AI In Project Management: Could Bots And AI Replace People?
We’re in the era where automated techniques will make our work easier.
This has happened since Henry Ford invented the assembly line, but its current crop of practical uses resembles something more related to a science fiction outtake than it does an “I Love Lucy” skit. Manufacturing has already felt the effects of AI, all but replacing manual labor. From 2000 to 2010, 5.6 million jobs disappeared, only 13% of those jobs were lost due to international trade. The vast remainder - 85% percent of job losses - stemmed from “productivity growth,” which is an excellent way of saying machines are replacing human workers.
Is it true that AI is regularly used in Project Management tasks? As one continues to store and collect information, we are indirectly contributing to Big Data; it is harder for humans to process it according to what their brains can do. If you’re in the same job and doing the same task every day, to check your task inside the project you have to understand the pattern of your job. What if we get the pattern and automate the task?
As systems like OpenAI, an Elon Musk intelligence lab, continue to grow while creating ways for machines to teach themselves to behave like humans, we may soon lose out on the hope of a “human touch” being the deciding factor for whether we are employed or not. Joaquin Phoenix’s character in “Her” sustained himself by writing genuine-sounding love letters, but what if robots grow adept enough at understanding our emotions that even jobs like this become old-fashioned?
What Is AI?
With this question, the first thing it came to mind is a simple example of voice assistants that are in trend nowadays. Using Alexa, Google Home, Siri, we’re communicating with an AI system that can perform the day-to-day task. A perfect example of it is that Samsung recently launched a campaign on ‘ Samsung Bixby Voice Assistant-MNDmother that helps daughter with #VoiceForever. The video is a real-life story where technology helped the girl to preserve her mother's voice. Since her mother was suffering from Neuron disease, which takes the patient's ability to speak and move. The campaign is a very touching true story and showed how AI and ML could be used to help a human.
How Can AI Be Used In Project Management?
Some AI systems, like chatbots, are already being used by millions of companies. A chatbot will let you check on the status of projects quickly. But it’s not technically considered Project Management AI. Neither is an algorithm that applies machine learning to predict estimates for tasks. AI is when you start bringing bots and algorithms together, allowing them to share the data each of them has collected in order for them to find efficiencies on their own. Once you understand how the data you collect can be optimized through machine learning, you can begin to understand the effect that a potential Project Management AI can have on your industry.
“The designing and building of intelligent agents that receive percepts from the environment and take actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.” Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig
How Does AI Automate Resource Management?
It is rather interesting when allocating the project resources in the correct department with assigned task and timeline. It is essential to meet the deadline for the project’s health. Yes, you’re thinking right, how about allocating these resources predictively with the help of AI that can monitor resources and alert Project Managers when the needs need attention?
Allocating the right resources to the right department to make sure they have all of the tools they need to meet the deadline is vital to a project’s health. Allocating these resources predictively can be done with the help of AI that can monitor resource pools and alert you when teams need attention. To go a step further, AI could dole out the proper resources autonomously, saving you even more time.
How To Automate Risk Management Using AI
Risk management asks us to consider an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project’s objectives. AI can tap into large data sets to see if any situations that have led to an effect on past projects can occur again, calculate the likelihood of it happening in the current project, and alert you accordingly.
Will AI Impact Project Managers?
The future of Project Managers is in an initial stage, as far as AI is concerned. It will genuinely change the way of the project delivered, and Project Management will evolve more advanced. In the midst of this evolution, it is important to remember that there is something AI cannot do – be human.
AI will assist, not replace, Project Managers. As with every technology, AI alone will not guarantee success. However, deployed purposefully, AI can be a distinctive accelerator and game changer for Project Managers and thus help increase project success rates. The Project Managers who succeed will likely be those who manage to see beyond the bounds of ‘human’ imagination and answer questions about how this technology can add real value and drive positive change in project management and business transformations. This will ensure the strategic value of Project Management. Many good Project Management tools are available and many companies are planning to upgrade it to a more better and easy way to manage projects.
Originally published at www.linkedin.com.
