Consultant| Timely Nexus Project LLPGreater NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh, India
A few months ago during a project review meeting, a senior engineer made a remark "Project managers today spend most of their time scheduling meetings, sending reminders, and preparing status reports. Are they really managing projects anymore?"
The room went quiet for a moment.
Many project managers would strongly disagree. After all, they deal with stakeholder alignment, risk management, conflict resolution, and decision facilitation tasks that are often invisible but critical to project success. However, in many organisations today, PMs are spending a significant amount of time on status reporting, coordination meetings, follow-ups, dashboards, and documentation. Some professionals argue that this is simply modern project management ensuring communication and alignment. Others believe that project managers are gradually losing strategic influence and becoming administrative coordinators.
In your experience, are project managers spending too much time on coordination and reporting rather than real project decision-making and do you think automation and AI will eventually change this balance?
I’ll answer that with a question: which specific part of an aircraft is responsible for making 50 tons fly? A project’s purpose is to deliver results within set constraints, not to debate individual contributions. The synergy of an airplane's components is the perfect analogy for this kind of cheap comments.
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1 reply by SANJEET TERI
Mar 05, 2026 2:15 AM
SANJEET TERI
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Interesting analogy. I agree that project success is always the result of synergy among multiple roles like an aircraft relies on many components working together. If we extend that analogy to projects, what role do you think the project manager plays in that system - pilot, air-traffic controller or aircraft engineer?
Consultant| Timely Nexus Project LLPGreater NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh, India
Mar 05, 2026 1:53 AM
Replying to Kenan Catic
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I’ll answer that with a question: which specific part of an aircraft is responsible for making 50 tons fly? A project’s purpose is to deliver results within set constraints, not to debate individual contributions. The synergy of an airplane's components is the perfect analogy for this kind of cheap comments.
Interesting analogy. I agree that project success is always the result of synergy among multiple roles like an aircraft relies on many components working together. If we extend that analogy to projects, what role do you think the project manager plays in that system - pilot, air-traffic controller or aircraft engineer? Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Interesting question. I suspect the engineer’s remark resonates with many people because it touches a real symptom, but not necessarily the real problem.
In many organisations, project managers do spend a large portion of their time coordinating meetings, preparing status reports and maintaining dashboards. On the surface that can look administrative. However, coordination is not the same as administration. In complex projects, alignment itself is a form of work. Without structured communication, small misunderstandings quickly become cost, delay and conflict.
That said, the concern behind the comment should not be dismissed. When coordination becomes the dominant activity, it often signals a deeper issue in the organisational design of the project environment.
In my experience there are three structural causes.
First, weak decision architecture. When governance, escalation paths and decision rights are unclear, meetings multiply because the project manager becomes the informal integrator of unresolved decisions.
Second, low decision maturity among stakeholders. Many status meetings exist because stakeholders want visibility but avoid committing to decisions. Reporting replaces responsibility.
Third, fragmentation of tools and information. When project data is scattered across systems, people rely on meetings to reconstruct the real state of the project.
A related dimension is accountability. Projects move forward when decisions have clear ownership and consequences are understood. When accountability is diffused, coordination mechanisms expand to compensate for the absence of decision responsibility.
From that perspective, the future impact of automation and AI is quite interesting. If used well, automation can remove a large portion of mechanical coordination work such as status consolidation, reminders, basic reporting and information retrieval. That should not make project managers less relevant. It should push the role closer to its real purpose.
The real work of a project manager is not scheduling meetings. It is helping a group of people make timely, informed and responsible decisions under uncertainty.
If automation removes the administrative layer, the remaining work becomes more strategic, not less. Sensemaking, risk framing, ethical trade-offs, stakeholder alignment and decision facilitation become the core capabilities.
The real evolution of project management is not from coordination to automation. It is from coordination to decision leadership. Saving Changes...
