Project Challenges

A new Podcast is on the air and this week Ricardo discusses how our work and personal relationships tend to feed back into our perspective and set of implications. In the last Newsletter he published, Ricardo spoke about an event that was introduced to me by a great friend, Burning Man. Ricardo went to Burning Man this month looking for something “out of the box”.

In June 2023, we embarked on a exciting journey to explore the uncharted territories of Atificial Intelligence within Project Management.

The rapid technological advancements an the transformative potential of AI elevated our curiosity, leading us to conduct a comprehensive survey among experts and practitioners worldwide.

AI can enhance project management through automation of repetitive tasks and anable more efficient scheduling, resource allocation, and risk assessment.

In this episode, Ricardo discusses the dilemma of maintaining trust while conveying truths that may not always be pleasant to hear. He emphasizes the critical role of honesty and transparency in project management, despite the challenges they might bring. Ricardo uses his experience and shares real-life instances where telling hard truths was vital for the ultimate success of a project.

In this episode, Ricardo digs into the uncanny world of zombie projects - the projects that refuse to die despite their draining effects on organizational resources. He explores the mystery behind their existence, highlighting factors such as the fear of failure and the misgivings around abandoning sunk costs.

In this week's episode, Ricardo explores a crucial concept for achieving successful project delivery: "swallowing the fish." This idea, originating from the book "Technology as a Service Playbook" by Thomas Lah and JB Wood, is represented by a graph that forms the shape of a fish, depicting a decline in revenue and an increase in expenses.

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), project leaders should ask themselves two key questions. First: Are my organization and I willing to adopt AI-inspired tools as part of the ordinary course of doing business, particularly in project management? This question will give you a sense of your organization’s appetite for adopting machine learning (ML)–inspired technology. The second—and, in fact, the more critical question—is: Are my organization and I ready to take this important leap forward? This question will give you a sense of how quickly you can identify and apply AI to projects.

Technology has begun to transform how organizations deliver projects, and rapid change lies ahead. What role will leaders play when AI is deployed in project management?

While AI is not yet a standard tool in the world of projects and project management, there is no doubt that it will disrupt this discipline, and probably faster than we expect. The prospect of that transformation seems almost incredible: in most organizations the tools used to manage projects remain relatively basic compared to the sophisticated digital technology being deployed in other parts of business. Most projects are still managed with Microsoft Office tools, such as Excel and PowerPoint. Can you imagine running your business and operations with spreadsheets? Well, that reflects how little technology has evolved in project management.

In this video, Ricardo explains in detail how to calculate the critical path. It explains with examples how to calculate the forward pass and the backward pass, as well as the free and total floats.

This video is all about AI in Project Management Ricardo Vargas shares six direct applications of Artificial Intelligence and how the impact the work of project teams.

Join Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez and Ricardo Vargas on a informal conversation about their featured article on Harvard Business Review about artificial intelligence and other project management technologies.

Only 35% of projects today are completed successfully. One reason for this disappointing rate is the low level of maturity of technologies available for project management. This is about to change. Researchers, startups, and innovating organizations, are beginning to apply AI, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to project management, and by 2030 the field will undergo major shifts. Technology will soon improve project selection and prioritization, monitor progress, speed up reporting, and facilitate testing. Project managers, aided by virtual project assistants, will find their roles more focused on coaching and stakeholder management than on administration and manual tasks. The author show how organizations that want to reap the benefits of project management technologies should begin today by gathering and cleaning project data, preparing their people, and dedicating the resources necessary to drive this transformation.

How many times we were faced with a challenge to decide in our personal life? Follow Ricardo Vargas on a journey to use a mathematical model to select the best house for you to buy. AHP is one of the most reliable tools for you to improve your decision making and apply it on your work and daily life. Created by Thomas Saaty, AHP is considered today the best approach to remove bias and increase your assertiveness in making decisions.

In this week's podcast, Ricardo addresses the topic “Economy of Attention”. He says that a product is made to meet a market need, and the greater the demand, the higher the price of the product. However, as large amounts of data and actions we must manage make attention an invaluable presentation. There are many things vying for our focus at any given time, including work, employees, social media, and electronics.

Informal discussion with Maged El-Hawary, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of ASGC about the future of project management and their case study featured on the book PM Next Generation, published by Wiley.