The Rise of AI: How AI is Revolutionising Project Management
Learn how AI is integrated into project management. Watch this webinar with expert Mashhood Ahmed to gain actionable insights and strategies.
Introduction
In this webinar, learn how AI is enhancing project management. Mashhood Ahmed discusses how AI tools are streamlining project processes and improving team dynamics. Gain insights into adopting AI in your agile projects.
Video
Access the presentation here presentation, tune in to the audio version, or read the full transcript.
About Mashhood Ahmed
Mashhood Ahmed, with significant experience in project management and AI, has been instrumental in pioneering AI integration in project management. His global engagements reflect his deep knowledge and success in leveraging AI to enhance project efficiency.
Transcript
Here’s the full transcript of the video.
00:00:00 Mashhood Ahmed: Thank you much, Jay and thank you very much for Knowledge Train for giving me this opportunity to speak in front of this for crowd. So today I will be talking of about “The Rise of AI – How AI is Revolutionising the Project Management”. This is not something that will happen in the future, this is something happening right now today, and we will see that. How we can do this in a live demo in 20 minutes from now, right, so, let’s just stay there. So, before I get started, let me just make sure my slides are working. Yes, they are.
00:00:33 Mashhood Ahmed: There we go, my name is Mashhood Ahmad. I’m a certified human, I’m not a robot, I’m not a hologram, I’m a real person. right? So, if you would like to connect with me, you can scan the QR code. My LinkedIn profile and connected you know the LinkedIn. About my work, I have over 20 years of Project Management, Consulting and Programme Management experience worked in US, Canada and Middle East. I got my PMP certification back in 2008, so I’m an old guy with the PMP certification. Got my master’s from University of Waterloo and few years back I challenged myself to do something different and that was the engagement and speaking in front of the crowd that took me all over the world. I’ve been to South Africa, Tanzania, New Zealand, Singapore, you know Pakistan US and Canada, so many places in within US and Canada that I cannot even count. So that’s been my experience and I do volunteer for PMI and a couple of other volunteer organisations. So, I highly recommend all of you to volunteer in whatever capacity you can, because that’s how they give back to the society, right. So that’s a good sign of our humanitarian side.
00:01:51 Mashhood Ahmed: So, with that you know connecting the LinkedIn if you would like to and we’ll just get into the topic. Before I get started, I usually start my talk with patterns and the reason I like to talk about patterns is because patterns are everywhere. They tell us very important lessons in life, right? They tell us what’s gonna happen, how to map the pattern, how to see the pattern. So, our goal is to understand the pattern, follow the pattern. Either break the patterns or making patterns so that we are getting the edge from those patterns. So, learning from patterns, let’s just look at industrial revolution. So first industrial revolution that lasted over 150 years was about moving people from agricultural society to their national society, right? So that was the time when, you know, the agriculture industry saw like, farming equipment, tractor trailers and then we see the mechanisation. We saw the steam water power, some radio network and things like that. OK, that was 150 years long time frame. Then after World War II we get into second industrial revolution up until late 80s, early 90s.
00:03:06 Mashhood Ahmed: And that was all about mass production, assembly line, electricity, power grid, road network, rail network, aero planes flying all over the place. And that lasted about 60 to 65 years, depending how you calculate that time frame. And then in early 90s, we get into the computer automation in mid 90s, we saw the birth of Internet and we got like connected devices. People start talking, communicating and then that lasted about like 30 plus years now. Where we are today in 2024, we are looking at Cyber physical system AI technology, neural network and other new technologies. So, the important lesson here is 2 form, one time it takes for this revolution is shrinking, and the innovation growth that is happening in each in this revolution is much higher than before. That means it is very important for us to understand and learn these new technologies and new things as they come along for us. And also, we are the 1st generation who will experience multiple industrial revolutions in our lifetime. What I mean by that somebody you know like our parents, right? Most of our parents born maybe 40s or 50s, you know, and they spend their whole career in one industrial revolution right. They stayed there, they did some little bit of a change, and it was ok for the adoption. But we’re the 1st generation that will see multiple industrial revolution, meaning this fourth industrial revolution will be much shorter and innovation growth here will be much faster than we can catch up.
00:04:54 Mashhood Ahmed: With all things happening in generative AI, it’s impossible for anybody to catch up with all the things that have happened up there. So, what is important here is from these patterns is to have the important skill set and I would like to talk about two skill sets that are very important. These are not technological skill sets: this is a pure human skill set. Number one is our ability to unlearn. We need to unlearn the old ways of doing things, and we need to unlearn our old habits and old patterns. Then we need to supplement this with our ability to relearn, right? So, we need to relearn the new way, we need to adapt to the new ways of doing things. And we need to build our new habits so that we can have this continuous improvement throughout our life. So, this is very important, right? So, we need to unlearn how we do things and we need to relearn the new way and we need to be OK with not knowing everything that is happening in the technology. Or the business because it’s just really not possible to catch up with all the new innovation and the growth that is happening at the speed of the light.
