How to Leverage AI For Increased Project Management Efficiency
Leverage AI for efficient project management. Streamline tasks, gain insights, and boost collaboration.
Rob Binns of Refresh Marketing explains how AI enhances project management. Learn the steps to define goals, choose the right software, and leverage AI for increased efficiency and insights.
Project management. Intuitively, we know the process is vital for small and large businesses.
Yet, for some reason, project management is still undervalued. So, how can you adopt better project management processes to keep up, and what does artificial intelligence (AI) do with it?
Mastering AI-driven Project Efficiency
Below, we’ve compiled a quick-fire, three-step guide on leveraging AI for increased project efficiency, from defining your goals to researching and implementing the right software. Then, we’ll walk you through our top three tips for making the most of your chosen project management software, with an industry case to demonstrate its usefulness.
Ready to make your job and life easier? Let’s dive in!
1. Define your project management efficiency goals.
The first step to leveraging AI for project management efficiency?
Understanding how, exactly, your projects stand to benefit most from AI. After all, ‘efficiency’ is a fairly vague word. What does it mean? And how does it look through the lens of your business – and its unique project management needs?
So, before you choose a particular AI project management software provider, ensure your team and stakeholders are all aligned with a set of shared goals. These could be using AI to:
- Improve task allocation and scheduling
- Identify areas of risk to the business (like overspending against budget)
- Make better decisions regarding the management of people and resources
- Analyze the productivity of people and projects
- Boost communication and information-sharing between teams
2. Research and identify the right AI solutions.
It’s nearly time to implement AI project management tools into your business’s approach. Don’t dive in just yet because not all project management software is created equal. Different providers offer contrasting:
- Starting prices (with varying free-trial durations)
- Features
- Scope for customization
- Data storage
- Users (individuals able to access the software)
- Number of automation available
- Levels of mobile functionality
- Integrations with the tools you use every day
- Ease of use
With all that in mind, you’ll need an AI project management tool that works for you – and what works for you won’t necessarily be what works for your competitors.
See More: Modernizing The Enterprise With AI
3. Implement your selected AI project management tool
Now you’ve picked the AI project management tool that best fits your business’s unique needs and the nature of the projects you handle – it’s time to implement it. To align it with the infrastructure, workflows, and array of software solutions your business already relies on – and ensure each platform plays nicely with the other!
Again, how simple this process is will depend on the project management tool you’ve selected. The latest research findings have shown that project management software’s features and functionalities depend on the provider you pick. Some have excellent third-party integrations; others may lack that versatility but make up for it with clean, lean user interfaces and slick, stripped-back navigation.
With the implementation taken care of, your AI-fuelled project management tool is ready to go. Now? Let’s look at how you can use this software to increase the efficiency of your project management endeavors.
See More: Top 10 AI Development and Implementation Challenges
Leverage AI for Increased Project Management Efficiency: 3 Top Ways
1. Automate repetitive tasks.
When searching for project management software, you need an automation builder.
These components allow you to create automated workflows, or processes, within the software. Through a visual interface or set of tools, it allows you to define and automate several tasks and actions based on predefined conditions or triggers.
Sounds complicated? Sure – but it simplifies your life.
You could, for example, set up an automation rule to assign specific tasks to certain team members based on their roles or expertise. Or ensure that some tasks depend on others. So, for instance, a copywriter won’t be able to begin work on a website creation project until the design phase is complete.
Automations are vital because they allow you to streamline repetitive or manual tasks – cutting out the admin, boosting efficiency, and ensuring consistency at all stages of the project management process. (While freeing you up to do what you do best – lead those projects!)
2. Understand the full extent of your software’s capabilities.
What is the biggest productivity mistake your team can make? Not having project management software.
The second-biggest mistake? Having AI project management software but not making the most of its wide, impressive range of features to drive project excellence and efficiency.
With project management software, you’ll gain AI-driven insights into:
- Resource allocation: By understanding how team members are assigned tasks and projects, you can identify workload imbalances and remedy resource mismanagement.
- Project and task progress: Through Kanban-style boards and Gantt charts, you’ll know, at a glance, how your team’s efforts are unfolding – and get an instant sense of task and milestone achievement.
- Productivity and people: Project management software can provide AI-driven insights into your projects’ productivity and people by tracking your team’s time. This helps with billing and quoting for future jobs and understanding what your staff spends most of their time on while at work.
- Budget and expenses: Are you overspending? Project management software can tell you how your team’s actual costs are tracked against planned ones, identify where the most significant cash drains are, and how to save money going forward.
3. Drive data to dive deeper.
Project management efficiency isn’t simply about automating tasks or getting as much done in as little time as possible.
Nope – it’s also about analyzing. It’s about crunching the numbers to understand which elements of your project have been working and which can be improved. It’s about optimizing, iterating, and leveraging data to make better, more informed project management decisions in the present and going forward.
Here’s where project management software can help. Because these tools and platforms aren’t just about generating this data but sharing it.
You can create customizable reports of all shapes and sizes, summary reports, progress reports, and task-specific reports to suit the unique needs of your business. And ensure these are shared throughout teams and departments to get everyone on the same page and signing from the same spreadsheet!
Project Management in Construction: An Industry Use Case
Struggling to picture precisely how project management software looks in principle and practice? Here’s an example of how a (hypothetical) business in the construction industry let’s call it “Bob’s Builders” – benefits from an AI-driven project management tool:
- Planning: Project management software helps Bob’s team create a project plan, define goals, establish milestones, and allocate responsibilities to the team.
- Resource management: Bob uses project management software to optimize resource allocation, establishing calendars for resources like materials, equipment, and labor to ensure they’re used optimally – and preventing overbooking or conflict. Learning to manage and optimize critical resources can create more efficient calendar management and help boost time management and productivity.
- Collaboration and communication: With many stakeholders involved (including architects, engineers, contractors, and subcontractors), Bob needs project management software to juggle them. Sharing project-related information in real-time, communicating seamlessly, and speeding up collaboration.
- Document management: Construction projects generate a lot of documentation, from drawings and specifications to contracts and permits. Bob uses project management software as a centralized repository for these documents, which helps him with version control, document tracking, and simple retrieval of info.
- Progress tracking and reporting: Through an AI-fuelled project management tool, Bob can monitor progress by tracking KPIs and generating reports to identify bottlenecks, meet deadlines, and make better decisions.
- Risk management: Bob harnesses a project management solution to manage construction’s inherent risks, including budget overruns and schedule delays. Bob can document risks, assign risk owners, and implement risk mitigation strategies.
Can he fix it? With the right project management tool, he can!
Embracing the Reality of AI in Project Management
Artificial intelligence is no longer some inaccessible, untouchable technology reserved for big-data companies or future generations. It’s here, now, and not only the future, it’s the present.
In project management, AI is already helping the world’s businesses streamline processes. Simplify challenges. And automate the mundane tasks – to free up the most lucrative opportunities.
That said, it’s easy to get swept up in and carried away by the wonders of AI. So it’s worth remembering that AI is a tool when all’s said and done. It works best when combined with the kind of expertise and judgment that only humans can provide. (Well, right now, at least!)
So, constantly evaluate the benefits and limitations of your AI project management tool to ensure it aligns with your business goals and needs.
Good luck, and happy project managing!
What steps have you taken to revolutionize your project management with AI? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
Image Source: Shutterstock
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