Future of Project Management
By 2030, 80 percent of the work of today’s project management (PM) discipline will be eliminated as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on traditional PM functions such as data collection, tracking and reporting, according to Gartner, Inc.
The quote is taken from a press release back in March 2019. Reading it then felt like reading the synopsis of a sci-fi movie. Now it is tangible, it’s not about if it will happen, but how we should get there.
A recent HBR article is diving into the topic how AI will transform project management, this illustrates how the discussions are becoming much more concrete. My key take-aways from that article are:
Project managers will switch from glorified administrators to people leaders
The future project manager “…spends most of his time coaching and supporting the team, maintaining regular conversations with key stakeholders, and cultivating a high-performing culture”.
This aligns well with the conclusions in the brilliant book Momentum (K. A. Nordström and P. Schlingman) where they state that the future leader must master communication, inspiration and building a culture. When all admin tasks are removed, leaders will finally have the time to lead and to inspire. To stay on top, leaders must embrace this already today, a storytelling- or coaching course might be the best addition to your development plan for 2023?!
Become friends with your robot assistants
We currently think of cross-functional project teams as a group of individuals, but we may soon think of them as a group of humans and robots.
As project mangers we need to learn how to work with robots, it’s again the often recited quote that … a robot will not replace you but a human collaborating with a robot will. How do you turn this insight into practice? Have the flood of new AI tools that are available created any real business value?
Train models and re-train current staff
Are senior leaders willing to wait several months, up to one year, to start seeing the benefits of the automation?
To harvest the benefits of AI and boost the efficiency of project execution to reach the 2030 vision, the work must start now. Training the models will require large amounts of data and changing the habits of the current project mangers will require re-training. It’s the marshmallow test again, you need to put in effort today for future rewards. Do you have strategy for implementation? or are you waiting for the technology to become even more mature?
It sounds like a dream scenario to dedicate time to re-invent the art of project management, with the ultimate objective of allocating most of your time to being a leader instead of an administrator.
I’m all in and ready to explore all kinks on the road ahead.
