Episode transcript The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.
Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Recently I received a question that I said, You know, I need to answer it in this episode. Will PMOs survive in the age of AI with all these technologies? Will the Project Management office still be relevant? How will things happen in the project office? The answer to this question is not easy, and everything I can say to you now is that it's based on my experience and it's based on what I'm seeing today. I don't have a crystal ball that is able to understand what the future will look like. The future needs to unfold so we can see what will happen. However, there are a few trends that I truly believe we need to pay attention to. The first thing if your current project management office has the attributes of preparing reports, collecting information from projects, and consolidating them to be presented to the senior leadership of our organization, organizing data, preparing templates, or enforcing people to use these templates. Train people on the use of these templates, and train people on the methodology organization is using. If this is the scope of work of your project management office, I see challenges in the future. I see massive disruptions, and why I see these massive disruptions because everything that is part of the scope of this example of project office will be done by AI will be done.
There is no such thing as you combining information and getting reports with the power of the AI of today. You know, this does not make any sense because the information will be compiled, consolidated, and using generative AI; you do not even need to give a perfect parameter. You can just ask in natural language as you ask a project manager for information; you can just write please, how this project is going. Is there a problem or not? You can ask this way and get the answer. And this brings me a challenge. Will reports even exist in the future? This concept of preparing reports and why I'm saying this is because, with generative AI, I just need to go on a GPT on a transformer. It can be okay. My company GPT, and ask questions the way I'm speaking. I can even speak with the voice box of matters that matter. Facebook just released. I can even speak and say, How is my project? Is there any problem with this project? I don't need to ask a specific question. I can ask and dig in based on the feedback I received that is generated by AI with pretended real data of the project. So I may not need it because why do I do a report? I do a report to consolidate information because it's hard for them to get this information.
But when the information is at their fingertips, why do I need to do that? And then by listening to that, you may say to me, Oh, it's so it's the end of the project office. And my answer is no. It's just a shift in the role. For example, if you use AI now to accelerate, to improve the speed of your project delivery, you are using AI as a tool to maximize corporate results. This should be your top priority today. If you are a manager of a PMO, this must be your top priority how I can use these kinds of tools with safety, privacy, confidentiality, and everything to produce that to speed up. Because for example, I said one thing about enforcing templates, and this is why I'm saying that this will not be needed anymore because I will do that for you. You just provide the data and say, Please prepare for me the risk register, and it will prepare the risk register based on the templates you already provided, the user, the project manager, and the person in the project team. Managing risks does not need to know; oh, there is a header or footer. This is just irrelevant. They could keep the focus on the project and what matters. The second thing you can use the PMO competence results of predictive analysis of projects to improve your own. Management process, you can benefit from the use of AI to identify areas where your project competence could be improved.
Maybe people are struggling with this because of risks, for example. So you know exactly what you need to do. And this is the same for the project manager. Okay. Project managers will have to revisit their skills, and this is why I am on this. I would say fight to promote AI and to make everybody aware of that. Another thing you need to think it's what about the soft skills or the power skills? What about that? Are you willing to use the PMO force to help project managers to negotiate better, manage stress better, to motivate their teams better? Because so far, at least at this moment, I'm recording this podcast, there is no AI tool that motivates people. Maybe in the future, it will have one, but not right now. So these are the paths. So what is important is that if you want to continue with relevance, you need to shift because all these manual tasks, data collection, and data exploration will be done by technology. So just think about that and try to reframe what your PMO would be, and then it will be something that will add a massive value to your company, especially in these volatile times. Think about that, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
