a different plan.  My prompt, in this case, was “Give me a 200-word project plan outline for a sales conference, following the PMI PMBOK methodology”.  And the response was very different – focussing more on project documents required to outline and then manage a project:

Certainly! Here is a 200-word project plan outline for a sales conference that follows the PMI PMBOK methodology:

Project Charter: The project charter will define the purpose of the sales conference and identify the key stakeholders involved in the project.

Scope Statement: The scope statement will define the boundaries of the sales conference and identify what is included and excluded from the project.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): The WBS will break down the sales conference into smaller, more manageable components.

Schedule: The schedule will identify the key milestones and deadlines for the sales conference.

Budget: The budget will identify the costs associated with the sales conference and how they will be managed.

Risk Management Plan: The risk management plan will identify potential risks associated with the sales conference and how they will be managed.

Quality Management Plan: The quality management plan will define how quality will be managed throughout the sales conference.

And this just scratches the surface. As we move through the different stages of any project cycle, there are numerous ways that AI is going to speed up and make our work as project managers more effective.

I don’t see this putting us out of work, because human interaction, building relationships, and managing the complex web of stakeholder requirements, varying agendas and business pressures will always be something that humans can navigate in a different way from machines. But it is going to be interesting to watch just how this amazing technology morphs our project management behaviours in the coming months in years.