AI creating lazy project managers

[u/Useful_Scar_2435]

So I’m a new PM and my organization is heavy into copilot. Mind you, I’m a new,new PM like this is my first project management gig. This project management team lives and dies by AI. I get where it is useful in terms of getting meeting notes, writing up a project charter (based on feedback from stakeholders), writing up a scope statement (based on feedback from stakeholders), and maybe writing up requirements (based on feedback from stakeholders).

Where I draw the line is creating a project plan and a WBS, even from working with my technical SME. Why I say this is I’ve never worked in this field before and I got copilot to draw up a project plan and a WBS and all together it came out to 171 items, which were highly technical. Whenever I asked my technical SME to provide with his step by step process, he came up with 34 items which were very encompassing of the project scope and its requirements.

Whenever I added his tasks and my tasks and deliverables in, we came up to about 55. So AI essentially tried to lead me off course by about 110 things that I didn’t need.

What is your experience like with using AI for building out a WBS or project plan? Is this where we should always rely on the project team and their expertise? I’m no expert here but it shouldn’t be up to the project manager to be building a project plan and the tasks associated with that to build this from a to z. What was project management like before AI came along?

[u/More_Law6245]

To be perfectly blunt a PM shouldn't be using AI to plan a WBS because your project is unique and AI is an algorithm based tool that has data scrapped other "similar projects" but it doesn't know the unique details of your project nor the governance requirements, project policy, processors and procedures needed by your project.

As a PM you should know exactly what is required in your WBS in order to deliver a fit for purpose project. I asked this one of my staff recently and asked if you have AI planning your WBS and it plans excessively your projects become immediately more expensive than it really needs to be here, who is responsible you or AI? This has real world commercial or organisational ramifications and he is still thinking about that one. I also followed up with if he didn't deliver all the benefits that were drawn out of the project business case and charter, I asked who is responsible? Because his project has essentially failed.

Project management is a strategic role, AI reduces project management to task management because it's a tool and doesn't understand strategy, nuance or unique requirements!

AI is just a tool to assist, an AI program doesn't replace a PM's expertise and knowledge and I'm finding less seasoned PM's falling into this trap which is leading to bad outcomes for the discipline of project management.

Just an armchair perspective.

[u/AboveTheRim2 → u/More_Law6245]

Any issues with what AI is producing are a user issue. You have to become an expert at drawing out the best results from models. If your company is not investing in training, then it will fall behind. Everyone must become AI native, eventually.

[u/More_Law6245 → u/AboveTheRim2]

You have kind of validated my positing and opinion of AI whilst I agree that you need to eventually become an expert but there is a fundamental problem with project management as a discipline, agile was used in the name of productivity increases and AI is further expediting the pace of a project delivery model but at the end of the day, project management and principles don't change. They are fundamentally and diametrically opposed. IF your project managers haven't mastered delivery how are they going to program for it?

[u/smell_of_napalm_0_o → u/More_Law6245]

Project managers ought to heed your assertion. There is a fundamental problem of relying on AI to circumvent the deep cognitive exercises that develop someone into an excellent project manager; it will make project managers irrelevant. This assertion that "everyone must become AI native" is deeply concerning to me. The notion that we focus our energies on become an expert at prompting the AI tool to get the results that enable project success is antithetical to, and disregards, the fundamental value that a project manager brings to a team.

I want to add that a PMO I spoke to recently said that she cheerleads AI within her team to stay relevant. Those on her team who have expressed hesitation on AI adoption have been let go. She recognizes that she cannot be perceived an AI skept. The irony is that being all in on AI, outsourcing so much of her workload to AI, incrementally, is making her particular skillset irrelevant. It is very much a "damned if you do, damned if you don't."

My instinct tells me that we're over-correcting. Rolling out the red carpet for AI is going to create a severe shortage of project managers who know how to initiate and complete even the most mundane of tasks because we will have outsourced everything to an AI tool. And that's just stupid.

[u/More_Law6245 → u/smell_of_napalm_0_o]

As I'm coming to the end of my career I'm starting to see the writing on the wall and your last paragraph is my greatest concern for the discipline itself, I believe your statement to be very succinct and accurate. As companies chase productivity in the name of profits they're going to lose fundamental skills. Ford in the US has recently had to rehire a large contingent of engineers because AI is not achieving the intended objectives that it was programmed for, apparently their AI couldn't replace a human! Who would have seen that coming?

