With the current wave of Generative AI opportunities permeating all aspects of work and personal life, I grabbed the chance to enroll in PMI’s Generative AI Overview for Project Managers course.
According to the course introduction, Generative AI will impact project management in various ways, including in improving project delivery success rates, benefits realization, societal impact of projects with global influence, and career advancements for project managers. The World Economic Forum predicts that 75% of companies might adopt some form of AI technologies by 2027. Time for project managers to get ready.
The course illustrates many practical ways that Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Bard, and other emerging tools can help project managers in various scenarios, such as:
- cost-benefit analysis
- developing a business case justification
- creating a project charter
- calculating earned value
- creating agile user stories
- prepare talking points to communicate with difficult stakeholders
- give advice on how to communicate more empathically
It can also help project managers with repetitive tasks which will free up their time to focus on higher-value activities. Some examples of repetitive tasks that could be handled by GenAI include:
- report generation
- resource allocation
- scheduling
- planning
- maintaining a risk log
- cost estimation
As we know that GenAI is not infallible, in fact it can hallucinate and can sound very convincing even when giving an incorrect answer, using these technologies must come with a warning. The course makes it clear that project managers should not rely solely on GenAI output. Humans must be involved in every decision, to ensure that there are no ethical implications.
The course was short, but very informative in the sense that it highlighted many areas of project management where GenAI could potentially be used.
