Tag: Project Management

Embracing AI-driven Project Management: A Guide for PMs

Written by Arunabh Satpathy on September 26, 2023. Posted in Articles.

AI project management software is revolutionizing the landscape of products and services. A host of tools are making their way to the market to capitalize on their potential. Given their ability to automate tasks, analyze data, aid insights, and improve the bottom line, AI project management tools will rapidly become part of standard operating procedure within companies, transforming traditional project management.

This rapid transformation has left project managers wondering how their job expectations will change, whether they will be replaced by AI, and how to adapt to the change. This article aims to cover those questions.

Table of Contents

AI Project Management Today……………………………………………………….. 1

Analysis………………………………………………………………………………….. 2

Rewriting……………………………………………………………………………….. 2

Summarization………………………………………………………………………… 3

Generating Reports…………………………………………………………………… 3

How to Adapt and Thrive with AI Project Management Tools………………… 4

Embrace the Changes in the Project Management Role……………………. 4

Learn Continuously About New Technologies…………………………………. 4

Think of AI Project Management Tools as “Interns”…………………………. 5

Picking the Best AI Project Management Tools…………………………………… 5

AI Project Management Tools are the Future…………………………………….. 6

AI Project Management Today

As industries are becoming more competitive, project managers expect more output from their employees and themselves. AI project management tools assist PMs to select and prioritize projects based on company and stakeholder needs. They help PMs ensure that company resources are allocated to the most impactful projects in the most impactful way.

AI tools help increase the per hour value of work, especially because employees are happier and more productive working with AI. In fact, a McKinsey report found that the productivity gains among junior workers are higher than they are for senior workers.

For project managers, AI can perform many productivity boosting tasks including:

Analysis

AI project management tools can analyze and report on work you or your teams do and offer improvements. Some AI tools can spot patterns in historical project data and generate project plans optimized for your company and stakeholder needs. They can also spot areas of improvement in employee work.

For instance, any project manager will tell you how bad requirements can have negative downstream effects like rework. Requirements errors make-up 70 to 85 percent of the cost of rework.

When you write requirements for projects and/or products, AI tools can help you rate the quality of your requirements based on the 6C’s (i.e., clarity, completeness, conciseness, consistency, correctness, and context). The results are rated on a scale of 0% to 100%.

Rewriting

Beyond just offering analysis, you can also write and rewrite content and documentation using AI. The rise of ChatGPT has dramatically shifted the landscape of many industries and professions, including project management. You can automate project planning, generate project status reports, summarize meetings, and even develop training materials.

You can also write, and rewrite documents based on drafts and get those results formatted in bullet form or as a paragraph. The best tools also allow you to select and edit the AI’s output to your team’s specifications.

Monitoring Progress

AI project management tools offer PMs the ability to monitor the progress of their projects or sprints. Team members and stakeholders can visually see how the project is progressing against the planned timeline. With AI project management software tools, you can communicate with your team and update project progress. This can help improve team communication and collaboration, leading to more successful project delivery.

Summarization

Project managers often must grapple with vast amounts of data in bite-sized pieces to make informed decisions. AI tools can create a brief abstract or reframe requirements in different terms so PMs can make decisions quickly. The ability to reframe requirements also has explanatory power so that team members from different disciplines can better understand their colleagues’ intentions.

Generating Reports

Current tools can generate reports from your documentation with one click. An AI project management driven method leaves tools to summarize meeting notes or project updates in seconds with pre-structured headers, tables, and more, these tools ensure that project managers have perfectly formatted content.

While these are some basic tools that project managers can use, AI project management tools can go even further. This includes converting requirements data into user stories, translating requirements from language to language for better collaboration, and even elaborate on existing requirements.

How to Adapt and Thrive with AI Project Management Tools

There’s no doubt that AI in project management will be the new paradigm in the near future. A Gartner study said that AI will handle 80% of project management tasks by 2023. The best way to deal with this upcoming change is to adapt to it. Here’s how:

Embrace the Changes in the Project Management Role

A change in the role of project manager is inevitable in many ways. Here are a few ways you can adapt and thrive in the evolving role of PM.

