Artificial intelligence will take over the job market. How many times have you heard this claim, or should we say myth? This is probably the most common misconception when it comes to AI. Still, in reality, hardly anyone sees the challenges artificial intelligence is facing at the moment, along with tangible benefits.
It offers various opportunities in various fields, and project management is no exception. While some of the changes are subtle, we believe that AI will shape the face of project management in the future. So, let's see what impact it will have on companies and their project planning.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Project Management
Data Analysis
In project management, data analysis comes right after automation. Artificial intelligence can identify correlations and patterns in data that humans would hardly ever notice. AI helps teams accurately analyze their previous performance, generating more efficient plans and predicting potential problems that might hinder your project's success.
Improved Efficiency
Forecasting and reduction of errors allow organizations to boost efficiency significantly. Artificial intelligence can automate numerous complex tasks, including sending emails and notifications about delays. Automation will help organizations save time, ensuring their focus on more pressing matters, such as innovations and improvements to projects.
Lowering the Costs
One of the main challenges project managers face is ensuring their teams stay within the budget. AI doesn't only resolve numerous administrative tasks but also spots hidden shortcomings in many administrative tasks. Additionally, artificial intelligence analyzes information on completion time and estimates whether projects will be completed on time.
Project Management Forecasting
As the name implies, project management forecasting is all about making predictions, assumptions, and guesses about the outcomes of a project. These particular project forecasts analyze historical project data and try to predict future performance.
The goal of forecasting is to predict possible outcomes, increase project success, and reduce project risks. It allows you to learn how likely the project will be successful, look for risks, and spot areas for improvement. Afterward, project managers will have enough knowledge to anticipate project duration, budgeting, cost overruns, and required resources.
Ideally, project managers should start forecasting when the project is at least 20% done. You can always apply different methods that will help you forecast in project management, but keep in mind that there is no silver bullet with these techniques.
AI and Project Managers
Project managers can quickly turn risky projects around by adding artificial intelligence to performance monitoring tools. This way, they can track progress and avoid potential risks threatening project delivery.
We must mention that every project is prone to risks; however, artificial intelligence can accurately predict the number of defects in project management. If project managers use AI at different project stages, they can alert their team members if they notice that the process is too risky.
AI can alert potential delays, identify underperformance on KPIs, and suggest ways to keep projects on the right track. But, if you want your project to be on track, you need to have the right people working on them.
Considering AI can review the history of past projects, you will have real-time information on resource management. Based on this, you can compose a project team and assign roles to individual team members. AI tools also help project managers stick to deadlines.
Using AI in Risk Management
Some specific uses of AI in risk management include the following:
Threat Analysis
AI can analyze massive amounts of data from different resources. This way, project managers can generate real-time predictions and alarm the security team, to address these risks quickly. AI is crucial in developing warning systems that ensure the organization's uninterrupted operation and its stakeholders' protection.
Risk Reduction
AI evaluates unstructured data about activities or risky behavior within the organization. It can spot patterns of behavior linked to previous incidents and present them as risk predictions.
Fraud Detection
Most of the time, fraud detection requires detailed analysis processes for insurers and financial institutions. However, AI can significantly decrease the workload of these processes and minimize fraud threats by using machine learning models that focus on a database search, social media analysis, and text mining.
Data Classification
Based on the previously defined categories and patterns, AI tools can classify and process all available information while, at the same time, monitoring access to this data.
Challenges and Disadvantages of AI in the Workplace
Although AI offers certain advantages, it also has a couple of limitations.
High Cost
Creating a machine that mimics the human brain and intelligence can be expensive; it demands a lot of resources and time and can cost a huge deal of money. AI also needs to operate on the latest software and hardware to stay up-to-date and meet the requirements.
Unemployment
A robot is one of the applications of AI, which implies fewer jobs or changes of job descriptions for humans. In some instances, this could increase unemployment. For example, robots can replace humans in manufacturing industries in technologically advanced nations like Japan. But, remember that human supervision is still required in many cases, even when AI is involved.
Emotionless
Ever since our childhood, everyone has taught us that computers are machines that don't have feelings. Humans work as a team, and team management is crucial if you want to achieve goals. While computers and robots are more efficient than humans, only people can achieve an interpersonal connection.
Still at the Development Stage
It's quite challenging to convince some decision-makers to invest their money in AI since these solutions aren't mainstream yet. People are more familiar with traditional tools and don't want to take risks.
Companies Using AI in Project Management – Example
Apple is one of the largest tech companies selling consumer electronics like Apple Watches and iPhones. For years, they have been using artificial intelligence in project management and their products. For example, this technology enables the FaceID feature or their smart assistant Siri.
Facebook – ever heard of deep text? Well, Facebook uses deep learning to automatically interpret and understand the content and emotional sentiment of the thousands of posts, in multiple languages, that people publish every second.
Future Developments and Potential Impact on the Industry
We can hardly estimate how AI will impact the future of work, but one thing is sure, AI is one of the most important technologies nowadays. As companies seek to minimize Covid-19 interactions and maintain operational costs low, they will try to replace humans with machinery.
Daron Acemoglu, an economist at Boston University and MIT, has published a report stating that robots could replace nearly two million employees in manufacturing industries by 2025.
Industries like finance, hospitality and tourism, medical, automotive, cybersecurity, and job search will be heavily affected by AI, but we still have some time before this happens.
