Will the widespread adoption of prompt engineering commoditize project management skills, or can it help PMs differentiate themselves and command higher value?
Director, Learning Design & Development| PMIAsheville, NC, United States
Hi PMI Community! I’m Sarah Philbrick, and I work as a Product Manager at PMI with a focus on our learning offerings. As we go on this skill-building journey together, I’m excited to engage in meaningful conversations, explore trending topics, and learn from each other.
Reflecting on one such topic, GenAI and prompt engineering, I am interested to hear your perspective on commoditization vs. differentiation.
Will the widespread adoption of prompt engineering commoditize project management skills, or can it help PMs differentiate themselves and command higher value?
Karo OkiPlanning Coordinator | Program Management and Data Analytics Professional| Infrastructure OntarioWaterloo, Ontario, Canada
Hi Sarah,
With what I'm increasingly learning, I actually believe that the widespread adoption will help PMs to differentiate themselves particularly because it will come down to how effectively you are able to prompt your AI tool given your specific context and how savvy you become at providing solutions over the long haul. Saving Changes...
This conversation highlights the real crossroads project management is facing with GenAI. Some aspects of the role may become easier or more standardized through automation, but the core of project leadership like sound judgment, stakeholder management, and strategic thinking ,remains deeply human. Prompt engineering by itself won’t replace capable PMs. Instead, those who learn to apply GenAI in practical, value-driven ways will likely stand out. The edge won’t come from simply using AI tools, but from applying them wisely to navigate complexity and drive better outcomes.
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Constance MortonPM Consultant| Public Knowledge®Henderson, NV, United States
The 21st PM needs to leverage new AI and subsequent tools while honing traditional ones of critical thinking and communication. Tailoring tools and skills to the diverse landscape of projects speak to the value of the human in the loop.
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Anonymous
I view AI as a tool to assist PMs gather, process, and present data. If you lack these skills, relying on AI prompt engineering to fill the gap will be a disappointment because you won't not know what to look for nor be able to verify the correctness/reasonableness of the results presented to you. Adoption of prompt engineering will expose the incompetence of those without the requisite project management expertise and enhance the output of the experts in multiple folds.
I consider the objective of artificial intelligence in project management to be fundamental. We must differentiate the functions that humans should get AI to perform for us as project managers. In my opinion, artificial intelligence should serve as a support and maintain an assistant-like personality to help us navigate the complexity of projects. This is why chatbots tend to be positioned as the best solution for supporting PMs. Due to the uniqueness and temporary nature of projects, it is necessary to treat our projects individually and feed the AI with the legal, technical, and administrative information necessary for it to have all the limiting elements in which the project in question must be managed (dates, penalties, milestones, amounts, restrictions, responsible parties). Once this information has been collected, such as contracts, specifications, procedures, schedules, and plans, we must make it available to the AI and ensure that it recognises it for Project ‘X’ and then enable it for the rest of the project team. I am referring to a professional artificial intelligence (AI) application such as CHATGPT, PM INFINITY, designed to assist project managers in the comprehensive management of projects by combining natural language processing, automated document analysis, and voice assistants (such as Alexa, Sidi, or others) to provide support in the supervision, control, and execution of complex projects
It will be great if we could share more for develop this idea with PMI Community Saving Changes...
I am a civil Engineer and PM with over 25 years experience mainly in the built environment.I believe widespread adoption of AI will enhance and expedite PM decisions leading to better project outcomes.Practicing PMs will greatly benefit from the efficiencies brought about by AI
It's definitely going to enhance the role of a Project Manager and increase productivity. It is a matter of fact that what prompts are provided as inputs and how better it is structured to describe the requirements.
As other tools, GenAI can be used in a way to improve capacities for those to want to or used to hide incapacity of others.
Project Managers that want be better in their holes will use it in good way, trying to be faster in their tasks and using extra time for extra projects or just to do good use time to comunicate better with stakeholders and enchance projects involved to.
The adoption of Generative AI is a tool to enhance or eliminate “human-in-the-loop.” For example, the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) in libraries has reduced the need for administrative staff. Saving Changes...
Being trained in prompt engineering does not guarantee overall project success, but for a project manager with PMI skills definitely finds an edge with AI prompt engineering and helps him/her navigation through project.
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