00:06:10 Mashhood Ahmed: So, with that, I’m going to move into the definition of AI. I believe everybody has seen some definition of AI. Everybody has a good understanding of what AI is, right? But for me it is simple which is, It’s the ability for the computers to perform tasks that normally requiring human intelligence or to imitate intelligent human behaviour such as problem solving, learning, reasoning, having the logical discussion right, visual perception, looking at the pictures a dog or a cat. Recognising voice, is this a male voice or a female voice, is this like a European accent, Australian accent or an American accent, right? So having that recognition and different languages and then we can put like a large amount of data. And patterns into this AI engine that can analyse this and give us the more intelligent results that we are looking at. So, with that, I will talk about the AI categories at the very high level. So, the first one is generative AI that can generate the content. It can generate images, it can generate videos, it can generate voice, any content that we are trying to play with generative AI is an example of generative AI. For the generative AI can also build the context that means it can infer from the information what is not being said and kind of fill those gaps. And when it does, sometimes it does it correctly, other times it does it incorrectly and it causes the hallucination.
00:07:50 Mashhood Ahmed: The next one is the specialised AI, which is like a narrow AI that can do something very, very specific. So, the example I typically give is in healthcare, radiologists have been using AI to look at the images and see if there’s a cancer or if what type of problems are right. So, this is like image recognition kind of a problem. And what we could do is we could look at the image and say yes, this patient has 80% chance of cancer. This person patient does not right so and vice versa and then we have hybrid AI that can combine the both. So, what happens when we combine the both so, the same example of medical diagnosis. Now the doctors can say OK, this patient has cancer cells, if I treat this patient with this medication or this therapy, what would be the outcome? How the cancer will shrink, how it will impact the patient body because you know, cancer medications affect the human body very dangerously, right? So, we need to keep a balance up there and that’s an example of a hybrid AI where you can use specialised AI for the layer of generative AI images, pictures. And other details and see what the scenario or the simulation may look like.
00:09:09 Mashhood Ahmed: So, some of the research findings I just put these two research findings on one slide. I’m pretty sure all of you have seen this one “AI won’t replace humans – but humans with AI will replace humans without AI”. Now if you take this same statement 100 or 200 years back, the farming equipment will not replace the farmers, but the farmer who use the farming equipment will replace the farmer who do not use the farming equipment. OK, so you replace AI with the technology of first industrial revolution, second visual revolution and this remains, this second remains the same that means we need to learn, and we need to adopt the AI and move forward. The second one, from 2019, Gartner research finding that “Says 80% of today’s Project Management task will be eliminated by 2030 as AI takes over”. It is not saying 80% of project management function or project managers. It’s saying 80% of project management task. Let me ask this question to this, we have about 47 people here. Is there anyone in this room who loves to take the meeting minutes as a project manager? who tries to take taking the meeting minutes?
00:10:25 Mashhood Ahmed: Do we have anyone? I haven’t found one yet, somebody says haha, no way, right? So that’s the problem I see sometimes down there, there you go. So, I have done this, this talk or similar talk to like thousands of project managers across the globe. I haven’t find a single project manager who loves taking meeting minutes. And this is exactly what we will do today. We will have like a meeting minute; we will put into ChatGPT and Google Gemini. You’ll see some results and we will play with it to see what else we can do. So, with that, I’m going to talk about why all of this is happening right now. Because AI is one new terminology, it’s first was discussed by Alan Turing in 1950s right, so it’s been in the academic topic for last 80-90 years almost now right 70-80 years. However, now today we have the better algorithms. We have the good programmes, we have infrastructure, the cloud that can provide us all the things that we need. I mean 10 years back, 15 years back, you need to set up a data centre it takes like, you know, months and months now you can set up a data centre. And within three hours, as long as you know what you’re looking at, then the third point here is internet of things. Now we have connected devices, so we have more concise and more accurate data that was not available. The last point is structured and unstructured data, we all understand what is a structured data. It is the data in the spreadsheet in tables in the rows and columns, right. And in the third industrial revolution we solved the structured data problems, but the large amount of data is unstructured. Unstructured data means the videos, the documents, the PDFs, the document Repository, SharePoint, Google Drive, this drive, that has like thousands of documents. But nobody goes and read it, the example I gave as project manager did you write a lesson learned document from the project right?