Focus on Soft Skills: With automation handling routine tasks, the PM role will focus more on soft skills like leadership, strategy, and building high-performing teams. Organizations will need the leadership skills of PMs to keep their companies competitive by switching to AI tools.
Strategic Alignment: While AI will lead to gains in productivity, using this productivity boost in the right way will involve PMs focusing more on aligning projects with strategic goals for results. This includes using other strategic tools like baselining and documentation tools to direct the power of AI in the best possible way.

Learn Continuously About New Technologies

The future is a hybrid of machine speed and human judgment. To keep up with these rapid changes, PMs should stay updated with the latest technologies and tools that can help them in their work. This includes new AI technologies as well as other technologies coming down the pipeline.

A key skill for the future is data literacy. In a recent report, 31% of organizations said data-related skills like data management, analytics and big data, are the highest talent development priorities.

And with AI taking over the manual aspects of the job, the PMs role will become even more human-centric, with soft-skills like critical thinking, conflict resolution, and deal making becoming more important.

A culture of learning within companies is important as almost 30% of employees consider learning as a key factor when considering a new position.

Think of AI Project Management Tools as “Interns”

Virtual assistants will gradually shift PM activities towards coaching and stakeholder management. AI tools are best understood as competent interns that need some oversight while doing administrative or manual tasks.

The dominant paradigm will involve PMs dealing with more human-oriented tasks that involve soft skills, deep market research, and making critical decisions on product positioning.

Picking the Best AI Project Management Tools

Intelligence: Any artificial intelligence must be powerful enough to tackle the task at hand. When looking for a tool, get one that gives you high quality output when automating tasks, analyzing data, and providing context.

User-friendliness: PMs in competitive industries are often time stressed. An AI project management tool must be easy to use. The best tools give you options both for a prompt-based interface and a button-based interface.

Interaction with other tools: An AI tool in isolation is not useful to project managers. However, an AI tool that is integrated into a larger ecosystem of tools is extremely valuable. The best tools typically come with packaged software that allow PMs to document, test, and review their project management performance.

Collaboration: PMs know that success in any project is a team sport. So, an AI tool that simplifies project requirements will make it easier for developers to understand business analysts and vice-versa. A tool that can translate requirements accurately is even better since distributed teams can perform across the world.

AI Project Management Tools are the Future

In conclusion, AI has the potential to significantly enhance project management practices. By embracing AI tools like virtual project assistants, continuously learning about new technologies, using AI for improved decision-making, automating administrative tasks, and using AI for project selection and prioritization, project managers can adapt to this new landscape for improved outcomes and profitability. It’s an exciting time for project management as we explore these new possibilities.

Source: Futuristic Architect Businessman Industry 40 Engineer Stock Photo 1196903896 | Shutterstock [AS1]

Caption: AI-driven project management increases employee productivity across the board. [AS2]

Source: AI Improves Employee Productivity by 66% (nngroup.com) [AS3]

Caption: Summarizing helps project managers get the gist of long documents to make quick decisions. [AS4]

Caption: AI is best seen as a project management intern. [AS5]

Source: Blue Printer Paper · Free Stock Photo (pexels.com) [AS6]

Caption: Learning and career growth are particularly valued among younger employees. [AS7]

Source: Workplace learners: new workplace expectations | Statista [AS8]

Best of PMTimes: 5 Ways Your Company Culture Affects Project Management

Written by Jacob Wilson on September 12, 2023. Posted in Articles.

A brand’s culture is the personality and identity behind the company.

It is the set of values, rules, and commitments that the employees live by at the office, and employers use to build an appealing brand image both internally and externally. So naturally, you can expect your company’s culture to influence and affect every process in every department, and thus effectively shape the future of your brand as a whole. When you’re managing a new project or several projects, though, your company’s culture will have avital role to play.

Not only will it help you assemble a crack team of professionals, but it will also help you delegate roles, ensure healthy and continuous communication and collaboration, set your goals and objectives just right, and ultimately deliver on the projected results ahead of time. With all of that in mind, here are the five ways your company culture can affect project management, and how to use it to take your projects to new heights of success.

Incentivize employees to increase productivity

At its core, your company’s culture serves the purpose of incentivizing your employees to love their job and the brand they work for. Through numerous employee-oriented rules and routines, the causes your company supports, and the values your brand stands for, you’re building a friendly work environment where people can live, laugh, and work with a positive attitude and a clear goal in mind – to give it their best on each and every project.

