How Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Over Project Management Functions, and Why That’s a Good Thing

Back in 2019 Gartner predicted that 80% of project management tasks would be replaced with artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. The project management world widely reacted to this prediction with skepticism and even fear. But neither the research firm nor project managers could have known how much the world would change over the next three years. 

For most organizations, the pandemic fast-tracked an understanding and acceptance of technology-enabled ways of working. On a cultural level, people didn’t just accept it but they also relied on technology to facilitate business in completely new ways of working. 

The project management function, plagued with broken supply chains, precarious budgets and labor shortages, was particularly impacted. And in response, project management changed to become more iterative and interactive over the past few years. Out of necessity, it has become more agile and creative, flexing to accommodate constantly shifting factors. 

While 2030 feels far off, the move toward the predicted elimination of 80% of project management tasks has begun, though it looks less like an elimination and more like a transfer—one in which project management evolves to be faster, more data-driven and more effective in a continuously transforming market. 

 

The Raytheon Missiles & Defense Model for Automated Project Management 

Propelled by the pandemic, Raytheon Missiles & Defense pushed its adoption of AI and automation into high gear. 

“We learned a lot during the pandemic. We proved we could work and collaborate virtually,” Bill Gundrey, executive director for digital engineering and operations at Raytheon, wrote in a recent MIT Technology Review article. “In the end, digital transformation is all about people. It’s about being able to work from anywhere and to leverage new tools to improve how we collaborate.” 

Those tools weren’t all software-based. While AI and machine learning (ML) played a huge role in transforming Ratheon’s project management functions, the change started with a very human transformation from waterfall to agile ways of working. 

Under a waterfall method, the development process at Raytheon could take months. The requirements-gathering process alone involved hundreds of pages of PowerPoint charts before the customer could even view a preliminary design, Gundry wrote. 

But with an agile approach, Raytheon customers had earlier and more frequent visibility into projects and were empowered to give feedback on designs and models in real time and could request changes before Raytheon engineers invested time and money into building out prototypes that weren’t quite right, according to Gundry. 

“We don’t have to stop our work to allow time for extensive formal checkpoints,” Gundrey says. “Instead, our team and our customers become incrementally smarter day by day because the process allows for a more continuous flow of iterations.” 

With agile ways of working in place, Raytheon began adopting AI tools to facilitate this new iterative data-driven product development process. Gundry reports that Raytheon adopted model-based engineering to predict complex, structural and thermal interactions in missile systems so that engineers could better understand how a product would operate at hypersonic speeds. However, the AI and ML power quickly flowed into PM functions. 

By connecting data previously siloed throughout the organization and storing it at a single source through data federation, project managers were able to facilitate collaboration, testing and development faster and with greater accuracy. At companies like Raytheon, where security and safety are a top concern, AI- and ML-enabled robust firewalls protect classified data. Gundry wrote that this data architecture program, which is only feasible at this scale through AI and ML, helps Raytheon’s teams navigate a global supply chain that continues to face challenges caused by the pandemic and ongoing political strife. 

While any organization’s project management functions could benefit from AI-powered automation, Raytheon’s projects are particularly time sensitive as its technologies target high-impact causes, including climate change and national security concerns. In its work with government agencies, Raytheon believes that its digital transformation efforts, centered around agile ways of working and AI-enabled data management, will dramatically increase its speed to market. 

“The goal is to reduce an acquisition, development and production process that currently takes 10 years to an astonishing 18 months, helping [Raytheon’s] partners get new capabilities into the field faster,” Gundry wrote. 

AI to Optimize the Human Differentiators of Next-Gen Project Management 

While the majority of project management functions that existed in 2019 may be taken over by AI by 2030, we believe this is good news for project managers already transforming to be more agile, more data-driven and more collaborative more often. AI frees the project manager to achieve higher-level goals and elevates the project management function in general. By harnessing the power of AI, project managers can optimize their truly differentiating characteristics of empathy, creativity and authenticity, and deliver greater value no matter what the world throws at them.