00:12:34 Mashhood Ahmed: But nobody needs it, I have to do as a project manager, I do it, I put on the repository nobody looks at it. Now with having that unsorted data access using AI, anybody can go and breathe that data and get some insight from it, and that’s gonna change the way the future would be. So quick overview of the generative AI landscape, we have Google has a product called Google Gemini. We will do a live demo with that ChatGPT has a ChatGPT version that is available to the market. Cloude has cloude 2 and 3 now 3.5 that is available to the public. And now they have the web version of it, that’s something I have not experienced by myself, but a lot of the people are talking really good value that they are getting from the cloude 3.5. Then we have also have Metal Llama from Facebook and Microsoft have their own product which is called Copilot. Copilot uses the ChatGPT in the back engine, but then this response you get from ChatGPT, and Copilot are different, right? So, there’s some fine tuning that was done there as well.
00:13:49 Mashhood Ahmed: So, with that typically ChatGPT, Google Gemini, they offer these four different categories, right? Three to four different categories. So, ChatGPT will talk a little bit more because everybody is familiar with that one has like 3.5, 4.0 and 4o (omni) that was released last month. And you know 3 was free, then 4 was paid, now 4o is paid and the other 2 are free. Then we have the API Interface, API interface, if you are writing a programme within your organisation that talks to ChatGPT to do something very specific function. In that case you will use the API interface. Then there are Custom GPT, Custom GPT are things that you would do to customise for your business. Or for your need and you can publish it to the public or you can just keep it private to within your organisation. And the last one is Enterprise ChatGPT, this is where most businesses are trying to sell. So, Microsoft is selling Copilot is Enterprise ChatGPT, Google is selling Gemini as Enterprise ChatGPT and ChatGPT or open AI, they’re also selling Enterprise ChatGPT. That has all the security bells and whistles it governance and all those things taken place, right? So with that now I’m going to change some gears and we will do a live demo of ChatGPT of generative AI. I need 2 volunteers to one would be read the script of a sponsor and another one would read the script of the project managers, and this is a short meeting that I’m going to copy paste into those generative AI and ask number of prompts and see how it would interact in real time. Do we have two volunteers that we can unmute and help me to read this script while I can take a break and have some sip of water.
00:15:57 Jay Gao: Yes, if you could type in the chat, I will unmute you.
00:16:06 Jay Gao: Anyone?
00:16:09 Jay Gao: Great.
00:16:10 Mashhood Ahmed: Happy to you, yeah.
00:16:16 Mashhood Ahmed: Yeah, go ahead anyone, first one could be sponsored in the next.
00:16:19 Jay Gao: OK, Layla.
00:16:26 Jay Gao: Right, I think I’ve given the sent request for audio, I think you can start speaking now. Let’s see if we can hear. I think the audio’s still loading should be.
00:16:42 Mashhood Ahmed: I can hear you yes, thank you.
00:16:46 Henrietta Still: Should I start?
00:16:48 Mashhood Ahmed: They’re you go.
00:16:50 Henrietta Still: Good morning, I appreciate your time. We’re excited to get started on this website project for our insurance agency. The website is going to be a crucial tool for our agents. We need it to be user-friendly and efficient.
00:17:06 Jay Gao: Henrietta?
00:17:07 Henrietta Still: Yes, do carry on going?
00:17:09 Jay Gao: Ohh Layla sorry I wasn’t sure who was talking earlier.
00:17:15 Jay Gao: Layla, are you with us? Is your audio on?
00:17:21 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, Jay wait, why don’t you act as a project manager, go ahead.
00:17:24 Jay Gao: Yeah, sure I’ll just be read the other part.
00:17:26 Jay Gao: Good morning, I’m eager to help you with this project. Let’s start by outlining the key requirements. I understand we need both technical and business functionality.
00:17:36 Henrietta Still : The website should have an attractive, professional design that reflects our brand. It must be responsive and mobile-friendly to accommodate various devices.
00:17:45 Jay Gao: Understood, the website should also have a user registration system for both clients and agents, allowing them to log in securely. What are the functionalities you envision for registered users?
00:17:57 Henrietta Still: Clients should be able to request quotes, submit claims, and access policy documents. Agents, on the other hand, need a portal where they can manage policies, communicate with clients, and generate reports. Additionally, we need to integrate a live chat feature for immediate customer support.
00:18:13 Jay Gao: I see. For the back end, the system must be scalable, ensuring it can handle increased user loads as our agency grows. We’ll also need robust security measures in place to protect sensitive data. What about integrations with external systems?
