What AI Can’t Replace in Project Management

You’ve probably heard it countless times. “Robots will take our jobs!” “AI will make me irrelevant!” If you’re in a job where your functions are repetitive, that function can be automated. Yeah, there’s cause for worry there. AI will impact every industry and influence jobs for years to come.

Project Management is one of those areas I’m excited to have AI make a greater impact. Taking notes? Let AI do it! Sending out actions? Let the bots hit send! Scan emails for important information. A sniffer can do that! Update a schedule? Just say “Update this task to this date and recalculate the timeline.” Done. AI can take many of those lesser functions off our plates and allow us to focus on higher-value functions.

But you may be asking, if AI does all that, what will I do? We talk a lot about what AI can do. Here are four key areas where I see AI can’t take away, and where I choose to spend the majority of my time.

Leadership. Leadership is your ability to influence and guide people and teams to accomplish a common goal. The key word there is influence, because you probably don’t have authority. A project leader must be able to organize, motivate and encourage their teams by helping them understand the end goal. Leaders help others when they’re stuck and are effective listeners. AI can’t take the place of a good leader.

Relationship Building and Trust. Great teams function when psychological safety is present. Team members feel free to speak up or won’t punish each other for making mistakes. This environment is created when relationships are built amongst the team and they trust one another. The project leader is key to making this happen.

Decision Making. Here is where AI can have an influence, but not authority. I’ve used AI (I’m personally a Claude.ai fan) where we input a few variables and asked AI what the best course of action would be. The output was insightful. Though AI influenced what the decision was, the executive sponsor had the authority to make the final decision. NOTE: Don’t input any company proprietary information.

Strategic Discussions and Decisions. Strategy is a collection of intentional decisions that creates a plan for success to achieve organizational goals. This entails understanding your business, the target audience, and what may or may not happen in the future (made in an environment of uncertainty). Again, this is an area where AI could influence the process, but can’t substitute for human interaction and decision. Not all project leaders are part of the strategic decision making process, but are critical to its realization. Project leaders need to understand the strategy so they can align activities and teams to achieving goals.

AI is one of those areas that will be debated, sometimes hotly, for some time to come. Not everyone shares in my excitement of having AI take lesser functions and that’s OK. AI will continue to impact project management, but it can’t take away leadership, building relationships and trust, decision making, and strategy.