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?
AI will transform the PM's role and not do away with the role PMs play. Saving Changes...
Mona FrazierHead of Change| Business Change Innovations, LLCNc, United States
I believe no matter how advanced, there does not exist a tool to replace the amazing human mind. Tools are what we use to get work done faster to free the mind for creative activities. Saving Changes...
chulmin kimPM Consultant| Shinsegae I&CIncheon, 28, South Korea
May 24, 2024 5:41 AM
Replying to Sergio Luis Conte
...
With the new generation of generative AI portfolio/program/project manager and business analyst role "are dead" at least in the way they were originally defined. I think a good source to understand that are the two courses on generative AI delivered for free by the PMI, mainly if you see the 3 layer model.
As a project manager, I agree with your content. Saving Changes...
chulmin kimPM Consultant| Shinsegae I&CIncheon, 28, South Korea
Jul 09, 2024 5:45 PM
Replying to Baba Mohamed CISSE
...
The adoption of prompt engineering will give value in project management to those who have a good capacity to adapt in this disruptive world.
As a project manager, I agree with your content. Saving Changes...
I believe AI prompt engineering skills will enhance PMs ability to utilise AI as a tool rather than commoditize project management skills. Currently, LLMs still produce output based on the user's input. So regardless of how well structured the prompt is, the user still has to make a suitable request to get the best feedback. It's still a garbage in, garbage out system to some extent.
Prompt engineering for LLMs does lower the bar in terms of the level of knowledge a person needs to function effectively as a project manager but knowledge in project management and subject matter knowledge is still needed to direct the LLM on what to do.
An experienced PM with prompt engineering skills (and general AI productivity best practices) can further differentiate themselves by how effectively they can utilise AI to enhance their productivity and output quality. Saving Changes...
AI is a solution to optimize generation of more & more complex deliverables in less & less time. However, there is no AI that can convince a team of developers and testers, or electricians and quality managers to work more closely with each other, hearing and smoothing out each team's concerns, differences and objectives. THAT is true project management. AI is for deliverables management. I think the real jobs that it endangers is the Business Analyst and Project Administrator, who do a lot of deliverables development work, and are traditional Junior PM roles.
...
1 reply by LISTER CARBON
Aug 09, 2024 1:00 PM
LISTER CARBON
...
Well said!
Saving Changes...
Shenin HassanEducation Control / Compliance Specialist | Ministry of Education UAE Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
I perceive and deploy Gen AI tools as supporting resources to manage certain aspects of my projects. However, human intervention is critical to ensuring the accuracy and confidentiality of project information.
I managed to build two GPTs to support me with (1) retrieving specific information from frequently used organizational publications (e.g., company profiles, policy documents, and other organizational process assets) and (2) generating graphs and charts based on project data. This is more like looking at the GPT as a COBOT (Collaborative BOT), my personal digital assistant.
One interesting application I developed is a scenario extraction GPT, which would provide me with specific scenarios from a repository of "lessons learned" scenarios I have created and fed the GPT as knowledge files. This is immensely helpful for me, as I can always refer to previous project issues, precautions to be taken in certain projects/customers, workarounds, and solutions adopted in previous deployments, etc. As mentioned in the course, due diligence should be invested in creating the persona and the tasks. I followed a modular approach by having sub-tasks, each instructed to handle a specific action.
Feedback is critical, and reinforced learning is what makes Gen AI interesting. Saving Changes...
Shenin HassanEducation Control / Compliance Specialist | Ministry of Education UAE Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Jul 09, 2024 5:45 PM
Replying to Baba Mohamed CISSE
...
The adoption of prompt engineering will give value in project management to those who have a good capacity to adapt in this disruptive world.
I completely align, and at the same time, a trial and error approach would make the adoption more rewarding. Saving Changes...
Adoption of prompt engineering will helps PMs to differentiate themselves as highly skilled and very efficient in the execution of their mandate and thus command high value in the field of project management professional. With the adoption, the PMs will acquire knowledge and ability to select appropriate formula for prompt engineering based on the nature( complex or not) of the project and thus achieve the objective with ease.
Previously the use of prompt AI engineering was not known or exploited. The faster the PMs exploits this knowledge and skill, the more the value would be accredited to them before AI is overtaken by something new. The field is quite dynamic. I am definitely sure that after AI, something else will crop up which will be of higher value and will change the environment of the project. Saving Changes...
PMI Team Member