00:18:31 Henrietta Still : Absolutely, we need seamless integration with our internal CRM system for data synchronization. And we should also integrate with third-party insurance databases to provide accurate quotes and policy information in real-time.
00:18:44 Jay Gao: Got it. Do we have an approved budget for this project?
00:18:47 Henrietta Still : The board has initially approved the budget of $100,000, we should be able dollars, we should be able to showcase the new website at our annual conference which is scheduled for November 28, 2024.
00:19:00 Jay Gao: I will engage the web team to fully understand our resources, capabilities, draft project charter and come back to you by first week of April with project charter approval and draft project schedule. In terms of timelines, we should complete design by the end of April, development by the end of September and testing by the end of October in order to be ready for the annual conference in November.
00:19:25 Henrietta Still: Yes, that will meet our timeline expectations for the annual conference, make sure to engage Web team, Communication team, Customer service, Agent union and IT team. Let’s work together to make it a success.
00:19:40 Mashhood Ahmed: Thank you very much for volunteering and coming and speaking up. So, what we did in this meeting, I just put like a small script where we can showcase what was discussed in the meeting. And next what we will do in ChatGPT we will ask some prompts so my first prompt would be. Hi ChatGPT, I am working as a project manager, I will enter a meeting transcription based on this meeting transcription can you please provide me short meeting summary under 50 words.
00:20:15 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, so I will go to my ChatGPT screen now and you guys can confirm if you can see my screen or not. Now can you see my ChatGPT screen?
00:20:30 Mashhood Ahmed: Yes, you guys can.
00:20:32 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, so I’ll put my prompt.
00:20:41 Mashhood Ahmed: I will enter a meeting transcription, I am working as a project manager, help as an AI assistant to provide response to my prompts. I will enter those prompts after I enter the meeting transcription.
00:21:30 Mashhood Ahmed: And what I will do is I will copy and paste; I’m going to put this one in ChatGPT as well as I will put in the Google Gemini. So, now you can see the Google Gemini here and I’m going to copy paste this. Now I will go back to ChatGPT and say sounds like a plan. Go ahead and enter the meeting transcription, then you can provide the prompts you would like assistant with. I’m happy to help, so let me just go and copy the meeting transcription. When I enter the meeting transcription here and then says great, you have captured the detailed transcription for the initial project meeting. How can I assist you right?
00:22:14 Mashhood Ahmed: I’ll say the my first problem was provide me the summary under 50 words.
00:22:28 Mashhood Ahmed: So now under 50 words, it is saying the project involves developing user-friendly, responsive website for insurance agency featuring client and agent portals, live chat support, and integration with CRM and third-party databases. A $1,000,000 budget is approved, with showcase planned for annual conference in November 2024.
00:23:02 Mashhood Ahmed: So how many of you think that it captures the essence of the meaning in 50 words and it is accurate?
00:23:12 Mashhood Ahmed: Yes Katerina, you’re right the budget is wrong, so it’s in the transcript I provide as I copied this as $500,000, not $100,000. Now if I go to Gemini and I will put the same prompt absolutely go ahead and share the meeting transcription so. I will enter the meeting transcription and let me go ahead and change the budget to 100. So it will give us the right response.
00:23:43 Mashhood Ahmed: So, now provide me meeting summary in 50 words.
00:23:59 Mashhood Ahmed: So, the sponsor initiated the website project for the insurance agency, emphasising the need for user-friendly, secure interior platform. The project manager acknowledged the requirements and outlined the next step, including engaging stakeholders, developing a project charter, and establishing communication plan. The project has a budget of $100,000 and a target launch date aligned with the annual conference in November.
00:24:20 Mashhood Ahmed: So, now you can see that both ChatGPT and Google Gemini gave me the 50 words summary. Both of them is a little different OK, why is different because each one of them has like a personality. Think of like you are working in an organisation, and you have 5 project managers. Every single project manager does things differently, so the way you do the project is different from the project manager sitting next to you. OK, so let’s go back to the slides. So that was our first prompt, now I’m going to do my second prompt that says. OK, based on same meaning transcription, can you please give me action items in a table format with action details, action owner and target dates. So, this is something I like you know, if you spend a lot of time in the meetings, you know that people talk about, OK I will do this, I will do that. And sometimes as a project manager, we don’t understand the technology or the details, right. So sometimes things get missed and this is where this will be very, very useful. So, I will say that based on the same meeting can you please provide me action item table with following columns, and you can add whatever you like, right? So, for example, the way I would prefer to do is like I need ID, I would say action details and then I will say action owner and then I will say target date.
