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Witness AI
Witness AI
Unpublished PMI Customer Experience (CX) research provides evidence — PMI’s commitment to supporting project managers through this
that the need for upskilling is urgent, since only about 20% of project technological evolution.
managers report having extensive or good practical experience with
AI tools and technologies, and 49% have little to no experience with or
understanding of AI in the context of project management.
Report generation
Low
Figure 1 demonstrates the level of support GenAI can provide Meeting notes
for specific project tasks, mapped along the dimensions of summary
task complexity and degree of human intervention. Automating Assisting Augmenting
Machine Human
Who does the work?
9 Shaping the Future of Project Management With AI
Action
agile, design thinking or new manage projects successfully. With the widespread availability and
potential of GenAI tools at both the individual and organizational
general and specific communication tasks. It can also be used to
generate code, summarize meeting notes and lessons learned
practices still to be developed, levels, it is important to take advantage of the improved results from past projects and obtain insights from unstructured data.
that GenAI can help project managers deliver.
it’s clear that there is more Project managers should also learn about the fundamental
Think of “ways of working” as chains of events and tasks to deliver relationship between data and AI and become familiar with their
than one way that work is a result, where generative AI can automate, assist or augment organization’s data strategy and practices. By understanding how
accomplished today. That’s project management skills and competencies. For example: data feeds these tools, project managers will be better positioned
to understand and evaluate AI outputs. Data literacy will also enable
why PMI encourages project — Project planning: Use GenAI to simplify data mining and project managers to shape the tools and models that are specific to
analysis of historical data to help with the overall project projects — those that predict project outcomes, risks, resources
professionals to become fluent planning and optimization and to generate comprehensive and so forth — so that they are delivering the most accurate
Context: Action
While generating meeting summaries or status reports is a useful
time-saver, GenAI can bring new value by analyzing underused —W
hile predictions indicate the great
and/or unstructured data. potential of GenAI in project management,
the current adoption rate is still very low.
How are you identifying tasks in your projects
Industry: Technology, media and telecommunications
where AI could be integrated to deliver
Use case: Project managers can use GenAI to analyze structured
greater performance?
and unstructured company and customer data to uncover insights
and correlations that will help improve project agility and — G iven the rapid integration of AI technology
productivity in creating more customer-driven solutions. into popular project management tools,
are you proactively identifying and adopting
these AI-powered features to improve
Industry: IT (software development) project performance?
Use case: In the IT environment where technical and nontechnical — Considering the critical role of data in
workers need to effectively communicate about projects, GenAI driving accurate AI outputs, what initiatives
can help prepare code summaries and reports using nontechnical are you discussing within your organization to
language for multiple audiences, such as functional stakeholders, ensure useful project data is available to feed
product managers and business stakeholders and analysts.3 GenAI tools?
These interpersonal skills PMI’s Pulse of the Profession® 20234 identified four critical power
skills that are essential to help organizations transform and deliver
— Improved communication: Use GenAI to help streamline
communication across different levels, including enhancing
include collaborative leadership, sustainable results: strategic thinking, problem-solving, stakeholder management, suggesting supporting data, automating
collaborative leadership and communication. All of these are human less complex communication processes and evaluating content to
communication, problem-solving traits that to some degree can be augmented by AI. For example, help convey the right narrative and perspective in more sensitive
and strategic thinking. project managers can contribute more strategically to their
projects and organization by applying AI tools to different aspects
and complex messages.
Ensuring teams have these of their business, industry and market to solve problems more Power skills will become even more of a competitive advantage,
effectively and quickly. making or breaking each and every project as AI productivity gains
skills allows them to maintain allow more time to be spent on human interaction. PMI’s own
— Embed strategic thinking: GenAI is very familiar with strategic research, as well as multiple small- and large-scale studies over
influence with a variety of models and constructs. Even if you don’t understand the the last two decades, consistently cite human factors among the
component for making change. organization like yours will open your eyes to many lower-level, Remember that algorithms cannot look anyone in the eye, speak
but important, connection points that you might have never truth to power, stay the ethical course or be accountable for their
considered. decisions. Project managers can do all these things and more,
including the ability to interact with humans, express empathy,
— Improved collaboration: Prompting GenAI at the front end of a adapt, create counterintuitive solutions, decide in ambiguity,
collaboration helps the team start at a different place, since it negotiate, manage stakeholders, lead and motivate. Project
allows the team to skip all the lowest common denominator managers have skills that will never find their way into machines,
brainstorming that might otherwise predominate initial meetings. no matter how smart the machines become.
Context: Action
GenAI can help project managers with communication,
collaborative leadership and other power skills by supporting —H
ow are you planning to leverage GenAI tools
them in negotiating complex chains of stakeholders, institutions to align project objectives with broader
and processes. organizational strategies and ensure consistent
value delivery?
Industry:
Life Sciences and Healthcare — What concrete steps are you taking to integrate
AI tools at the initial stages of project
Use case: brainstorming, definition and preparation of
In drug development, project managers must work with multiple early documents?
stakeholders, partners, processes and regulatory requirements — In light of the adoption of GenAI tools to
to successfully discover new drugs and go through development perform or support several project management
of clinical trials and, finally, approval. GenAI can support tasks and activities, how are you planning to
communicating across these domains, as well as help streamline balance technology with human ingenuity that
and improve knowledge sharing among research groups, reduce recognizes and leverages the uniqueness of each
data silos and promote a more integrated development process.3 project’s context?
Professionals with business Imagine you want to have a better perspective on the risks at
the corporate level of your project or program and the most likely
The use of AI tools will enhance business acumen in two ways.