This is why it is important to find ways in which your company’s culture can directly influence and elevate the productivity of the individual, before you can start optimizing it to positively impact the team as a whole. Be sure to find out what moves your employees as well as the values they stand for, and try to weave them into the narrative in some form in order to inspire them to care for the project and its outcome.

Ensure accountability and boost collaboration

In order to manage a successful project from inception to finalization, you need to build accountability among your team members. Your employees and colleagues need to hold themselves and each other accountable for their actions, as well as the actions of the team as a whole in order to keep the project moving forward at all times, react to mistakes and setbacks effectively, and even predict possible pitfalls to avoid them successfully.

When you have accountability, you can also boost collaboration and co-dependence easily. Through a positive company culture that nurtures accountability and collaboration, your employees will lean on each other for support, you will be able to spark innovative thinking and decision-making, and of course, you will have an easier time running a tight ship with minimal risk of error.

Bringing diversity to the team and the project

It’s no secret that one of the keys to an efficient and successful project is diversity. But beyond the project itself, your company’s culture should emphasize the need to attract, bring in, and retain diverse talent from numerous communities and demographics in order to improve the brand’s image, and bring value to the company in terms of skilled and loyal employees. This is a solution favored by Australian business leaders, so let’s take a look at their example.

In Sydney and other highly-competitive business hubs, project managers will source diverse talent from agencies such as atWork Australia in order to bring people with disabilities into their ranks and tap into a lucrative talent pool that resides within this community. Likewise, they will use AI-software and specialized HR recruitment programs to eliminate all bias from the recruiting process, in order to give all applicants a fair chance at proving their worth to the company.

Following the same mindset, be sure to bring people from all walks of life to your project in order to spark creativity and innovation, improve collaboration, and gain loyal brand members.

Define leadership roles and strengthen organization

Another way in which your company’s culture can help you manage your projects and deliver on the desired results is helping you assign leadership roles, structure communication, organize workflow, and organize your employees individually. Now, this requires you to combine your own leadership skills with the insights your company’s culture brings to the table in order to help with delegation and workflow.

Using your skills as a leader, be sure to analyze how your team members respond to the values of your brand and the governing rules that shape your culture, and then proceed to pick out the individuals best suited to run the team. Assign complementary personalities to your leaders, people you know are devoted to the cause and passionate about their work, and of course, find the right “contrasting” figure that will serve as the counterweight to the team – in order to improve the decision-making process and ensure critical thinking.

Carrying the project with shared values and passions

And finally, keep in mind that a positive company culture builds passionate mindsets. When your employees and team members are in love with their job, and when they resonate with the values of your company, they will invariably become more committed to the project, and they are likely to become passionate in the process. Through this shared passion, your team members will carry the project to fruition.

Final thoughts

Project management is the driving force behind long-term business success in the modern corporate world. Be sure to act on these insights and work on your company’s culture if you are to fine-tune the PM process, and create a diversified and passionate team that will take your brand forward as a whole.

Published: 2019/09/04

Best of PMTimes: 7 Tips on How to be a Great Project Manager

Written by Jasmin Ali on August 22, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Project management may sound easy, but taking up the role of a Project manager requires sword play with the right wit.

Many a times, when the Project Manager is at fault or does not abide to an employee’s needs, the company is bound to lose a valuable resource. A good Project Manager is hard to find, but a great Project Manager? It is harder. Understanding the goals of the company, project deadlines, managing time effectively and being a good boss to employees can be easy if these seven tips are followed:

1. AVOID MICROMANAGEMENT

Project managers tend to get extremely observant and controlling when a project is assigned to their team. It might be because of irrational deadlines, lack of time, underestimating the power of their resource and panicking about proving their position. This leads to constant micromanagement where Project Managers constantly nag or monitor employees and their work, breathing down their shoulders through the entire day or week, until the project is done and dusted. Sometimes, employees are never given an off and might be asked to work during the weekends which would eventually drain them out. A great Project Manager understands that every employee is human enough to have their own time and space to figure out how much they can deliver and how fast they can. Employees should be given their own freedom to work around schedules and plan out how they can deliver before deadlines. Micromanagement only demotivates employees and puts them in a position where they are rendered as incapable of deliveries unless monitored. A great manager avoids micromanagement like the plague and uses it when and wherever necessary.