00:26:14 Mashhood Ahmed: Copy the same prompt, because I want to use this on the ChatGPT and let’s see what Gemini does. So now it’s telling me, number one I project manager need to engage the web team and the stakeholder to assess internal capabilities and resources and that should be done by July 11th. Now sometimes it picks up dates incorrectly and that’s something that we need to pay attention to right so, all the dates are incorrect in this case. Develop detailed project charter outlining scope, time and budget and risk present for chartered sponsor for approval, established communication plan. Begin identification of project risk and mitigation. Now if you look at these dates, it’s putting all these days at 11th of July and 18th of July and the reason being is because in the meeting we said that the project manager, said that he will get back to the sponsor within two weeks for the project charter. So, if you look from today’s date, two weeks is July 11th, so that does make sense, right? So, it kind of loses few contacts, but it kind of tried to build the context because we did not provide the meeting date when that meeting was actually happened. So, let’s see what the ChatGPT would do for the same prompt, I put this one in ChatGPT. So, now it is saying draft project charter project manager within two weeks, engage web team resource stabilities within two weeks coordinate with integration and Intel CRM teams. IT team need to have that discussion, and this is to be announced or to be discussed.
00:28:03 Mashhood Ahmed: So, all the dates here are to be discussed and prepare for website for the showcase at annual conference November 25th. So, original date was November 28, but it took like 3 days of contingency, and it gives me a table like this, and I can copy paste and I can put the dates that I like to and that’s something that I would take as the next step. So, one of the comment is pick my attention to Katerina saying, “If my PSO made these mistakes we would have a performance conservation”. Absolutely, so think of this ChatGPT and Gemini as your assistant. It is not a project manager, it is not replacing project manager, but it is doing things that would take you like 30 minutes to do. It can give you this table in like one minute and now you can copy paste and make this table in your own. You don’t have to type all the things that were discussed in the meeting, and this is where the value is of the time saving. And how we can do 80% of tasks and optimise our capabilities, very good question, Katrina.
00:29:11 Mashhood Ahmed: Now in Gemini, I want to show you one more feature here, it shows export to sheets. So, if you click on that one it can save this table into the Google sheets and from there you can put into anything that you want right. So that’s something OK, I got this table all the dates are incorrect. But I can fix the dates, but all the tasks or actions are correct or maybe need some fine tuning or some massage. But this is doing your 60% of your job that to at least type it in right so you don’t have to type all those things that were discussed in the meeting. Now, going back to my prompts, I will put a next prompt that is based on this meeting. Can you help me define the resources? Do we need to complete this project? OK, so I would like to understand the resource management. Based on this meeting, what project resources do we need to complete this project? So, any response the ChatGPT or Gemini is giving to you, you’re not gonna copy paste as is because your reputation would be at risk, as Katerina said that you know this would have like a performance conversation definitely. Think of this as an intern, somebody who knows something but makes some silly mistakes and you need to keep a tap because your name will be on that paper. Now if I put this prompt, what resources do I need and let’s see. So, it is saying personal resources, we do need a project manager, we do need a web developer, OK we do need UI, UX designers, we do need content creator, we do need quality assurance, we do need system admin and stakeholder representative from different teams. Now as an experienced project manager, we know that resource does not mean just a human resource or the people resources, but could include other resources like budget, technology and other things. So, let’s see what other resources it is giving us.
00:31:26 Mashhood Ahmed: It’s saying we need a budget of $100,000, we need software and tools, we need some web development platform. We need a content management system, we may need a project management system, we need some communication tool, we do need some hardware and some additional consideration. Third party vendor, training, marketing and promotion, now think of this like if you have to type all of this how long it will take you. Is this 80% correct as whatever you would do in your organisation? Most people say yeah this is 80% correct right. Not 100% correct but if I have to type this it will take me one hour right? So now AI is here to help you to get over that blank page syndrome that you don’t have, you don’t know where to start, you just know you have a draft. And that’s easier to you know, manage it from there rather than writing from the scratch. So, this is what Google Gemini gave the answer. Now let’s go and ChatGPT and put the same prompt here and see what resources this would recommend.
00:32:33 Mashhood Ahmed: So again, similar context it’s saying human resources, project manager, web development team UI/UX, security specialist. So, the other one did not mention about the security specialist, but this is required because in the meeting we talked about the IT security issues, right. Quality assurance, CRM integration, data analyst, communication, marketing team, customer service, legal and compliance. And technical resources include web hosting service, software tool for development, for CRM for security, encryption testing and debugging, third-party API. It did not mention the project management software that Google Gemini mentioned. So, there are few things that you will see that Gemini would do better than the ChatGPT. And sometimes that ChatGPT can do better than Gemini. So, think of this as like a every tool is a separate project manager and each project manager does somethings differently.
