Will the widespread adoption of prompt engineering commoditize project management skills, or can it help PMs differentiate themselves and command higher value?

I believe the 'commoditization' risk is real for PMs who focus solely on administrative tasks (scheduling, status reports, etc.), as AI will excel at those.

The true value of a PM isn't in writing prompts; it's in the strategic thinking behind the prompt: deep stakeholder empathy, complex problem deconstruction, nuanced risk assessment, and aligning outputs with overarching business goals. The PM who can use prompt engineering as a tool to accelerate strategic decision-making, simulate scenarios, and manage resources more efficiently will become more invaluable, not less. It's the difference between a scribe and an author.

Context Engineering is the real next step.

Great topic Sarah, I'm of the opinion that the real challenge for PMs goes beyond just prompt engineering, we must embrace full project context engineering. Project data comes in structured, unstructured, and semi-structured forms, and (at least for now) AI only adds value when that data is framed clearly to the LLM. PMs who can guide their teams to prepare and contextualize information will unlock AI’s potential for their project. AI is evolving quickly, but at least in the short term, I believe PM's have the opportunity to multiply their value by going beyond just the prompt and structuring the larger project data in a way that the LLM can dig deeper and provide more insights beyond the immediate prompt. Setting that framing from the beginning of a project will enable even simple prompts to produce better output.