How the Project Management Institute is helping members boost their AI skills

The Project Management Institute is helping members boost their AI skills. The advent of Generative AI (GenAI), exemplified by the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, has significantly amplified AI’s influence on professional fields. Project managers, in particular, stand to benefit greatly from AI’s potential to enhance productivity, efficiency, and project outcomes. To harness these advantages, project managers must proactively explore and integrate AI into their workflows.

Indeed, a foundational understanding of AI is no longer optional; it is essential for project managers to navigate the evolving landscape. PMI’s unpublished CX research underscores the urgency of this upskilling, revealing that only a small percentage of project managers possess substantial practical experience with AI tools and technologies.

Project managers who embrace emerging technologies and actively promote AI adoption within their organizations will position themselves for career advancement. Now is the opportune moment to take action, and PMI provides valuable resources to guide your journey.

This article will delve into:

• Strategies and recommendations for implementing GenAI in project management.
• The essential skills project managers need, as outlined by the PMI Talent Triangle®.
• PMI’s unwavering commitment to supporting project managers through this technological transformation.

To effectively harness the potential of current GenAI tools, project managers should assess tasks and deliverables along two key dimensions:

1. Complexity: This encompasses the number of variables, the need for business context, and the level of specialized project management expertise required.
2. Human Intervention: More intricate tasks often necessitate greater human involvement to achieve desired outcomes.

Within these dimensions, project managers can position GenAI’s role along a spectrum:

• Automation: For simple tasks requiring minimal human input, GenAI can automate processes such as report generation, data analysis, and note summarization.
• Assistance: For tasks of moderate complexity, GenAI can support project professionals by providing initial drafts, data analysis, and planning.
• Augmentation: For highly complex tasks, GenAI can enhance human capabilities, aiding in strategic decision-making and complex analysis.

While GenAI can streamline many project management activities, human expertise remains crucial for ensuring accuracy, completeness, and alignment with organizational goals. By understanding these dimensions and leveraging GenAI appropriately, project managers can optimize their workflows and drive project success.

To fully harness the potential of GenAI, project professionals should adopt a holistic perspective on their capabilities and explore various strategies for integrating GenAI into their daily workflows. By strategically leveraging GenAI, project managers can enhance productivity, efficiency, and project success.

Here are some effective strategies for project managers to integrate GenAI into their daily work:

1. Identify Suitable Tasks: Begin by evaluating your project tasks and identifying those that can be automated, assisted, or augmented by GenAI. Prioritize tasks with repetitive, data-driven elements.
2. Select Appropriate Tools: Research and choose GenAI tools that align with your project needs and organizational goals. Consider factors like cost, ease of use, and integration capabilities.
3. Train Your Team: Educate your team members on how to effectively use GenAI tools. Provide training and support to ensure they can leverage the technology to its full potential.
4. Experiment and Iterate: Start with small-scale experiments to assess GenAI’s impact on your projects. Continuously evaluate results, refine your approach, and iterate based on feedback.
5. Establish Clear Guidelines: Develop guidelines and protocols for using GenAI to ensure consistency, quality, and ethical considerations are addressed.
6. Address Ethical Concerns: Be mindful of potential biases, privacy issues, and ethical implications associated with GenAI. Implement measures to mitigate risks and ensure responsible use.
7. Foster Collaboration: Encourage collaboration between project teams and AI experts to leverage their combined knowledge and skills.
8. Continuously Learn and Adapt: Stay updated on the latest advancements in GenAI and explore new use cases. Be prepared to adapt your strategies as the technology evolves.

Today’s project management landscape is diverse, with various approaches like predictive, agile, and design thinking gaining prominence. PMI emphasizes the importance of mastering multiple working styles to effectively tailor project management techniques to specific contexts.

The Ways of Working dimension of the PMI Talent Triangle® underscores the need to adopt optimal practices, techniques, and tools for successful project management. Given the widespread availability and potential of GenAI, project managers should seize the opportunity to leverage its benefits.

Consider “ways of working” as sequences of events and tasks leading to project outcomes. GenAI can play a pivotal role in automating, assisting, or augmenting project management skills and competencies. For instance:

• Project Planning: GenAI can streamline data mining and analysis, aiding in comprehensive project planning and optimization.
• Time and Cost Management: GenAI can support estimation, analysis, and risk mitigation efforts.
• Risk Management: GenAI can assist in risk identification, analysis, and planning.
• Communication: GenAI can enhance writing and reading tasks, generate code, and summarize meeting notes.

To effectively utilize GenAI, project managers should grasp the fundamental relationship between data and AI. By understanding their organization’s data strategy and practices, project managers can better assess and interpret AI outputs. Moreover, data literacy empowers project managers to shape AI tools and models that accurately predict project outcomes, risks, resources, and more, driving informed decision-making. This knowledge also helps mitigate potential risks associated with GenAI adoption.

Interpersonal skills like collaborative leadership, communication, problem-solving, and strategic thinking are vital for effective project management. These skills enable teams to influence diverse stakeholders, a crucial factor in driving change.

PMI’s Pulse of the Profession® research highlights the importance of strategic thinking, problem-solving, collaborative leadership, and communication for organizational transformation. While these are primarily human traits, AI can augment them. For instance, project managers can leverage AI to enhance strategic thinking, problem-solving, and communication within their organizations.

Strategic Thinking:

GenAI’s familiarity with strategic models can aid project managers in identifying strategic connections and opportunities.Collaboration: GenAI can facilitate more focused team discussions by bypassing initial brainstorming.Problem-Solving: GenAI can assist with specific problem-solving aspects, research, and hypothesis generation.Communication: GenAI can streamline communication, support stakeholder management, and evaluate content for effective messaging.

As AI increases productivity, human factors, including power skills, will become even more critical for project success. While AI can automate many tasks, it lacks the ability to build relationships, express empathy, navigate ambiguity, and make ethical decisions. These uniquely human skills are essential for effective project management.

Project managers who can effectively combine AI with their interpersonal skills will be well-positioned to lead successful projects in the future.