Technology has advanced substantially over the last few decades. Artificial intelligence has played a significant role by acting as the central nerve appearing in an extensive variety of technologies and providing smart solutions to problems. Innovations developed within the AI frontier are the core driving force that transforms how we undertake our contemporary lifestyles and how businesses compete in this globalized world. In this post I question the appropriateness of integrating AI within the field of project management and the strategies to leverage and manage AI-enhanced projects. As new technologies continue to develop, I suggest that traditional paradigms of conducting business and the management of  projects ought to adapt in order to remain relevant and efficient. It is well accepted that management is always an evolving discipline. Similarly, by embracing AI, I propose that management and project management approaches will have to evolve to cater for the new changes, possibilities, and challenges of AI-enabled projects.

Project management has enjoyed a plethora of advancements over the years. Technological advancements have led to a wide range of software and applications that ease planning, monitoring, controlling, and managing projects. Today, there is ongoing debate which has centered on AI and how the world will soon be AI-driven. It is suggested by many stakeholders and practitioners that AI is the next big thing and its prospects are simply limitless. But is this inevitable?  The impact of integrating AI within any practice is well-documented, and in this article I will concentrate on AI in project management. All in all, similar to other domains, applying AI into project management methodologies implies a paradigm shift in how projects and AI are conceived and practiced. Thus, I see that potential standalone roles will evolve into interdependent activities, and each will borrow characteristics from one another. Objectives here are, thus, twofold: (i) elaborate on the need and areas to integrate AI into project management practices, and (ii) to provide insight into how AI enhancement may influence hybrid management and contemporary approaches broadly.

Various submissions within the literature suggest that Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to support project managers with decision-making and to optimize the performance of project teams, thus improving project results. Predictive analytics, a major field in AI, provides project managers with the opportunity to forecast project developments or risks and to optimize future project setups. It enables the use of a large number of project-relevant data and has the ability to generate, test, and evaluate alternative solutions. The results of predictive analytics can help optimize project results, avoid project delays or failures, reduce costs, and achieve project goals. Automated scheduling and the management of a project's human resources and other resources are crucial for a successful project. AI technologies can help improve time efficiency and quality of the scheduling process, providing project managers with unlimited options for managing human and other resources during a project. This results in a reduction of manual effort in this part of project management, which can have a positive impact on costs and open up new possibilities for human resource management and dispatching. With the application of AI solutions, the management of complex projects has greater potential to avoid uncertainties and deliver high performance.

There are various AI-based tools and technologies available that have the potential to automate several parts of the project management process. A few project and research initiatives have emerged to provide AI support in certain situations and to combine this support with problem-solving. All of these initiatives are research-oriented and do not yet offer complete solutions for proven use in real project situations. Having conducted a brief review of the literature and searched for published case studies which document AI’s use within project planning and development, I find no published works detailing investigation into which of the AI-based solutions have worked well and under which conditions. The results of my search suggest (or rather imply) that some basic approaches of AI are rather common in project management. It shows that some organisations use AI in some elements of their project management work but this is dependent upon the organisation’s size and the sector in which they are operating. It is seen that currently the most important characteristics of AI in project management are objective structuring and data analytics. Furthermore I suggest that AI does make headway in project management, but I observe that the uptake is still low. AI ha steh potential to have a significant impact on project management and bring project management performance to a new level when utilised appropriately in the project's lifecycle. By utilising AI, there is potential to synchronize strategic goals through AI ‘use’ cases and to allow the overall business strategy to be evident in an organisation, especially if project management is part of an organisational business strategy. AI offers the potential for greater communication and collaboration between stakeholders, teams, and resources, creating room for mentoring opportunities and helping in managing experts' knowledge to resolve conflicts.

However, I suggest that the integration and replacement of human project managers by artificial intelligence systems raises several challenges and has its limitations. In seeking to identify some of the more significant issues and challenges I offer five points of focus to consider.  First, human decision-making is complex, involving emotions and rationality. AI decision-making is based solely on pattern recognition; it cannot replicate human intuition and creativity, which are essential in solving complex problems in natural sciences. Second, project managers use interpersonal skills to communicate, motivate, and negotiate with stakeholders, an ability that AI still cannot replicate. Third, AI technologies can learn from historical data and documents but cannot guarantee that they are up to date or reflect the latest research. Fourth, AI systems can amplify, multiply, and transmit biases, rendering incorrect results, and have serious ethical considerations, and finally, AI systems have limitations, particularly in understanding organisational dynamics and stakeholder interactions.

I suggest therefore that whilst AI can assist project managers in finding quick solutions for certain problems based on patterns and historical data, it cannot replace the human project manager fully, as it overlooks organisational dynamics and project management best practices, which can involve uncertainties. The successful management of projects and operations requires both human judgment and provocative analytics. The growth of project management depends on both AI technology and human experience factor which are contextual and dynamic.. Hence, individual projects should be looked at in the context of a diverse environment and complemented by a combination of AI assistance, rules, algorithms, human judgment, and leadership. I suggest therefore that integration and not replacement is the future paradigm when seeking to leverage the potential of AI within the field of Project Management and that there will always be a need for efficient leaders.

So what does the future hold? AI continues to grow and is an exciting area of which is experiencing constant evolution. Technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing continue to mature and enable experts to make better use of AI insights. Incorporating a layer of AI into project management presents itself as an emerging feature of a project manager’s role, improving and augmenting decision-making and reducing managerial overhead. An area in which we can expect a lot of change is the interaction between AI and human experts, mostly referred to as augmented intelligence and guided decision-making. So, the project manager’s tool and skill set will evolve rather than the tasks associated with their role being fully replaced. Some see this collaboration as a ‘fourth’ wave of human-machine interaction, focusing on projects for the creative class, where AI can enhance the creativity of project stakeholders to develop new ideas.

Subsequent trends include initiatives to elevate the abilities of the project manager with smarter training and education. While there are projects already underway, building the next generation of tools, getting AI to work within this space is a big challenge. Successfully augmenting the role of a project manager with AI will depend on the role and the way the AI system fits into the organisational culture of project management. However, as AI and human manager synergy develops, the  premise that it is a zero-sum game is open to challenge.  Agility and adaptive project management are required skill sets for AI-augmented project management and project leadership. I suggest that we will all continue to see the blend of humanism, creativity, and professional AI tooling as an approach to leading the way in more efficient and innovative project organisations. With the growing complexity of AI systems, it is not feasible yet to overtake the role of someone who has an associated understanding of human moral and aesthetic values, context awareness, heuristic reasoning, and human creativity.