Will AI Make Project Managers More Valuable or Less Necessary?

Artificial Intelligence Leadership Stakeholder Management

Tsz Kiu Wong Founder| T.K. Felix Wong Studio Edinburgh, SCT, United Kingdom

Over the past year, we've seen AI tools rapidly improve in areas such as scheduling, reporting, risk analysis, meeting summaries, documentation, and stakeholder communications.

Many tasks that traditionally consumed a project manager's time can now be automated or significantly accelerated.

This raises an interesting question:

As AI becomes more capable, will project managers become more valuable because they can focus on leadership, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement? Or will organizations need fewer project managers as administrative and coordination tasks become increasingly automated?

Which project management responsibilities do you believe are most likely to be automated in the next five years?

And which skills will become even more important for future project managers?

I'm interested in hearing perspectives from PMs across different industries, including construction, engineering, IT, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing.

Posted: Jun 21, 2026 7:25 AM

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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

Not AI, generative AI. Less Necessary, unfortunately. Right now 95% of project, program, portfolio manager work is replaced by generative AI. We are moving from human in the loop to human in the lead. I am saying this because I am leading this type of initiatives.

Posted: Jun 21, 2026 9:35 AM

Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal

An excellent question.

I believe many coordination and administrative activities will be increasingly automated over the next five years, including reporting, scheduling, status tracking, documentation and parts of risk analysis.

However, the more interesting shift is not whether project managers become more or less valuable. It is how their role evolves.

As AI takes over more execution support activities, project managers will spend less time managing information and more time governing decisions, aligning stakeholders, navigating uncertainty and ensuring accountability.

The future may not be about managing projects or AI separately, but about leading increasingly complex human-AI delivery systems.

In that environment, judgment, communication, trust and decision-making will become even more important than they are today.

Posted: Jun 21, 2026 10:56 AM

Aaron Porter

Community Champion

IT Director| Blade HQ Payson, UT, United States

I think my definition of AI improving may be different from yours. I'm not saying either is wrong, just different.

I'm seeing more AI tools and built-in integrations, which has reduced the need for third-party integrations and made it easier to incorporate AI into existing workflows But, is AI materially more useful in completing project management work? Yes, in many use cases. Has AI become materially more trustworthy at making judgments and eliminating the need for a human-in-the-loop? This is where I get significantly more skeptical.

One particular drum I beat on, possibly too much, is that a project manager that has a good understanding of the role and works in an environment where project managers are more than glorified secretaries is not sacrificing leadership, decision-making, and stakeholder engagement to work on meeting notes. A project manager that works in an environment that places greater value on the administrative function, who then uses AI to become more efficient, is likely to be rewarded with more of the same kinds of projects.

There is a middle ground, of course. AI will reduce the administrative burden for project managers who are already spending most of their time on the more critical activities. I think a realistic answer to your question is that in organizations where the administrative side of project management holds more value, there may be fewer project managers or more and larger projects assigned to each project manager. In organizations where project leadership is more valued, some project managers may not see much more than a little less friction in their daily work while others may be outed as having a more administrative focus.

I've heard forecasts from different sources, including AI, stating that the PM role may be splitting into an administrative focused role and a leadership role,. If I'm being honest, I think they're overlooking that this is already happening and that people in the "leadership PM" role have already moved into different titles. They may still rely on project management skills, but they're program managers, directors, strategy leaders, chiefs of staff, transformation leaders, and similar roles. Because of this, I think it more likely that AI will help those project managers with leadership capabilities evolve into broader leadership positions than it is to transform project managers with an administrative focus into "leadership PMs".

The question of which skills will be most important will largely depend on the type of project manager the organization wants. The list of skills/functions that have the potential to be automated is not short (AI can generate this list for you), especially when you take into account those can can be fully automated and those that can only be partially automated - that will still need or strongly benefit from human involvement.

Posted: Jun 21, 2026 8:19 PM

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Will AI Make Project Managers More Valuable or Less Necessary?

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