First, by handling time-consuming, mundane tasks, it will free project
acumen understand the macro- scenarios that you may encounter if some of the risks actually managers to spend more time focusing on intraorganizational
occur. AI can help you gain insights to prepare a comprehensive influences, objectives and relationships. Second, GenAI can augment
and micro-influences in their business risk analysis and impact evaluation because of project project managers’ abilities to see the strategic implications of their
organization and industry and issues. This will prepare the organization with a recovery plan and
to anticipate all mitigation actions before a major event happens
work, enable them to practice and frame their conversations with
high-level stakeholders and make better decisions about their
have the function-specific or and impacts the organization. projects. The very presence of these tools may also change the
types of business acumen that project managers need to deeply
domain-specific knowledge — Scenario analysis: GenAI’s multimodal data capability can be understand, versus those that can be accessed by the tools.
used to support analysis from different sources (e.g., text,
to make good decisions. image) to suggest more aligned information with the problem For example, generative AI makes it much easier for any project
Professionals at all levels need and business sector. It can also be very useful to predict
outcomes from different business conditions and scenarios.
manager to look at a situation through the eyes of an industry
expert (through a prompt). So, like individual telephone numbers,
to be able to cultivate effective general industry knowledge may be less important to retain in the
— Insights generation and innovation: With GenAI tools allowing human brain. However, the details of the organization’s competitive
decision-making and understand customization of prompts and questions, project managers can advantage, potential leverage from data that exists in the
rely on easy and fast data-driven insights and speed up the
how their projects align with identification and implementation of business innovation initiatives.
ecosystem or new data generated by your project will be
something to understand in detail.5
the big picture of broader — Assessment of business implications: Use GenAI to Functional operations are becoming more automated and
organizational strategy and understand and map the impact and contribution of projects transparent as well. These common software-as-a-service (SaaS)
on the business. enabled processes are also well-defined in general data sets.
global trends. Again, here, the business acumen that will set you apart has more
— Systems thinking decisions: Use GenAI to help understand to do with what is different about the way your organization
and consider multiple dimensions and interdependencies of the operates. What makes it special, more efficient, more effective?
project within the organization or the broader environment. This level of understanding will help you not only firmly connect to
the strategy with your project but allow you to ensure that all of
the project-to-organization connections are in place to truly
achieve results.
Context: Action
GenAI interfaces enable project managers and team members to
search and retrieve relevant information and obtain tailored —W
hat actions are you taking to adopt
results without having in-depth programming skills. This will take GenAI to better communicate the strategic
the data-driven decisions to a new level by enabling real-time implications of your projects to high-level
access to enterprise and past project data, to extract the right stakeholders, ensuring project goals and
insight and intelligence at the right time. outcomes are consistently aligned with
broader business objectives?
Industry:
Financial Services — In industries with fragmented data across
multiple systems, solutions, locations and
Use case: formats, what actions are being taken to ensure
Throughout the financial industry, banks and insurance, relevant access to quality data is available to use GenAI
data is stored in multiple locations and formats, making it difficult tools effectively?
to query and effectively retrieve relevant information for analysis — Considering the emphasis on understanding
and decisions. GenAI tools built on top of existing data-lake what makes the organization’s data, operations
solutions can provide quick and simple enterprise-level access to and ecosystem distinct, are you considering
business data, allowing project managers and other users to using GenAI in your projects to identify and
retrieve and generate structured analytical reports to support capitalize on the organization’s unique
faster problem-solving and decision-making.3 competitive advantages and characteristics?
Putting GenAI
to Work for You Shaping the Future of Project Management With AI
Project professionals looking to build their GenAI skills can use the PMI Talent Triangle® to
Insight frame a plan for their professional development. We propose a two-tiered approach that
can be customized to individual needs and goals.
Project managers will best direct their GenAI
Table 2 proposes a simple but broad approach focused on overall development. Choose the
learning journey by connecting it to specific
skills you would like to enhance, then map them to your learning needs relative to AI tools
competencies they want to build and benefits
and concepts, with the goal of achieving your expected results.
to their current projects. This section offers an
explanation and practical examples on how the
PMI Talent Triangle® can be used as a guide for Ways of Working Power Skills Business Acumen
competency development.
Enhanced What practices, techniques and What power skills can you What skills related to business do you
Skills approaches do you want to enhance and improve with the use want to improve with the use of AI tools?
enhance? For example, become of AI tools? For example, faster For example, better understanding about
more efficient on risk management problem-solving or better written the industry or alignment of project
or adopt a more data-driven communications. benefits with the organization’s strategy.
approach to project execution.
Business Create business ChatGPT-4, Bard Define the business - Faster execution
Acumen case need, evaluate - More comprehensive
industry context, analysis
prioritize among - Better alignment
other organizational with business
initiatives, identify context and market
positive and negative challenges and
market conditions opportunities
Get AI Ready
With PMI Shaping the Future of Project Management With AI
PMI stands at the forefront of the evolution of project management,
offering advanced courses, certifications and continuous learning
opportunities that equip and empower millions of project
professionals worldwide to build their GenAI skills to deliver value and
better outcomes through operational excellence. PMI’s commitment
to guide project professionals on how to leverage GenAI, foster
career growth and demonstrate resilience in a dynamic business
environment is wide, deep and ongoing.
2 PMI. (2023). PMI.org site survey. (Conducted August 10-24, 2023, response base of 998)
3 Deloitte. (2023, September 12). The generate AI dossier — A selection of high-impact use cases
across six major industries. Deloitte AI Institute. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/
us/Documents/consulting/us-ai-institute-gen-ai-use-cases.pdf
4 PMI. (2023). Pulse of the Profession® — Power skills: Redefining project success. PMI. https://www.pmi.
org/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/power-skills-redefining-project-success
5 Edelman, DC & Abraham, M. (2023, April 12). Generative AI will change your business. Here’s how to
adapt. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-will-change-your-business-
heres-how-to-adapt
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