How Unsupervised Learning Algorithms Help Project Managers
From the AI IQ Blog
by Paul Boudreau
Technology offers an incredible opportunity to improve project performance. This blog shares the latest research and how organizations are implementing AI into their project methodology. Come with an open mind, increase your knowledge, share your concerns, and become a project manager with new skills to offer an organization.
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Unsupervised learning is a type of AI-based algorithm that relies on characteristics instead of labeled datasets that are used in supervised learning. A typical application is the ability to classify or cluster datasets based on their characteristics. For example, an unsupervised learning algorithm can easily classify fruit based on color, size, and shape. The algorithm does not know what a banana is, but it will create a common group for anything resembling a banana. In projects, three uses of unsupervised learning are for risks, task complexity, and change requests.
1) Risks. Using unsupervised learning to cluster risks might result in finding a common cause for a group of risks or developing a shared mitigation strategy. Clustering risks from several projects can also result in finding a risk on your project that was overlooked.
Figure 1
Clustering
Posted on: January 08, 2024 12:00 AM |
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Comments (5)
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Luis Branco
CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª
Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Paul
The topic you brought to our reflection and debate is very interesting.
Thank you for sharing and suggesting uses for unsupervised learning
Kwiyuh Michael Wepngong
Community Champion
Financial Management Specialist | US Peace Corps
Yaounde, Centre, Cameroon
Thanks for this, it's insightful
David Grady
Strategic Portfolio & Project Analytics| Yale University
Glastonbury, Ct, United States
I suspect that when unsupervised learning is let loose on a vast corpus of project management data we will end up with quite new project methodologies. That's because we are probably overemphasizing metrics and standards that we're familiar with yet provide little value, and underestimating some other areas that are little regarded. Much like Sabermetrics upended the labor market and strategies in baseball, AI will teach us to approach the game in very different ways. Risks types, task complexities and change requests can be categorized of course, but the true value of unsupervised learning is pointing out things that we don't even yet know.
Paul Boudreau
President| Stonemeadow Consulting
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
@David Grady. An excellent observation. I totally agree. The age of the "grand" project dashboard is coming to an end.
An excellent observation.
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