Senior IS Project Manager| Baycare Health SystemsClearwater, Fl, United States
Project managers do have some administrative responsibilities such as those listed by Sanjeet, like scheduling meetings and sending out (in my case) weekly status reports. However, Project managers add value to their projects by creating project schedules, managing project risks and issues, and removing blockers from team members so that they can complete their tasks on time and within budget. Saving Changes...
"In your experience, are project managers spending too much time on coordination and reporting rather than real project decision-making and do you think automation and AI will eventually change this balance?"
In my experience, this has been a common lament for as long as I've been a project manager. It doesn't affect all project managers equally, and there isn't a common definition for what a project manager is and does that is adhered to by all companies. Automation and AI are not likely to change how organizations perceive project managers, and companies that see them as more of an administrative function are more likely to look into ways to use automation and AI to replace them.
The latter statement is a general observation, not fearmongering or an attempt to predict the future. A coworker told me that his wife, who works in data quality, was part of a large layoff and replaced by AI, in spite of the AI they were using not meeting acceptable quality levels. Maybe it will improve. My point is that two of the strongest factors in how AI will impact project managers are how project managers are currently perceived and the organization's decision-making capabilities. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
A Project Manager is somebody that makes things happen. Somebody that just do this: "Project managers today spend most of their time scheduling meetings, sending reminders, and preparing status reports" is not a Project Manager.
Saving Changes...
Ryan MillsFounder & Principal Consultant| Rydel GroupAustralia
It’s an interesting observation, and in many organisations there is some truth in it.
Over time, the project management discipline has accumulated a significant amount of administrative overhead such as status reports, meeting coordination, documentation, dashboards, and follow-ups. While all of these serve a purpose, they can gradually consume the very time that project managers should be spending on the work that truly moves delivery forward: managing risk, resolving blockers, facilitating decisions, and maintaining stakeholder alignment.
This is where modern delivery platforms and automation are starting to play an important role. PPM tools such as Focus HQ are designed to automate much of the administrative layer of project delivery consolidating reporting, surfacing insights, and reducing the need for manual coordination.
When the mundane elements of project administration are automated, the role of the PMO and the project manager can shift back toward what it should fundamentally be: enabling effective execution.
In my view, the future of project management isn’t less project managers it’s project managers spending far less time administering projects, and far more time actively leading them. Saving Changes...
Project managers do spend a significant time doing coordination, reporting and communication which might appear as administrative, they were essential for stakeholder alignment, transparency and meeting enterprise standards and governance requirements. With increasing integration of AI tools within an organization, these administrative tasks can be automated, allowing project managers to focus on other important aspects of the project.
Depending on authority and influence, project managers are responsible for making project decisions. They are solely accountable for ensuring project success by meeting the acceptance criteria and fulling the expectations of the stakeholders and sponsors. Saving Changes...
I came to the community forum today precisely because I’m frustrated with how my current organization views project management and what the role of project manager is on a project. I really appreciate the commenters above pointing things out like how different organizations have different ideas of what it means and being a project administrator is not the same as project manager. I love what Luis pointed out about decision making being diffused leading to more telephone games and more coordination among stakeholders internally which detracts from getting things accomplished. I also agree that having disparate data systems that don’t talk to each other leads to a lot more wasteful coordination and reporting. I personally feel it comes down to lack of trust that project managers can lead projects where they may not be the technical lead. I have felt also a lack of respect for the field of project management by those in leadership positions who may question why they have to work with project managers which will play a role in how the PM role is limited in what they are doing on projects. In my current organization we have all these things at play and I’m finding it very frustrating because it’s hard to manage projects when that autonomy and responsibility to manage projects has been gutted and split between a “delivery lead” who may or may not be technical and the PM. How do you help your PMO and project managers be seen as more than just project administrators? What I’ve been trying to do is not get bogged down in building reports but actually focusing on helping to remove blockers from projects and even stepping in and doing some of the work so I can be seen as part of the team. Helping with areas that are seen as important but also hard to do like recruitment. Not sure if this approach will change the perception of PM but I feel otherwise they just see us as the schedule and budget tracker and we are left out of strategic decisions and discussions because of it.
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