AI is ubiquitous in today’s world, both in the workplace and at home, and its rapid development has led to an increasing number of use cases.
Some people worry about AI replacing their jobs, especially where repetitive tasks are prevalent. While this may change how many industries operate, many roles still require human input, and this is particularly true in project management. Project success still hinges on emotional intelligence (EQ): negotiating scope changes, motivating a diverse team, navigating complex politics, and exercising critical judgment. These are capabilities only a human project manager can bring.
So, instead of seeing AI as a replacement, view it as an intelligent assistant designed to eliminate administrative burden (those repetitive, data-heavy tasks), allowing you to double down on your leadership and strategic skills where you can provide the most value.
Here are a few ideas on how you can leverage existing AI tools right now to save time, boost efficiency and make an impact, moving from administrator to strategic leader:
1. Zero-Effort Status Reporting
AI-powered tools can automatically ingest data from your tasks (Jira, Trello, etc.) and compile a draft of your weekly status reports, including burn-down charts and critical path updates.
The Quick Win: Turn a 45-minute manual task of data compilation into a 5-minute review and edit. You instantly free up almost an hour per week.
2. Instant Risk and Schedule Analysis
Forget sifting through massive project plans. AI algorithms can analyse complex schedules and resource allocations to highlight potential bottlenecks and suggest optimal paths before they become problems.
The Quick Win: Gain proactive insights on resource over-allocation or high-risk dependencies in seconds, allowing you to mitigate risks days or weeks earlier than by performing a manual review.
3. Automated Communication Drafting
From summarising long email threads to generating meeting minutes or stakeholder updates, generative AI tools can process large amounts of text and produce concise, professional summaries or communications, and even create an action list.
The Quick Win: Use AI to draft the first version of your weekly stakeholder update, an executive summary, or even a team retrospective, dramatically reducing the time spent on formatting and reporting.
4. Streamlined Meeting Management
AI tools integrated with your meeting platform (like Zoom or Teams) can automatically generate a meeting transcript, identify key decisions, and assign action items to specific individuals.
The Quick Win: Eliminate the need for dedicated minute-takers and ensure perfect clarity on who is doing what. Transform your meeting notes into an immediate action plan without any extra effort.
The Golden Rule: Trust, but Verify
AI offers incredible speed and efficiency, but it’s really important to remember that its outputs are only as good as the data it’s fed. I’d never suggest sending an AI-generated output without a thorough human review. Use it to draft, compile, and analyse, but always use your professional judgment to give the final seal of approval.
If you’ve already started using AI in your projects, have any other use cases, or would like me to explore any of these in more detail, please share your thoughts in the comments below.
