Will AI Replace Project Management?

Will AI replace project management? There are 2 answers to that, a short-term answer and a long-term answer. In the short term, project management in the sense that there are a lot of mechanical components, I think will be replaced by AI. Things like delineating tasks, assigning them to subject matter experts, following up on them, populating software, creating metrics. All of those things are very mechanical and they already can be done by AI. And there will be programs that will be dedicated to having AI agents that do that type of mechanical work. So in the short term, I think yes, project management work will be done by AI. Role of a project manager, however, also encompasses a lot of soft skills, people skills, change management. If you think about projects, the first thing is awareness and communication. And yeah, you could have AI put out information, but really that desire, the buy-in for a project, the what's in it for me, that convincing portion for all the people who are going to be working in the project or the stakeholders of the new changed state. That work, I think, will be harder to be done by AI because not a lot of people are honestly convinced by a robot, and we really don't hold ourselves accountable to robots either, right? Like, yeah, we could get reminders, but if there's not a human that really cares, then pshaw, I'm out, right? Okay, so there's that. I do think, however, in the long term, there will be a huge shift because as AI takes over the tasks themselves, it will actually take on the role of the subject matter experts in projects. There will be much less of a need for subject matter experts or people doing tasks. And if you think about the reason a lot of times projects don't get done, it's because the subject matter experts, the people doing the work, they either don't care, they don't know what's in it for them, so they don't care about the project, so they don't do it. They don't feel like it, especially if they're in a role in a small business where they have a day job and they're being asked to do extra work. They've done a full day's work and they have to do more, but it's not part of their normal job, so they just don't feel like it, so they don't do it. Or maybe they don't know how to do it, so they don't do it. There's a lot of reasons AI will not have those reasons. They'll happy to care. There's not going to be any problem not feeling like it. And as they learn how to do it more, there won't be the I don't know how. They're going to know how. So there will be many fewer people in a project, which means there won't be as much need for change management or holding people accountable, and that role will shrink. So I think in the long term, the project manager will become more of a producer, which is super exciting to me because I love to come up with ideas, and I'd love to be able to just wave my magic wand and have it all happen. But there's There's so many tasks and other people that need to be involved, and that just feels like so much effort. However, if I could say, hey, this is my vision, this is where I want to go, and I could direct AI agents to do the work, and I don't have as many people I need to convince or get on board or who don't feel like it or have time or not know how to do it, well, now my role becomes that of a producer, and there's a smaller team who's probably way more bought in that can produce way more output. And the change management role then that the project manager used to do, that'll probably transition into more marketing and sales. Once the thing, whatever it is, is produced, then it needs to be sold, right? So that convincing job and that accountability, keeping people on track for a purchase or sales pipeline, that is what's going to become needed by a human in the future. So those are my predictions. I think in the short term, yes, project management and all of the mechanical components of it will easily be taken on by AI. We are working on it too. A lot of people are. The human elements of convincing and holding people accountable, I still think in the short term, people feel accountable to human connection and people. That's what convinces people. People, and that's what they feel accountable to. But as project teams start to shrink in size because AI is taking on the technical task role, so you just don't need as many people, and that convincing change management role will go away or be largely dwindled. And that means the project managers become more producers of the entire initiative, and the change management goes into sales and marketing. There's my prediction.