Next Generation Project Management: Man Or Machine?

Nearly everyone recognize show the emergence of the “Internet” and “Big Data” have changed both our working and personal lives. Many people have written about how these tools present project managers with new opportunities as well as new challenges. Today’s project manager has faster, more capable and more cost-effective tools to store documents, to collaborate, and to communicate information. Today’s manager also has greater choices in methodology. All of this is evident to anyone practicing in the project management field today.

But what is not so evident is the fact that we are on an evolutionary trajectory that is accelerating us toward a greater use of automation in PM tools along with an increasingly greater use of information in making project related decisions. This notion is illustrated in Figure 1 below which provides a visual time line of the evolution of project management since WWII. The timeline is plotted against capability per $ on a log scale (as roughly approximated by the author).

Figure 1-Project Management’s Trend toward Automation and Information Intensity

This compelling secular force toward increasing automation and information intensity puts project management on the verge of a paradigm shift toward merging the project management framework with both data science and artificial intelligence (AI) concepts. The common, binding thread that both data science and AI bring to project management is machine learning. And when these methods are combined with the Internet, we have an extremely powerful set of project management capability at our disposal to help ensure optimum execution across the various PMBOK elements. Machines can do things quicker, less expensively and more consistently. In addition, many project management steps are repetitive/sequential tasks (especially those performed during the execution phases of projects) that have traditionally been replaced by machines.

So, are project managers on the precipice of becoming extinct just like buggy whip and slide rule makers? Well, there is a strong need for an approach that is less risky for project sponsors. An honest evaluation of project management’s overall performance on Information and Computer Technology (ICT) projects, for instance, indicates failure rates that approach 50%. For comparison, commercial airline accident rates average 0.0003% per departure. Surgical errors average about 0.01%per procedure. Therefore, in many ways senior stakeholders have become accustomed to safety, reliability and consistency in their lives. Why would they continue to tolerate high risk and low reliability if other options were available?

Thus far the unique aspects of projects (versus operations) and the non-repetitive nature project decision making has limited the experimentation and development of radically new automated approaches to the field. That is rapidly changing however. Project management tools like, projectrimms.com, for example, extract greater amounts of information from the project environment than traditional approaches and then leverage Bayesian techniques to make probabilistic judgments. In addition, it uses new heuristics for scheduling, quality management and risk management that emulate machine learning techniques. It also uses workflow combined with the internet for automated communication and notifications to stakeholders. The speed and performance capabilities of today’s information and communication technologies make all of this now feasible.

I would suggest that today’s practitioners become more familiar with the concepts of probability, information theory and inductive (versus deductive) reasoning. From my perspective your career as a successful project manager will depend upon it.

About the author:  John Aaron has been a project management consultant for the last 25 years. He is also the co-founder of projectrimms.com.  He has led the industry in developing applied, innovative methods and tools within the project management discipline. John was previously Dean and Director of Devry University’s Master’s Degree Program in Project Management which was one of country’s first master’s level programs in Project Management.