Project Management AI: The Next Workplace Revolution

When you mention Artificial Intelligence, a lot of people think of Cybermen or The Terminator; but what you may not know is that we’ve been using the technology for a few years now. Digital assistants are the latest must-haves making our home life that little bit simpler, but what can this mean for the future of the PMO and Project Managers?

AI in the PMO will work as an integrated system that will help your role as Project Manager become more streamlined, as less time will be spent on monotonous administrative jobs. So don’t worry, they won’t be replacing you – they’ll leave you freer to do the more important tasks you currently struggle to find time to concentrate on.

There are systems already available to assist with creating budgets, estimating tasks, and calculating risks. Not only that, there are other apps which work with chat systems to remember questions that have previously been asked. They then store the answers in an interactive Project Wiki. These are great systems that can be put in place today, require little integration and can help make your time in the office a little easier.

In the long term, Project Management AI will become a system that almost all PMOs will have. It’ll be able to perform the daily administration and management of projects with little to no human input. As it does this, it’ll learn an understanding of your projects’ performance.

Your new AI colleague will be able to provide you with accurate time estimates for your projects, and predict where you may hit roadblocks during the project, because the system will have access to all your data! Stored within its databanks will be information on how your project teams work, allowing it to make data-driven recommendations on who would be the best person to work on a task based on their skills and turnaround times. It can even assign these tasks on your behalf to help save time.

This AI system will be a new cornerstone in the PMO for being able to highlight and mitigate risk. It’ll be able to log data, such as how many changes are being made before an issue is resolved, and extrapolate this to the whole project to help make a range of recommendations for risk management.  As this system gains more historical data from working with your project team, it’ll be able to predict at which stage of the project you will most likely face issues (even at the planning stages!) and suggest ways you can overcome these quickly.

It also won’t be hindered by the optimistic outlook we all suffer with from time to time, as it will have to deal with cold hard stats. So when your sponsor asks you ‘How is the project coming along?’ you’ll be able to give them a confident update with a highly accurate timeframe.

So, whether you welcome our new robot overlords or not, you must admit they’re working alongside us (for now) to make both our work and home lives that little bit easier. To help prepare yourself for welcoming these new colleagues with open arms, brush up on your knowledge today with our ITIL foundation e-learning course which provides a solid foundation of both IT and Service Management!