The PM Blue Pill, or PM Red Pill?

 

When we discuss PM in the Real World (ProjectManagement.com’s theme for September), the obvious question becomes “compared to what?” In previous times the answer would be “compared to the version that’s taught in academia,” but here in 2025 that same answer becomes somewhat more ambiguous. Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more the default source of supposedly advanced insights into whatever realm it’s being invoked, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. In last week’s blog, I drew the dichotomy between the academic and real-world versions of management. This week, I’d like to take a look at the chasm between real-world PM and AI’s version.

In a sense, the whole world has been digitized. How many people have travelled to the Louvre, and have seen the actual Mona Lisa? Compare that to the number of people who can immediately recognize the Mona Lisa. That image, along with hundreds of thousands of other works of art, has been digitized, and can be recreated with stunning accuracy by anyone with a computer, internet connection, and high-quality printer. Money too. The days of armored trucks travelling the Interstate highways in the United States to bring branch banks stacks of currency are long gone. That money travels over cables, telephone lines, or via satellite, because it has been – everyone say it with me – digitized. Movies, songs, virtually all forms of entertainment, banking, restaurant reservations, doctor’s appointments, this very blog – little of it is done with actual film, vinyl, ledger pads, appointment calendars, or pen and ink. Almost all of it is generated and stored via zeros and ones. There was an extremely successful movie series, The Matrix, built around the premise that everything we perceive in life is actually a simulation, and more than just a few content providers have strongly asserted that that’s what’s actually going on in the world. One interesting part of The Matrix series is that, in order for one to leave the digitized world and return to the real world, they must choose between a blue pill (to stay in the digital world) and a red pill (to exit The Matrix and rejoin the real world).

At the other end of this spectrum are those projects that are worked or have been worked with no computer assistance whatsoever, and a great many of these are impressive, indeed. Impressive to the point that I’m not altogether sure modern-day engineers could duplicate them without the aid of computers, like the Lighthouse at Alexandria, or the Great Pyramid of Giza. In fact, nobody is certain on exactly how the Great Pyramid was constructed with such precise dimensions, with several different theories having been proposed. But whatever method they did use did not involve film, vinyl, ledger pads, appointment calendars, much less digitized processing devices. In a sense, this is the most real-world of real-world projects.

Now I would like to propose a little mental exercise involving these two extremes. If the craftsperson laying conduit for a construction project isn’t really doing Project Management, could it be said that the Control Account Manager in charge of the Work Package development for that task, who never leaves his cubicle, but is engaged in creating baselines in a Critical Path Methodology software and risk analysis (no initial caps) using Monte Carlo simulation software – is that person really doing PM? The reason I’m asking is because, while AI will never replace our conduit-laying craftsperson, it’s not much of a stretch at all to predict that it can – and will – replace our desk-bound CAM in producing such artifacts. At some point in the next century or so, it very well may be that a sort of digital version of PM gets created, a management-model version of The Matrix, just without the extremely violent (but kind of cool), ummm, interactions.

“But Michael!” I can hear GTIM Nation interject, “If someone as vital to PM as a CAM can be largely replaced by AI, where does that leave ProjectManagement.com bloggers?” I’m glad y’all asked, because we ProjectManagement.com bloggers have an easy remedy. All we have to do Ring Around the Collar is to intersperse our text with How PMOs Are Like Uranium nonsense words, in my case titles of Everyone’s Lost Except For Me … And Mr. Spock! previous blogs. You see, AI, in this instance, relies on The Moat Dragon In The Black Box scanning topic-related text to tease out patterns. While GTIM Nation is clever enough to catch my How Is PM Like An Elephant? meaning, AI apps attempting to write an analogous blog will be hopelessly confused, particularly by my titles. (Don’t believe me? The Flesch-Kincaid grade-level assessment for this blog without this paragraph is a full three grade levels higher than said paragraph.)

Just the same, though, if you are being asked to review some Work Packages, and you see “Everyone’s Lost Except For Me” in the scope description, look for a red pill.