00:33:32 Mashhood Ahmed: The budget is half a million because it’s what I copy paste it in this one so that makes sense that resources include human resources, financial resources and technological resources. And remember ChatGPT, Google Gemini, all these large language models and generative AI have passed the law exam have passed the medical exam, have read the PMBoK, have read the PRINCE2 and all the other project management out there and they understand how the projects do work. OK, so with that I will go into my 4th prompt, that is I would like it to identify 3 high probability risks that I have to manage as a project manager. I’m not saying give me all the risks because one thing I find is that if I say just give me the risk, it gives me a list of like 10 risks and that may not be good risk. But if I say give me 3 risk or 5 risk. It gives me a little bit of a better-quality response so let me go back and say.
00:34:40 Mashhood Ahmed: Great, based on this can you please provide me with 3 high probability risk on this project. And one thing I have noticed is that if you make spelling mistake or grammar mistakes, it’s OK. It understands it but sometime if you make like a major grammar mistake or spelling mistake it kind of gives you the wrong answer. So, I made a mistake for the probability I’m pretty sure it will catch up because it gets the context. So, identifying higher probability risk early in the project can help in planning effective mitigation strategies. OK good, here are the 3 high property risks for the website for insurance agency. Integration risk with existing system, risk description; integration with new website with existing CRM and third-party insurance database may encounter technical difficulties such as data mismatches in capabilities, delays in data synchronisation. Impact these challenges can delay project timeline. Mitigation strategy engage integration specialists early in the project.
00:35:53 Mashhood Ahmed: Second risk, it talks about the scope creep. I’m not going to read but you get the what it’s giving me a good idea where to look for. Security vulnerabilities because of the technical nature of the project, there could be some security risk that if I don’t take care of that, that will cause the problem. Remember in the meeting we talked about security because the portal and the information about the policies would reside in those systems. I’m going to copy paste the same from prompt for Gemini and let’s see what response it gives me. The first it says tight timeline and schedule risk. The November conference deadline is a significant constraint given the complexity of the project integration, custom features, multiple stakeholder, high probability of delay if not managed carefully. This could lead to missing conference launch, which seems to be a key business goal.
00:36:52 Mashhood Ahmed: The second risk is scope creep, and the third risk is integration challenges, so both of them provide me good risk and you know, so by default ChatGPT provide me risk impact and mitigation while Gemini only provide me the risk description. Now if I would like Gemini to provide me the mitigation I can simply type. Can you please provide me mitigation for each of these risks. OK, now if I do that, it will give me some mitigation strategies, right? So, it’s saying how do I manage the time risk? How do like a detailed planning start early follow the agile methodology, prioritisation, resource optimisation, have a contingency plan. Regarding scope creep, have a clear scope definition, have a change control process, have a regular communication. Do an iterative development, integration, early testing, get experience resource. Have a good vendor collaboration and have some contingency plan and then some additional mitigation strategies. So, you see that out-of-the-box in the last 15-20 minutes, you just give some prompts and then start giving us a lot of information that if I have to type, if I know all those things by my head, if I have to type, that will easily take me anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour. Because that will take my brain power, now if I have this, I can copy paste and I can make my own. But never, ever copy paste and send it to your managers without reading it. That’s a suicidal mistake at your workplace, so please don’t do that. So, with that, I’m going to get to the last prompt, which is custom prompt, and we’ll change the direction here. I will ask what would you like to ask ChatGPT based on this meeting transcription.
00:38:52 Mashhood Ahmed: You can type, OK what question would you like to ask on this? Yes, so Layla is saying it’s rare that we do the verbatim minutes nowadays, we do the action and risk. Yes, and that’s the example that we saw in the second prompt I asked give me the action item table and that’s something is very, very useful for the project management.
00:39:27 Mashhood Ahmed: So typically, people would say like in when I get to this prompt is like OK, can it draft me like a statement of the work? Can it help me draft like a project charter? Can it create a risk diagrams? Yes, it can now I think the risk mitigation is based on the BAU. A unique project would not be using toolbox to provide any mitigation. Yes, you’re right so again, think of as I said that you know, think of these responses for generative AI as a response from a smart intern that you recently hired. He or she understands the project management but does not understand the details or is not experienced as a human. So, somebody’s asking can you generate again chart or project timelines.
00:40:17 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, good let’s just do that.
