Leveraging Generative AI for Project
Management
Waleed Badawy, PMP, ITIL, MBA
Senior Project Manager @ Lean Business Services
3 articles
September 21, 2023
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Imagine PM automatically adding project tasks to his team’s calendar or even better,
reprioritizing them based on their criticality to the project. Al of this automatically
starting.
I will share some AI tools and applications that could really leverage PM’s work. The
most important point here, new tools are being released as we speak. I did my best to
select tools that reflect the potential of AI improved management. Maybe in the future
these tools will not exist or will be replaced by new ideas. It's an evolving market, but
now?
Can PM imagine doing a brainstorming session using AI to create the scope of his
project in a blink of an eye? This is the power of generative AI in project planning. Let
me give some examples. PM can use a tool like ChatGPT or Goggle bard in natural
language to craft the scope of his new project and when I say natural language, I'm
saying PM does not need a formal code or language. PM just ask as he ask any human,
for example, PM can access ChatGPT and type “Suggest the first level of a work
breakdown structure of a new software project”. Please split the word by types of work
required and PM will see a very decent draft of WBS for his project. PM will be amazed
by the results. Remember, PM can do this in practically any language. It's essential to
highlight that the prompt of what PM type in his chat drives the quality of the results.
PM will find thousands of tips on how to do that.
I always have in mind the CSRF acronym. C stands for the context of what PM need to
work. S means specific. PM needs to provide detailed information about what he needs.
The letter I stands for intent, It's his goal and what do PM wants the AI to do and F
means format and It's how PM want the results to be.
An example of a poorly written prompt on ChatGPT “could be prepare the scope of my
new software budget”. On the other side, an excellent prompt would be “I'm developing
a new education web site. Detail the project by the different types of work and please
produce a work breakdown structure with three levels of depth and one item per line in
the format I can copy and paste into Microsoft Project”. I am sure that even if PM knew,
each part of the scope just writing them would take more time than using GPT and
working with Scala is about the same.
PM can use ChatGPT in order to list tasks, suggest relationships, Etc. But PM can use
tools like Motion to scandal, any type of work among his team members automatically
based on the priority of the work and their availability. The two will analyze the available
time slots for each resource. It will evaluate the priority of the task and populate his
calendar with the assigned time slots. And of course, it will do this not only for him, but
for everybody in the project and will respect all the relationships PM defined for each
task. And even better, if none of his resources does not complete the task in the definite
time frame, it will automatically rescale all future work for everyone in seconds.
The Project Plan 365 Assistant Browser Extension and Erix GPT Microsoft Project Copilot
make it easier than ever to create .MPP projects and Gantt Charts in a conversational,
user-friendly manner. By utilizing the power of AI, these groundbreaking technologies
allow PM to quickly generate project plans while streamlining his workflow.
No manual planning is required and this. This is not science fiction. It's not something to
the future. It's what is happening and it's happening now.
