International Project Management Day 2020

AI IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT: THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROJECT DECISION MAKING

Project managers need to make critical project decisions on a daily basis. They are confronted with increasing complexities, high ambiguity and the need to process an exponentially growing amount of data and information in order to make informed and good decisions. This leads to an increasing risk of project failure – meanwhile, the project management industry is already challenged with ongoing low project success rates, caused by often massive failures of projects.

Project Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are expected to fill the gap by providing analytical and unbiased capabilities that go beyond human possibilities, towards a data-driven and fact-based decision-making approach.

While there is little doubt that AI as a trending technology will disrupt the project management practice and augment today’s project management capabilities, AI cannot be seen as just another new tool to make project management more effective. Rather, AI will act as a complement to human intelligence, requiring a collaborative approach and, accordingly, a significant change in project culture and peoples’ mindset.

Today’s project decisions are usually driven by human intuition, experience, leadership, and often do not follow any rational logic. Project decision-makers will be required to abandon such an approach and shift to a data-driven, decision-making approach.

This session will provide an overview of the expected changes from AI-driven project management, the resulting impact on project decision making and changes in project culture, and what actions can be taken by project professionals to match their beliefs and behaviors with the new project culture.

Learning goals:

• Gain insights on how AI for project management will significantly change decision-making in projects
• Gain an understanding of how to transition to a new AI-powered project culture