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?
Ivan KozhevnikovCEO | Strategic Business Leader with Consulting ExpertiseAlmaty, Kazakhstan
From my point of view, prompt engineering and GenAI won’t commoditize project management, but they might shift the skillset. Routine tasks like tracking or reporting could be automated - and that’s a good thing. But stakeholder alignment, change leadership, and critical thinking remain human-driven, at least for now. PMs may need even stronger fundamentals - to ask the right questions, validate AI outputs, and integrate GenAI into workflows. In that sense, AI could raise the bar, not lower it.
What’s not clear to me yet is - if AI takes over most of the foundational work, how will the next generation of PMs build the judgment and experience required to lead?
Saving Changes...
HAMADA BADRProject and planning Manager engineer| ACTCKuwait, Egypt
Hi,
My name is Hamada Badr. I am working in project management from 22 years. I think this will be more helpful, especially for making timeline like baselines, recovery schedules, and revised schedules. Also, for delay analysis, because this job take much time. Sometimes we wait months to get a product, and it still have some mistakes. So, I hope this will be more fast and more correct.
Thanks!
Saving Changes...
HAMADA BADRProject and planning Manager engineer| ACTCKuwait, Egypt
Hi,
My name is Hamada Badr. I am working in project management from 22 years. I think this will be more helpful, especially for making timeline like baselines, recovery schedules, and revised schedules. Also, for delay analysis, because this job take much time. Sometimes we wait months to get a product, and it still have some mistakes. So, I hope this will be more fast and more correct.
As a tool, Gen AI will serve to get extra productivity by its use and I think this iterative way to get more and more resources will help reducing the time that was used to generate packed information in specific formats, therefore, It will be critical the prompt technichs in order to get excellent results. Saving Changes...
Hi everyone. From my point of view, the wide spread adoption of GenAI will be an another tool for Project Managers, more complete, inteligent and probably more specific (depends of the prompts). Congrats PMI for that wonderful idea. Saving Changes...
Pablo SerraProject Manager| H&T PresspartAltafulla, Tarragona, Spain
i don't think so, it will help us in managing ourt work in a more effective way. Saving Changes...
The concern is valid. However, despite my immersion in AI, I believe we are still far away from a point where AI can fully replace human PMs. The vast complexities of project management require not only the human touch but also human reasoning, which will remain indispensable (unless we become AI-dependent homo sapiens, where we require AI to reason for us!).
AI, in its current stage, struggles to fully comprehend and contextualise the vast complexity of project management with all its nuances (organisational experience, PM experience, situation analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc.).
Surely, there are arenas where AI would excel. Or perhaps the key lies in how we excel at deploying AI to relieve PMs of cumbersome tasks, liberating their mental space for creative and strategic thinking?
The rise of prompt engineering won’t kill project management, it will redefine it. Just as tools like HubSpot transformed marketing ops, generative AI is evolving how we deliver value. PMs who integrate AI fluently into workflows, communication, and decision-making can elevate their role. Prompt engineering becomes another tool in the toolbox one that amplifies efficiency, insight, and stakeholder engagement. Far from commoditizing our skills, it raises the bar. Those who cling to rigid, task-based definitions of PM will struggle. But those who adapt especially in global, tech-integrated environments can differentiate through strategic thinking, AI literacy, and human leadership. The future belongs to the PMs who are curious, collaborative, and AI-aware. Saving Changes...
Michael SekerakProject Manager| Corteva AgrisciencesHarbor Beach, Mi, United States
Like any new technology or tool, there will be hesitancy at first. Scheduling software and digital construction drawings are in the same category of concern. Keeping that in mind, I believe the project managers that have taken the time to put these tools into practice have had an easier time managing other aspects of their project. Saving Changes...
Michael SekerakProject Manager| Corteva AgrisciencesHarbor Beach, Mi, United States
Like any new technology or tool, there will be hesitancy at first. Scheduling software and digital construction drawings are in the same category of concern. Keeping that in mind, I believe the project managers that have taken the time to put these tools into practice have had an easier time managing other aspects of their project. Saving Changes...
While AI is a tool that facilitates the analysis of engineering parameters or processes for the Project Manager, human judgment is still necessary to resolve certain concepts and feed them back into the algorithm. For example, I used AI to perform a DMAIC analysis (Six Sigma statistical control +3/-3) on written observations in an engineering report, where I asked it to categorize the observations into several aspects such as "reviewer’s judgment, technical errors, missing information, questions or doubts, formatting or presentation." However, the AI needed my help to resolve those observations that the algorithm categorized as "other."
After that, it generated charts and interpreted them. Despite my instructions to maintain the format and categories for analyzing other engineering reports with observations, the AI entered a loop of errors — such as not following the previous format, switching from line charts to bar charts, among others.
In conclusion, all software must still be supervised by a subject matter expert to ensure that the information generated by AI makes sense and yields meaningful results.
PMI Team Member
