Damith KuruppuHead of PMO| Alliant RIGSERV LLCKandana, Sri Lanka
During the PMI South Asia Regional Conference held in Sri Lanka on 31-May, few speakers mentioned that 80% of project management jobs would be obsolete due to the introduction of AI tools and the remaining 20% of jobs would be mainly regarding project management decision making roles. Such decision makers have been developed through the hands-on project management experience that were acquired over the years even through doing routine project management work such as preparing schedules and documents. With these routine jobs being taken over by AI tools, how do new project professionals gain the hands-on experience that would help them to someday be good decision makers and qualify into the 20%? Also with this well advertised 80% reduction in jobs, how do we inspire aspiring project management professionals to follow a path of project management where jobs wouldn't be abundant in the future? Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
First of all, AI is a boarder term. We are using AI from more than 40 years ago, sometimes without being aware on that. The "break" was when the new generative AI model (Transformer) was published by Google. The statement you posted is right but it is related to generative AI. In fact, business analyst/portfolio/program/project managers roles "are dead" at least in the way they were defined time ago. To understand that is so simple than take a look to PMI´s courses about generative AI delivered for free and mainly the 3 layer model. Somebody said in 2017 (when the Transformer model was published): 90% of my actual abilities are totally obsolete but the remainder 10% are enhanced by 1000%. And I agree with that after working with AI from 1986 up today. Last comment: from long time ago you can find studies and papers created by the top universities in the world taking data from lot of different countries which demonstrate that the use AI is not reducing jobs. Saving Changes...
Definitely AI will be taking the jobs of those who are not continuously improving on themselves and making use of these GenAI for their benefit. We need to upgrade and upskill on the use of GenAI, then spice it up with native intelligence, business acumen and good soft skills. Saving Changes...
The claim you cite reminds me of the saying that 86.35% of statistics on the internet are made up on the spot. Unless someone can break down that 80/20% that the speakers claimed, it's just a sales pitch. The question for the audience is what are they trying to sell.
First off, what do they mean by "Project Management"? If it is primarily administrative tasks, then those speakers are horribly inefficient project managers or they conflate PMs with administrative assistants.
Secondly, given all the best instant information in the world, my job can't be boiled down to a "decision maker". In reality, most of my job is being an effective communicator, and my background is more involved in data analytics than most.
When data shows a trend, I spend far more time trying to understand the "Why?" and "Is it important?" than I spent gathering data and crunching numbers. The bigger part of my job is convincing the senior stakeholders why they should listen to me, and they're not going to read a full page of 8 2-sentence paragraphs from ChatGPT. I also have to communicate it to teams of people performing the work in skilled labor professions who might check their emails once a day and ignore most of it.
When I mentor newer PMs, I will provide tips on charts and reporting like an easy to read dashboard, but that is not my focus. I emphasize that their job should be determining what is important, who needs to know, and how to tailor the message. That requires a lot of emotional intelligence to communicate the same subject to very different audiences based on the desired outcome of that communication. I don't see AI eliminating 80% of that any time soon. Saving Changes...
Jose RiveraCEO| Mentes Colaborativas Mentcol S.A.Guayaquil, Ecuador
The impact of AI on aspiring project management professionals is profound and multifaceted. AI tools can automate routine tasks, such as scheduling, risk assessment, and resource allocation, allowing project managers to focus on strategic decision-making and stakeholder engagement. For aspiring professionals, understanding and leveraging AI technologies can provide a competitive edge. It’s essential to stay updated with AI advancements and develop skills in data analysis and machine learning to enhance project management capabilities and drive successful project outcomes. Saving Changes...
Noha ShabanProject Manager| Value Driven Project Consultancy Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
This is a great topic, thank you for bringing it up. I think that if aspiring new PM's are using project support and coordination as a pathway to project management careers, then yes this pathway is likely to be reduced or eliminated through AI. However, if the pathway is through business analysis or other similar roles, then either this won't be replaced or will take longer to be replaced. But you are right, if project professionals' existing experience is what will be left, then new PM's who have not formed enough experience may find it difficult to step into this career unless through other roles that will still exist for humans in the future...All possibilities! Saving Changes...
Lakhitha SabbellaPMP, Integrations Project Manager Kuala lumpur, Malaysia
The fast growing AI area is a threat to many jobs, not just Project Managers. There could Project Management roles which are solely responsible for support which might eventually be replaced by AI. But the Project Management role is not just that, there are several skills essential to project management that rely on human intuition, judgment, interpersonal interactions, Emotional Intelligence (EI), Negotiation , Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving , Ethical Judgment and Integrity , Cultural Awareness , Mentoring and Coaching , Vision and Innovation and last but not the least 'Empathy' which cannot be replaced by AI.
The new age Project Managers, when they understand the broader picture can definitely excel. Saving Changes...
