5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help in Project Management in 2023

Whether you’re starting a career in project management or you already have a lot of experience, you can agree that project management is tasking.

Usually, you have to consider many factors and constantly stay on your feet to ensure projects are delivered.

Many project managers depend on proven systems and strategies to streamline their work. In addition, project management tools have been created to digitize this organizational task.

According to Price Water Coopers, 77% of high performing projects use project management tools. So, to work efficiently, you should implement these tools.

Over time project management tools have advanced in capabilities and efficiency more so, with the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Today, there are numerous AI-powered tools that can perform complex functions that humans can’t. They predict project success rates, analyze risks and even recommend decisions based on data.

As a project manager, you can improve your work efficiency using AI-powered tools, deliver projects for clients on time, and outperform your competition.

In this article, we will review 5 main applications of artificial intelligence in project management in 2022.

1. Intelligent Assistants

Working a job that requires repetitive tasks can be mind-numbing. In an office environment, it can be typing, approving documents, entering documents into contracts, and much more. 

These tasks quickly get tedious and often make you frustrated and constricted.

Also as a project manager, it’s your responsibility to make sure work goes as planned, and everybody gets their job done.

Being persistent in communicating with your team by constantly reinforcing urgency on them to resolve issues fast significantly helps in accomplishing tasks.

So besides planning activities every day, you also have to manage people. 

Your work will be characterized by shifting between dull redundant tasks and stressful human resource management. Balancing these two crucial duties can be overwhelming.

Intelligent assistants such as Chatbots, one of the most significant applications of AI in project management, can ease this workload. They are software that use artificial intelligence to perform tasks for users.

AI Chatbots can help automate mundane tasks, thereby reducing the time you spend on tedious work. They can also be integrated with project management tools and assist in:

• Alerting workers on deadlines
• Keeping track of tasks completed
• Creation of reports for performance analysis

With a fully automated monitoring system working, you can direct saved time and energy to other important tasks. Most importantly, you avoid work stress and find fulfillment in your job.

Tryg, a Scandinavian insurance company, cooperated with Boost.ai to build a tool that would eliminate unnecessary internal operations constraints. As a result, 97% of all internal queries were eliminated, and the number of calls to back-office support was significantly reduced.

Tryg was able to optimize staff operations using AI, making it easy for projects to be completed

2. Predictive Analytics

Depending on the size of your company and the number of customers you deal with, among other factors, you might be working on many projects at the same time. All these projects require tremendous focus and hard work to turn out successful.

But the success of projects can vary based on circumstances and resources available. And it’s hard to predict unforeseen changes with each step of your project management system.

You can revisit previous projects and find out how changes impacted different projects. But since you’re limited with time, you cannot possibly go through all projects and come up with a conclusive decision.

A survey by Gatner shows that project failure increases with project complexity that is based on project budget, high value projects have a failure rate 50% higher than low value projects. 

If you manage high value projects, you can achieve more success by continuously analyzing the progress of your project.

Predictive analytics is one of the most significant artificial intelligence use cases in project management. AI applications can identify patterns and connections that we can’t by analyzing both structured and unstructured data in a timely manner.

The software first understands the project’s data, integrates it from multiple sources, compares every set of data, finds anomalies, and provides information that you can use to make decisions for current and future projects.

While AI-powered tools expedite the decision-making process, they still rely on the principle of data quality; your data entry must be high quality to achieve high-quality output.

Software developer InEight implemented artificial intelligence by introducing an AI-powered construction cost and schedule assessment tool that assigns schedules and costs based on project deliverability. The platform brought data transparency and real-time visibility for customers and contractors.

If you use a project management tool to organize multiple clients’ projects, a tool such as InEight’s will boost confidence in your work.

3. Task Scheduling

Workers are expected to handle different tasks depending on the demands of a project. As a project manager, you ought to ensure these tasks are performed. So you’ll make a plan to allocate every worker responsibilities and timelines that matches your project goals.

But what if you are managing a project with many workers who have different shifts and most of the work is manual? 

Ideally, you’ll have to allocate tasks based on availability. Considering that lack of clear goals is the most significant reason why 37% of projects fail, it’s important to have every worker focused on your goals.

