Project Manager Days are Numbered
Automation continues to grow in discussions. Machine learning and applied intelligence are often associated with big data sets, but the tasks delivered by the Project Management discipline are ripe for automation. This discipline continues to be overlooked as “low hanging” fruit, but the software that is available is going to quickly place a lot of Project Managers into a new world.
The automation will start with the documents that make up the Project Management Plan. Imagine a series of questions that can go out to the stakeholders, that are combined into the Project Charter, Risk Plan, Communication Plan, Human Resources Plan, Procurement Plan and Quality Assurance plan. All of that time that the Project Manager used to spend collecting and updating the documents is now replaced with a form for the project team to fill in. From there the software extracts the pieces and puts it into the document.
The proverbial “meeting coordination” is also on the cusp of outsourcing. Products such as Calendly.com have eliminated the “back and forth” meeting coordination that often occurs. For those that are unable to use hosted based products, the ability to develop a program with the following features is available. The features look like this: 1) Objective: Schedule a meeting with multiple parties. 2) Problem Statement: There is no free time that exists on the calendar. 3) Software program will be an internal web page where you enter in the names of the people you want to meet with. The software program will look at the existing calendars to determine if there is a majority of attendees that have a free time slot. If yes, the program will email the minority and ask them if that time is also free. If yes, the blocked calendar will return the time to the program and the program will scheule the meeting. If the time is not available, the program will ask for available date and time. It will take the avaiable date and time, and then analyze the other team member calendars for the free time slot. Once it has been found the program will send off the meeting request. This eliminates hours of emails on the part of the project manager to find free time.
The Project Management software is growing beyond the lagging Microsoft Project. Companies such as Monday.com or Asana make compelling products that actual Engineers can use. These products are growing in intelligence.
The real job elimination comes when the tasks can be sequenced by the software. The day will come when the team members enter in all of the tasks from Security, Engineering, Operations and Client Services and the software is smart enough to sequence the events, assign durations based on previous data, assign the tasks and start to distribute the tasks along with the proverbial follow up task, “Is it done yet?”
If you are in the Project Management field and automating tasks, you’ve got an opportunity to package up your product and sell it. Project Management is an administrative function that is ready for automation.