The PMO and Artificial Intelligence, AI, weekly post #04

Bringing this article to you from Redmond Washington today as I’m joining the MVP Summit this year! Finally, in-person again after a long digital freeze period. It’s great being here again. Let’s look at the world of Artificial Intelligence combined with Project Management Offices. What can we be excited about this week?

A man standing in front of a huge screen containing Gantt charts, risk matrix, Project Summaries and similar PPM visuals – Bing AI



How to talk to Artificial Intelligence?

Or, how the techies like to call it “Prompt engineering“. And how I like to call it, learn how to ask questions (again). Just imagine you meet a person for the first time, but you meet with a big wall between each other, and the only way to communicate is through a keyboard and a screen. This person is willing (and you assume able) to help you with anything you ask it. But, that person doesn’t know anything about you, what your background is, and how you came to be here.

You can, if you want to, replace person with “highly trained, focussed and capable AI” and you are good to go.

Asking the AI “top restaurants in Den Haag” will not likely provide you with a nice answer. The AI might hallucinate or give you names of Italian restaurants even though you don’t like Pizza (you monster!).

This is where “Prompt engineering” comes in. You need to tell the AI: it’s role, the question, any additional information. And in the case you want to become a master of the Prompt (!) then this might be a resource for you.

A perspective from a LinkedIn user

I think Martin’s post on LinkedIn was spot on: “[…] this isn’t about faster horses […]”

Is Artificial Intelligence going to take over, or will it be our assistant? This is likely a question that’s on every one’s minds right now. Well, I really, really, believe it will take us to the moon, and way beyond. And I don’t think we are talking about faster horses, it’s a different ball game all together.

Doing more… projects or thinking?

I had a great talk with Peter and Magnus (fellow MVP’s also here in Redmond this week), around the change for the PMO’s revolving AI. We got to an interesting thought experiment. Basically we thought that the PMO could go 2 ways with AI.

Either it adopts AI to make the PM’s faster by assisting in the clerical work. And by doing so, gives the PM additional projects to take on. Because, he has more time to take on more projects… right?

Or, and we preferred this route, the PMO can adopt AI to make the PM’s faster by assisting in the clerical work. And by doing so, gives the PM additional time to deliver better quality work, and more meaningful connections in the organization.

I really hope some C level employees read this blog and will be able to understand the benefit of the second option above the first. Let me know what you think by signing up to the newsletter, you’ll get a direct connection to me by doing so.



Final Notes

Something to read after this article (and last weeks blog of course) is something about job security.

See you next week, it will be a vacation edition because I’ll be writing it on my way to Greece: sun, sea and AI! What’s not to like?

Thanks for reading,

Erik v Hurck