Organizing many employees with different duties, working hours, and timelines is complex. Often, you might fail to allocate tasks to specific individuals and consequently compromise your delivery.

This brings us to other applications of AI in project management, tasks scheduling, and management.

AI-powered tools are effective for scheduling tasks. They can quickly sift through large amounts of data, locate the correct information and execute a set of instructions based on it, thereby transforming your business to a whole new level of efficiency.

One of the ways artificial intelligence can help in project management is by tracking tasks and deadlines and allocating employees based on availability.

Having included all employee information in an AI task scheduling tool, your project timetable will be executed depending on the availability of the workers and the time allocation.

Hence you can spend more time focusing on the employees, which can, in turn, help you to empower them and find further efficiencies.

Onfido, a global identity verification and authentication provider, needed a tool for easy collaboration of employees. 

So, they employed Asana, an AI-powered task scheduling tool, and as a result, the team was able to scale from 200 to 400 employees without compromising work quality.

Asana helped Onfido grow by streamlining task management and collaboration of team members.

4. Risk Management

The purpose of project management is to control all aspects necessary for a goal to be achieved.

As a project manager, you need to thrive on detail and focus on the project’s progress. Doing so ensures you detect any risks that may compromise the progress of the project.

But besides your profession, you are a human being with a personal and social life. 

Occasionally this aspect of your being can derail your focus on the project. With less than 100% of your time dedicated to ensuring the fruition of the project, you might miss out on some things.

Without a holistic view of the project, you cannot identify risks that put you in a compromising position where odds are stacked against you in delivering a project.

A survey conducted by Safran, a project management company, on CEOs revealed that 92% considered knowing the risks of a project determined its long term success.

Risk management is one of the prominent artificial intelligence applications in project management today. 

An AI-powered tool can provide real-time data and project status, therefore, helping you understand and constructively influence the time and cost outcomes.

An AI system can analyze the skills and output of a particular team or individual, alert you on potential delays and underperformance on critical metrics and even recommend what needs to be done to get the project back on track.

Also, using AI models on past project quality data at different stages of projects can help identify and alert project teams if the path being taken will place the project at risk.

Shawmut Design and Construction uses AI-powered project management tools to collect field data and analyze risks for successful project delivery. The tools enabled ranking of projects by potential risk factors (PDF), allowing project managers to provide support where necessary.

Through the power of AI, they can accurately figure out where they need to focus their attention. 

5. Resource Allocation

Planning a project from start to finish and allocating the right resources can be challenging. As a project manager, you want to ensure you’ve put every factor into consideration to maximize productivity and reduce the time and cost it takes for completing the project.

But your efficiency is limited especially when dealing with large projects involving many workers and a large budget. Lack of communication, unclear goals, and budgeting issues are some of the challenges that might affect your planning efforts.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that 1 in 6 information technology projects costs more than 200% of the estimated amount, and 70% face project delays.

Resource allocation is an artificial intelligence use case in project management that can improve the accuracy of project planning and support your job of monitoring project progression.

Machine learning algorithms can estimate duration, resources, and budget allocation needed for project activities based on analysis of historical data previously collected.

This data can also be used to build custom work systems, estimate workload, analyze work and schedules, advise where training is needed, and even suggest new hiring based on the skills required for a particular function in a project.

This list of applications of AI in project management cannot be complete without artificial intelligence powered resource allocation tools.

By using AI-enhanced project management tools, you can make the right decision on resource allocation and increase the possibilities of your project going by your plans and resource allocations.

DEQA Design Collaborative in the Philippines implemented AI-powered software Forecast in their project reporting system and achieved a 40% reduction of time spent understanding their projects’ profitability.

The tool provided visibility and real-time insights into their projects allowing the team to find solutions to resource allocation problems and thus uniting their projects into one powerful core.

Conclusion

These examples are just a handful of the ways artificial intelligence can help in project management. Yet, they demonstrate how powerful this technology is and how you can benefit from implementing AI-powered tools in your management work.

Since most of their functions depend on the quality of data and instruction set, AI tools are still advancing to solve more complex project planning challenges.

While they can perform simple and repetitive tasks, nuanced tasks are out of their scope. Hence human intervention is still necessary for a project to go as planned.

You should invest time and resources into learning how AI tools work to train them to produce meaningful insights that can be used for better decision-making.

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