2. EVALUATE PRIORITIES

Many project managers follow agile methodology where different parts of the project that have various dependencies are mapped out and listed in the beginning. With time, priorities change. Re-evaluating priorities in a periodic manner and changing work deliveries is important. Priorities are never the same throughout a project and it takes a great manager to find the loops and holes of it, to deliver projects on time.

3. MANAGE TIME EFFECTIVELY

Time management is a great manager’s number one priority. Maintaining a balance between being productive during the productive hours at work and allowing employees to have their free time is important. Project managers must make sure that employees get the work done on time, without stressing them out by pressurizing them. Any good resource would work efficiently when the work is handed over to them, without the need of a push. Figuring out the good and the bad egg from the team is crucial. Laying out tasks and targets for employees to meet during each day is a good way to start.

4. COMMUNICATION IS KEY

Good communication is good project management any day. The ability to communicate to the stakeholders as well as the team effectively can drive a project to be delivered on time. Giving out broken promises to stakeholders and urging employees to complete their tasks as promised would cause huge problems to the team as well as to the clients. Being an effective communicator between the team and the clients is important.

5. UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGY

They say that great project managers understand their employees. Keeping track of how much an employee is able to deliver, how fast they can and what fields and skills they are good at is important. The ability to drive employees to complete tasks they love accomplishing and are good at. Knowing your team’s strengths and weaknesses and allotting tasks similar to what they can and cannot do is vital.

6. EQUIPPING THE TEAM

Technology is an ever-evolving stream of today and to be knowledgeable in all kinds of software and technology is a challenging task. Being up-to-date on technology and exposing your team to the existence of such, is important. Project management training for employees to be knowledgeable on various fields that are emerging in the current technology-driven world can bring the company a lot of projects and profit.

7. GREAT PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS

When there’s a project assigned to you, there will be problems assigned to you as well. These problems can arise at any time of the project. Problems can vary from being related to the employees within the team, health-issues or emergencies that occur mid-way or at the time of delivery, misinterpreting requirements, missing out on SLDC processes, bug issues and problems that are completely unexpected. Being a great problem-solver by understanding what is to be done at such situations is the best trait of a great project manager. A great project manager works towards the success of the company and its products and it is vital to know how to handle unexpected situations in a witty way.

BEING PREPARED

Being a good project manager takes time while being a great project manager takes experience. Using the right kind of skill at the right time and handling organizational problems takes time in understanding what each member of the team is capable of. Believing that your team can perform better at every step of the project is crucial. Preparations for the worst can improve problem-solving abilities.

SUMMARY

Understanding the project strategy vision, bringing out the best out of your team, timely delivery of projects, being an effective communicator, solving problems, preparing, disclosing, bargaining and closing projects can go a long way in tuning your project management skills. Looking into administrative details of projects is also an area that can’t be missed out. Project management takes planning, leading, implementing and collaborating.

Any good project manager can become a great project manager any day. Taking a keen interest in your development, the team’s as well as individual development is an added asset. Keep your doors open for employees to put in their thoughts and worries that serve as barriers to meeting deliverables or taking up projects. Delegate tasks and sub-tasks to get work done in a simple and easy way. Finally, a great project manager works with the team and accomplishes their mission.

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great someday”.

Published: 2017/12/25

Questions to Ask in the Project Management Interview

Written by Carmen Kesho on July 12, 2023. Posted in Articles.

I have worked in Project Management for over a decade and in a variety of different organizations. While most organizations value the PMP ® Certification, as is evident in the many jobs descriptions where this is a “Preferred Qualification”, not all organizations prescribe to the PMBOK guidelines/framework.

In some organizations, due to extremely aggressive timelines, the project may already be in progress and the charter (which defines the scope) and or budget have not been finalized. There are also scenarios where scope creep occurs frequently due to the lack of ability to say no to the customer and project management insight into the level of effort that is received, but not considered in determining the timeline once a customer or senior leadership has a certain deadline in mind.

Project Management is a discipline and if you are like me, you were drawn to Project Management because of the process, order, and structure it provides. There is no better feeling than adding Project Management structure and organization to help an organization reach its goals. However, it can be disheartening when the skills you have acquired and honed to be a Project Management Professional are not valued. Even worse, it can lead to burnout.