00:40:19 Mashhood Ahmed: So, I will go, and first ask can you help me put together a detailed project schedule. OK, let’s just do it two steps. So, last is question to Gemini and absolutely, so now it’s giving me the project timeline OK, the task one, task two, task 6 for the phase one, then give me phase two. OK great, I will ask it to can you please put this into a table or Google sheet. And then you’ll see meanwhile I’ll go to ChatGPT, I’m going to put the same prompt and see what happens next. So now it’s putting the same thing, right? It’s putting the schedule for me. OK, so each task is putting like two weeks, one week and the details. Now if I go back to Gemini, now you can see that Gemini put all these phases and all these tasks with start date and end date. And as you can see you scroll down, you can see that I can export into Google Sheets that means I can simply click here and it is now, creating a spreadsheet for me.
00:41:49 Mashhood Ahmed: And I can click on open, now here are the tasks that are discussed there, and I can simply go and change the dates and based on these dates I can create the Gantt chart. Now I will simply ask, can you please create a Gantt chart for these tasks. Now typically, I don’t see a really good response. I see an OK response in terms of Gantt chart creation, but we will see how it does. See, you cannot read Gantt chart directly from this text, it can provide you the data yeah, because that’s like a little step further, right. So, it’s not providing me that, but if I go to Gemini, ChatGPT. I have tried it, I think it’s it has done few times but not a good quality Gantt chart. So that’s something that I’m not gonna lie on. But it’s a good starting point, right. So again, think of this how this ChatGPT would look like 2 years from now. And two years from now, definitely it can do the Gantt chart much more to at a greater level.
00:43:00 Mashhood Ahmed: So, let’s see it’s analysing because it’s generating an image, it’s taking longer than the text, so the text responses are usually faster compared to the image responses. OK, it’s taking a little longer, OK let’s come back to this, there you go. So, it just did a Gantt chart for me right. Now this is what I find consistently that the Gantt chart goes from lower bottom to upper bottom, while as a project manager we are used to being from going top to the bottom. So that’s just something that these tools need to improve but if you look at this out-of-the-box, this is good, this is a good visual. It’s not the best, it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s a good starting point. I like the text component rather than the image component from these generative AI. So, let’s go back to our slides, we have not much time left, so I’ll just quickly go over what next. So do not use any AI model at work without having written approval. That’s just my warning, please do not do that because that could cause your you may lose your job for that.
00:44:20 Mashhood Ahmed: Now what you need to do is you need to build the AI governance within your team. You need some legal advisors. You need some privacy advocates, you need IT security, a expert and business idea representative to help build that type of discussion. I am also leading A-team at PM assistant. AI if you like this one you can go and download the AI prompt guide from project managers. That guide has over 80 prompts that you can just download and start using them. Also, once you download that you will get to my wait list. Once we release that PM assistant, you will be able to, you know try it out. So, our goal is to build the AI powered project manager assistant for every project manager on every project.
00:45:07 Mashhood Ahmed: If you like this one, I have couple of other rise of a AI series that you can follow me on the project-management.com or go to my site or follow your LinkedIn. You’ll find those details up there as well. And the transcript will be available, so the final comment is “AI will assist project managers. It will not eliminate the project manager role. However, it will transform our role into strategic business enabler”. So, with that, I would like to open the floor for Q&A, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an e-mail if you have questions that I have not answered. And if you like this, I do run like a four-hour AI master class. So, if you want to learn more about that one, you can go to the e-mail by page that link this up there stop. So, let’s open the floor for Q&A.
00:46:01 Mashhood Ahmed: So, I will go over the chat and then.
00:46:06 Jay Gao: Yes, thank you Mashhood, I would just in the meantime put up the survey before I forget.
00:46:13 Mashhood Ahmed: Thank you, Jay. So, I’m just going over the chat with you. Do you have any recommendations for acquiring the meeting transcript as to use as an input? Yes, my recommendation is so Microsoft Team, Zoom, Google meets any meeting collaboration tool that you are using has the transcription capabilities. So, you start recording, it can start doing the transcript, and then you can do the rest from there. Now the tool that I’m building, PM assistant. AI, this is where it can join all the meetings with you, do the transcription and automatically do things for you and recommend you what you should do as you go to.
00:46:56 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, “I will disagree with this statement it has replaced the planner if it creates a Gantt chart”. Yes, it can create the Gantt chart, but not to the quality level so it will replace jobs definitely. AI will replace jobs the similar way in second this revolution, third in this revolution. So many jobs were replaced, the farmer job is replaced by the by the farming equipment, but we have a lot of food available there are like 8 billion people and they’re food for everybody, right? So again, we’re not getting out of work. And now we have so many new professions that we never thought about right that never existed, like 20 years back. So yes, I agree with you that you know it, it’s opening more jobs. OK, let me go next.
