How Can AI Transform Project Management?

Hello and welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Helena, and if you're new here, welcome. In today's video, we are going to be discussing how can AI transform the project management profession, and if you are a project manager, how can you prepare for this new technological wave that's been happening. And if you haven't done so already, please make sure you like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell. It will help me out a lot. All right, with that being said, let's take a look at the first stat that I found, and it's a prediction from Gartner, and they say that by 2030, 80% of all project management processes will be done by AI. So if you're a project manager right now, you may be feeling a little scared hearing this, right? Because it could mean that your job could be replaced. So that's what we're going to be talking about today so that you're familiar with what AI can do in project management and how you can prepare for the future, and you can start making these changes now so that your job doesn't become obsolete. So let's start off by taking a look at what AI can already do inside of project management. So there are 2 components to AI. One is generative AI and the other is predictive AI. So generative AI, like its name suggests, will generate new information. It can generate text, images, audios, videos, right? And with this generation, like, it can help you write any kind of project reports that you have. You can even give it a specific goal that you want to achieve, and AI can help you figure out the list of tasks that go under that and help you analyze, sort, and prioritize those tasks. If you need an image or graphic for some portion of your report or your product, then AI can help you generate those as well, right? AI can also offer innovative methods for product testing. So it can read your code and come up with the test cases for your product as well. It can even code for you, although this is still kind of in its infancy. And the other portion of AI, as I was mentioning earlier, is predictive AI. So with predictive AI, like its name suggests, you can give it all all of the historical information about your project, such as how long certain activities has taken, how much certain tasks have costed. And with this information, the AI can predict what is the likelihood that your project is going to finish on time and on budget. So we have seen that AI can help you generate new text, images, videos, and it can also help you predict and forecast the future of your project as well. So needless to say, it is pretty damn powerful. AI can also help your team members streamline communications by transcribing the calls automatically, summarizing meetings. I remember when I worked as a Scrum Master, this was a huge part of, you know, my daily morning routine is getting on those daily Scrum calls and then having the meeting minutes ready and sent out to the team. But now AI can do all of this within seconds. AI can also be trained on all of your project's data, such as like all of the reports that have been written, all of the scope, and sometimes on large multi-million dollar projects, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of pages of RFPs and different data. So it's almost impossible for any human to know all of this information at all time. So having AI trained on all of this information and giving your team members a chatbot that they can use to query this data is super, super useful. You can also use AI to help you brainstorm various different aspects of your projects, like new features that you can launch, risk associated with taking specific roles. It can also help you brainstorm tasks that needs to be done to accomplish a specific goal, et cetera. AI can also analyze really large datasets within a fraction of, a second, really, a lot of times. And this can help you see patterns, and it will also enable and help you as the project manager to make informed decisions for your team. So what we have seen is that AI is very powerful. It can help you with many, many, many different aspects of your project. However, this being said, AI is not a replacement for human intelligence. And while it can do a lot of the repetitive, easy task, it can't replace a project manager. Okay, so let me say that again. While AI can replace some of the basic project management tasks, it can't replace a project manager. It will be able to replace a project management assistant or a project coordinator, but the main task of a project manager consists of communicating with the team and stakeholders building those relationships, and this can't be outsourced to AI. AI still needs humans to operate it in order for it to be successful. And if the humans in the team are not communicating with each other and are not working well together, then having the best AI in the world is not going to make the project successful, right? So as a project manager, you need to realize the power of AI and to know how to use AI to your benefit. That it can increase the productivity on your teams, but also realize that you still need a team to accomplish the end goal of your project, right? So you need to be prepared, know what's on the horizon, and be able to respond to these changes as necessary. So what I mean by this is that in the age of AI, know what AI can do, know how to do it, incorporate this into your processes so that you can become more efficient, But also know that this technology by itself doesn't change anything. You still need your team, you still need people in order to succeed and accomplish your project objectives, right? And then to add on to this, while no one knows for certain what's going to happen in the future, what we do know is that changes will happen for sure. So to become successful, As a project manager in the decades to come in this age of AI, the best way that you can prepare is to be a master of change. Okay? So to be really, really good at managing change on your teams because everyone else is just as lost as you are. You may feel really alone, like you're the only one struggling through this, but I guarantee you that you are not. Every, every organization is trying to make sense of this new technology that's happening right now and how they can incorporate it. So being able to have a flexible mindset, right, and then knowing what this technology is, then assessing how it can help your team, and then communicating that vision to the rest of the team and guiding them through this transformation is how you can succeed as a project manager going forward. So take where you are right now and really invest in becoming a master of change management. That is how you can succeed as a project manager going forward. You have to be flexible and be adaptable to new technology, but not just as, you know, you as an individual. On top of that, you need to also be able to motivate and inspire your team to adopt new technology, new vision, new ways of working as well. And if you can do this successfully, I promise you over the next decade you're not going to be without a job because every organization is going to have to go through this transformation and they're going to need leaders like you to help them get through this, right? So the project management profession will change in the age of AI because you as a project manager, you're not just going to be focused on the task and the tactics anymore. A lot of those tasks can be outsourced to AI. So for example, writing those meeting minutes, you don't need to do that anymore because AI can do it for you automatically, which saves you time. So this means that it actually frees up more of your time so that you can focus more on the strategic thinking. If you think of another way, the benefit of having this technology is like you're having an almost free assistant with you 24/7, 365 that will do all of your bidding, right? So to be competitive in the future in any management position, but especially as a project manager, is that you need to think strategically. Now it's important that you realize that while AI is pretty powerful, it still can't execute. It can't bring teams together, and this is where you add value as a project manager. You are able to bring in the human intelligence, all the people that's working on the team, and you're able to understand understand what is AI and how can it add value, and then marry the two together to get the maximum efficiency and to drive your projects forward. Okay, and it's also important for you to realize that AI doesn't understand EQ. AI doesn't have EQ. AI doesn't understand nonverbal cues. And being able to understand the human aspects of operating a project, being able to communicate with stakeholders, being able to deal with those conflicts, that can't be outsourced to AI. That is where you will add value to different projects for the decades to come. So I encourage you, instead of being scared of AI, use AI to your advantage to get things done faster, to generate those project reports faster, to get your meeting notes done faster, to generate images you need faster, to do all of these things faster by employing AI and also realizing that in order to compete in the next decade. It's about thinking strategically. It's about understanding EQ and managing your teams effectively. And don't be scared of this technology because I don't think it can fully replace all of the functions a project manager can do. So thank you so much for joining me for today's training. And if you're interested in learning more about AI, please use the link below to sign up for our free course.