I want to help mitigate the risk (see what I did there) of your joining an organization, department, or group that does not value the project management discipline and help you identify a role/organization that does.

Here are some questions to ask during the project management interview so you can determine whether a role within that organization will be a fit for you.

Questions and Insights

1. Do you have a centralized PMO?

If the organization has dedicated resources to building a Project Management Office, then there will be some standard practices and processes in place to promote organization, standardization, governance, and guidance for all projects. They should also provide access to deliverable and report templates. Feel free to ask more questions about the PMO so you can understand how you will be supported by the organization during your employment.

2. How are projects approved?

There needs to be a formal approval process for projects, so the Project Manager is not inundated with too many projects. Whether you are using Agile or Waterfall methodology, managing projects takes thought and planning.

3. What is the change management process?

Issues with changes typically arise more with Waterfall projects because with Agile projects, only certain amounts of features can be added within a sprint. If you are in a Waterfall environment and internal or external customers are frequently asking for more, there needs to be a formal process in place to assess the change requested and the impact on the project to determine if it can be completed. This way your team members aren’t overworked, or your timeline is not derailed by additional requests.

4. What authority do Project Managers have in this organization?

Project managers are problem solvers, strategists, communicators, and much more. In some organizations, the role is more focused on administrative tasks such as scheduling meetings, taking notes, and creating status reports. While that is a component of project management, that is not the entirety of the role. Asking about the authority the Project Managers have within the organization can help you identify whether their expectations of the role and yours are aligned.

5. How do you support your Project Manager when they have difficult clients?

Having formal processes in place to manage the project can help with difficult clients. However, there are times when the Project Manager may need support in enforcing those processes. Asking this question can help you determine whether your perspective manager will give in to client requests or if they will support you in enforcing processes and procedures.

Keep these questions in mind during your next interview. The Project Management role in the right organization can be extremely rewarding and fulfilling. Now you have more tools to get you to the right fit.

Shake up Your Stand-up

Written by Carmen Kesho on June 21, 2023. Posted in Articles.

Standups are a cornerstone of Agile project management. As a Project Manager, conducting stand-ups provides a daily communication touch point with your team that allows you to build rapport while gaining a deeper understanding of each individual team member. However, after you have worked with your team for a while and established a good sprint cadence and team dynamic, the standup may lose its flare and, in some cases, its necessity.

If your stand-ups are getting stale, try a few of these tricks to freshen your stand-ups:

Have a Standup or Two Via Slack. Post-Covid, we are inundated with virtual meetings. While the daily stand-up is meant to align all team members and get the day started with a common goal in mind, that 15 minutes may slow your team down if they are in the zone and want to complete a task. Try having the team write their updates at the start of their day and share them in a slack group chat. Chime in to help remove blockers as needed. Pro tip: Send out a template with the questions and ask for the responses by a certain time daily.
Reduce Frequency. If team members are working on higher pointed tasks with multiple components, there may not be a daily update. Depending on the end of your sprint, try incorporating a no standup Friday.
Celebrate Wins. While the “What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? What blockers are impacting me?” format is riveting, it may get a bit monotonous. Incorporate some time to celebrate wins during the standup. Pro tip: Name someone King/Queen of developers for a day when they complete a complex feature.
Incorporate Team Feedback. A team member may want to pass along some nuggets of wisdom they acquired from working on a feature, another team member might want to share a helpful article or tutorial. Again, to keep to the true nature of the standup, it needs to be concise and contribute to the completion of tasks and the betterment of the team’s performance. Sharing knowledge helps attain both of those goals.
Stand-up and Move. If you are working on-site and can meet with your team in person, have a walking stand-up. Walk with the team to get coffee or around the courtyard at your office space. If walking won’t work, get a stress ball, and pass it around as the team is talking through updates. Movement will help get everyone’s energy flowing and help the momentum for the day.
Finish with a Bang. You could equate the standup for a project team to a huddle before a basketball or football game. It sets the tone for what you are about to accomplish for the day. End the standup with a team chant, special handshake, or a theme song. “Eye of the Tiger” comes to mind. Try whatever gets the people going and sets the day on a positive and motivational tone.

Every person is different, and teams are made of people, so tailor these tips to your team. If you don’t see something that will work for your team, consider this a challenge to motivate you to develop more ideas of how you can shake up your stand-up.