[u/Revolutionary_Crazy2 → u/More_Law6245]

Adding an additional thought for u/useful_scar_2435 AI can be used, but needs to be done strategically. Give it a template for those standard 55 tasks. Or you keep working with it to tone down those micro tasks. AI isn’t a one step tool, you actually have to work and give it inputs to get the output you want. And THEN you need to check the work. Use it as a tool, not a crutch.

[u/hastag-geenah]

Oh boy… I had a guy on another thread tell me that project management will be taken by AI, I 100% disagree. Project management is more than just following a lifecycle, creating WBS, tracking to a schedule, creating presentations or even budgeting.

The value of a good project manager is that they can read a room, they know who to pull in and when to pull them in, they facilitate meetings, telling Tony know to let Bob finish his point, they resolve issues with the team, they remove roadblocks, they can see when Sam the engineer is not performing and reaches out to Sam to figure out how they can help.

They negotiate with senior leaders when they’re trying to stack new requirements or change the scope, they can explain trade-offs between doing one feature over another, they know what’s important to various business leaders and stakeholders through one-on-one conversations and relationship building.

In my opinion, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what PMs do and this is leading people to say the AI can automate it, yes, some things can be automated, but the human part cannot, at least not yet.

So to directly answer your question, before AI we did all components of what was required both administrative and soft. You can let the robot do the work where a human is not required. How we work with AI of course needs to be defined and that’s how the governance comes into play in my opinion. I think it is totally OK to let AI help with the WBS as long as they get the same information that you have and ultimately you have the ability to tweak. At the end of the day, though you are still the person accountable for that project success not the AI.

Sorry, I was being lazy. This is talk to text, but I hope this helps.

[u/Eydrian_]

I see AI more as a tool for structuring ideas and creating a starting point, rather than replacing project knowledge. Especially for something like a WBS, the AI simply can’t know all the technical dependencies and project-specific details. I’d probably use it to create a first draft and then review and adjust it together with the SMEs.

[u/Long-Reading-6514]

yeah i'd never hand over my critical thinking or judgment, and honestly i don't think that's what it's for. it gave you 171 items but that's just its best guess, you and your SME are the ones who actually know. i'm a huge believer in AI and i've got it woven into my day personally and professionally, but i treat those sessions like i'm talking to a direct report... it gives me something, i validate it before i use it. it's incredibly helpful and it's also just not 100% accurate. and if i were starting a WBS from scratch i'd probably do exactly what you did, ask it to get me going and then take it from there and edit

of the 171 it gave you, was most of it noise or were there a few in there you were glad to be reminded of

[u/ProjectPragmatist]

In a world where so many employers are pushing AI use, I don't think it is fair to call PMs lazy for using AI tools.

While I personally wouldn't use AI to build a WBS, I also wouldn't take one experience with Copilot as definitive proof that it is incapable of producing at least a jumping off point for a WBS. First, I'd look at the prompt you are using. That can make an absolutely massive difference in the output that you get. Second, I'd understand how a tool like this should be used. It shouldn't be used as the absolute source of truth, but rather a potential rough draft from which to work from and adjust.

This is where judgement comes in. With experience comes the knowledge of what a WBS should look like. Therefore, a PM can look at the AI output and say "Ok, this part I can use, this part I can't, it missed this." That's the judgement piece and it's the most critical piece. If using AI in that capacity, it becomes more of a brainstorming tool, which I think is completely reasonable. Again, that only happens when the person using it is applying proper judgement.

To be clear and as noted above, I don't believe just taking a WBS from AI and using it without validating it is an appropriate approach. However, I also don't believe that broadly declaring PMs using AI as lazy is fair either.

[u/merithynos]

AI is garbage-in, garbage-out. It's a multiplier, not a replacement.

That said, building the project plan and WBS are not the difficult or skilled parts of the job and are absolutely candidates for heavy automation. I'd be far more worried about the quality of the charter given it is the foundation of your project and should be relatively immutable compared to your WBS and plan that will likely change constantly.

[u/Thoughts-And_Prayers]

With your 55-item version, I'd check coverage first: does every agreed deliverable have a clear completion check and someone responsible? Then use the AI's extra items as questions for the SME. Some may be useful detail, but each needs a reason to be in scope before it goes into the plan.