00:47:47 Mashhood Ahmed: Yeah OK, Layla is saying but they are not great transcript. Yes, zoom, Microsoft Teams, they are not great transcript, there are some other tools. If you would like to try one, I would suggest you to try a tool like fireflies. AI. And then there’s another tool called Fathom, you can try that one. Again, they’re not 100% accurate, but they get the job done to a level and this is where I say that, you know, even if you let AI do your job, you have to read every single thing. Could it produce the project plan on example Verto or Smartsheets? OK great, so Smartsheets have some integration with AI and what people are doing is they’re using Smartsheet and Zapier or make.com and by building those custom workflows or automations, you can do those things. George is asking, do you think AI will have impact on PM methodologies such as Waterfall and Agile, yes definitely. I’m seeing that you know in my another demo what I did is I uploaded like a workflow diagram and that diagram has one error missing right like a decision box, yes and no. The no box was missing so, I asked ChatGPT saying hey the diagram is missing this, what does that mean? And it was able to help me navigate saying hey you need to fix this and this. So, in terms of process, you can put any process into ChatGPT and Gemini and ask them to fix it. And they will give you good recommendations, again not 100% correct, but a good starting point so OK anymore questions?
00:49:37 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, I think I catch all the questions.
00:49:41 Mashhood Ahmed: So, my recommendation is to you know, try these tools you know, enjoy them, you know work with them and see what works and what does not work with you. In terms of you like to learn more, feel free to contact me on the LinkedIn, we’ll be happy to have a chat or send me an email or anything you have please share details with me. Can you please repeat those tools? OK, I’ll just type them here, fathom and fireflies.ai. Is there any certification for this, so BMI has two courses for AI but those are not certification courses. I’m not going to go, I don’t think we need to go and get the certifications because what I believe is this is something, it’s a tool, it’s something that we need to use right. Typing skills, you need to know how to write a good prompt. So yeah, they could do some certifications, but I’m not familiar or aware of them. As I said, things are happening so fast, it’s humanly impossible to know every single thing that is happening in the world of AI so and we need to be OK with that.
00:50:59 Jay Gao: Just to add BCS has a couple of AI certificates, foundation in artificial intelligence but that’s just general AI has nothing to do, it’s not specialised for project management or anything. But they have a couple of certificates and I think some other accreditation bodies are catching up on that too, just to add thanks.
00:51:22 Jay Gao: I think George also asked Mashhood, when do you think we will see more AI in the PM world?
00:51:29 Mashhood Ahmed: OK, so I’m seeing in the last three months I start seeing there’s a little bit of a transformation happening within the project management world. But so, for example if you go to and I will type it here, if you go to RAIDLOG.com. OK, that’s a RAIDLOG, that’s a tool that as a project manager we use to capture risk, action, issues and decisions, right? They have an AI module where you can put your project description and it can generate the risk and once you generate the risk and you put up the mitigation plan then it will go and look what other content that you’re providing in kind of a, that’s some recommendation on the fly.
00:52:13 Mashhood Ahmed: So, you can download the AI prompt guide from PM assistant. AI, and RAIDLOG, I think it’s RAIDLOG.com that is an AI tool for PM and what was the other thing. If you could analyse the data, yes it does Layla asking you can it analyse the data? Yes, it does so ChatGPT 4, the paid version and Gemini paid version. I’ll just quickly show you the screen here. So, if you see this clip sign here. If I do clip, I can connect with my Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive or upload any document. I can upload PDF, word document diagram, spreadsheet and it will just give you some output, right. It will tell you can ask questions about like you can ask saying hey based on the spreadsheet. Can you help me draft some graphs and charts and similarly Gemini they have a plus sign here. So let me come on the screen. Yeah, and if you click on the plus sign, you can upload file, you can upload image or you can attach with your Google Drive.
00:53:24 Mashhood Ahmed: So same function, right? So, you can do those things, but again this is available in the paid version. It’s not available in the non-paid version. Can you share the link of the 2nd webinar for the Agile? It is on the project, let me just do it quickly from here I think I have it here, contribution webinar I’ll share the link right now, there you go. Yes this is here and if you go on this site you will also or if you go on my site mashhood.net you will also find some of my other talks and share my LinkedIn as well so feel free to connect and I think we have one minute left so I would like to thank Knowledge Train for giving me this opportunity to speak with this all through audience, I really enjoyed the talk and the Q&A session and thank you all, looking forward to connecting with you, thank you.
00:54:42 Jay Gao: Thank you Mashhood, for the great presentation. Thanks, guys, for participating, we’ll be having a webinars roughly every other month and keep subscribed and we will let you know of the of the upcoming ones. Thank you.