IA in Project Management
“IA replaces tasks, not people” – Ben Royce
A Project Manager will continue to Lead People!
Those who use AI tools are going to replace those who don’t!
A Project Manager now is People-First, Strategy-Centered, who uses AI tools for administrative functions such as scheduling and manage budgets, etc.
Essential Skills in modern Project Management that AI can’t reproduce:
– Collaborative leadership
– Problem-solving and critical thinking
– Strategic thinking
– Decision-making under pressure
– Communication
The transition to using AI in Project Management will likely:
– Reduce guesswork
– Make businesses more profitable
– Take care of administrative gruntwork
Multitasking
There is no multitasking…. what we do (or need to do) is rapid refocusing!
Responsabilities
At the start of a project, and as a Project Manager, I need to have my responsibilities well defined.
– Am I working with an Account Manager, or are those my responsibilities?
– Am I responsible to report to a Business Developer on possible Cross and Up-selling opportunities?
– Am I to accumulate the responsibilities of a Tech-Lead?
Good practices
Start the day with a “brain dump”. Checklists are the base to everything. So, starting the day with a brain dump as a checklist with no priorities of everything that is on your mind, personal or work related, is the best way to unclutter the mind to start a day of work.
Team Building Activities
Don’t let physical team gatherings only be planned by HR, and for each gathering make a team with people from various teams, define a budget and let that team organize it!
Synchronous communication
Have chat rooms for each department
Have chat rooms for the whole team/company.
Say “good morning” at the start of the day and “see you tomorrow” at the end of the day at the company chat room.
Share links, videos, etc
Keep the “water cooler” and “coffee machine” conversations happening in these shared chat rooms.
Keep webcams turned on during video meetings.
Asynchronous communication
Email is not a good tool for project management.
Notes from a meeting, from a phone call, or even from a chat room, any questions, feedback, or anything that should be written for future reference, should always be made in the task management software, in each task.
Time Tracking
Assuming ClickUp.
First, configure a calendar for national and local holidays, vacation, etc.
What is the goal for time tracking in the company/project?
If it’s for micromanagement, the team will not like it.
If it’s for project budget management, compare with estimates in the proposal, calculate the % of profit, then we should track the time in each task, not counting for bathroom breaks, coffee refills, etc, and only the time in the task.
This means about 6h30 of work a day and not 8h.
More on this here: https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/33686/are-there-best-practices-with-time-tracking
Scrum
“Everyone” is using agile methodologies and specifically scrum.
Developing a product, that gets feedback that in turn makes changes to the backlog? That’s Agile.
Developing a project, that has a closed backlog with predefined features and a closed budget? That’s not Agile.
In both cases we can manage the development using scrum, with sprints and ceremonies to be more on top of the development (and micromanage), but this is waterfall, or at least a hybrid project management.
More info on this subject, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OosYzkP-pLk