Harnessing AI in Project Management: The Highs and Lows
Amanda Loewy is a Senior Global Project Manager.
In the fast-paced world of project management, project managers must constantly be surveying the latest tech to take their game to the next level. When artificial intelligence came on the scene, it looked like an incredible tool that promised to streamline workflows, boost productivity, and maybe even make us look smarter (no guarantees).
Although AI in project management can generate enormous gains, it’s important to keep an eye out for the pitfalls as well.
A Cautionary Tale (With a Humorous Twist)
I once set up AI rules in my project management software to automatically move tasks to the “closed” section once they were marked complete. Seemed straightforward—complete a task, and voilà, it’s done.
But here’s where the situation got hairy: Every time someone closed a task, five new duplicative subtasks would mysteriously appear. You see, I had also created a rule to create five of the same subtasks whenever I added a task to the project, to cut down on repetitive work. (In hindsight, I should have added a step to check if the task was incomplete or complete, and to only run the rule on incomplete tasks.)
The rule for closing was made to be whenever the task was marked completed, then move to the completed section, leaving room for error in the overlapping rules. Turns out, the AI interpreted “marking complete and …
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