You remember a time, not so long ago, when the rhythm of a project was dictated by the gentle, ticking clock of a spreadsheet. My days, as a Program Manager who lives and breathes this stuff, were built on the shaky foundation of manually-updated Gantt Charts in Excel or Google Sheets. We’d spend hours, and I mean hours, wrestling with formulas to get some semblance of a velocity report, staring at Jira or Asana dashboards that felt like they were actively trying to hide the truth from us. The work was a grind, a constant, uphill battle against stale data and the kind of tedious reporting that made you question if you were managing a project or just a very complicated to-do list for a living. It was like we were all playing Little League, where you learn the game by getting your hands dirty, where you have to manually move every player and calculate every score yourself. It was honest, hard work, but if we’re all being honest with ourselves, it was also pretty exhausting.
Then, almost overnight, the game changed. Suddenly, we weren’t just learning to hit the ball, we were being handed a new kind of bat, a bat that told you exactly where to stand, how to swing, and what the pitcher was going to throw. We were told to step up from Little League and join the Major Leagues. The rules shifted, the tools evolved, and the way we do our jobs completely transformed. This new league isn’t just an option, it’s the only one you want to be in, and it’s powered by artificial intelligence. Now, taking notes, checking progress, and reporting are all done differently, and whether you think it’s better or worse doesn’t matter, it’s just the reality. You either train for this new league or you’re going to get left on the bench. For me, someone who has managed projects for years, it’s been the most incredible, most exciting change I’ve ever seen. The old way worked, sure, but this new way, this AI-powered way, it’s just so much better. It’s like having a team of genius interns who never sleep and never complain, and they’re all working for you.
So, what exactly can these digital teammates do for your Program or Project Management work? Picture this. You’ve just wrapped a project meeting, and you’re already bracing yourself for the next two hours you’ll spend sifting through your notes, trying to piece together a summary of what was decided. With AI, that’s all in the past. An AI assistant can sit in on your virtual meeting, or you can feed it a transcript, and in a matter of seconds, it will give you a clean, bulleted list of all the key decisions, the action items that were assigned, and who owns them. It can even draft a follow-up email to the team, all ready for you to review and send. This isn’t science fiction, it’s happening right now, and it’s freeing up countless hours that were once spent on administrative tasks. It’s like having a personal assistant who is also a world-class transcriptionist, and a great writer all rolled into one. You’re no longer just the project manager, you’re the project conductor, a maestro leading the orchestra, not the person trying to tune every instrument by hand.
Beyond that, consider reporting. I remember the pain of trying to pull a decent status report together from a dozen different sources. The numbers were always out of date before I even sent them. With AI, you connect your tools, like Jira or Asana, to an AI-powered dashboard. The AI is constantly watching, constantly pulling in the latest data, and can generate a real-time report for you with a simple request. You can literally ask it, “Hey, what’s our current project velocity and are we on track for our deadline?” and it will give you the answer, complete with charts and projections, in seconds. It can even flag potential risks before they become a problem, like an overworked team member or a task that’s taking longer than expected. It’s like having a scouting report on the opposing team before the game has even started, letting you know which pitches they’re likely to throw so you can adjust your swing. This is not just about making your life easier, it’s about making you a better, more proactive manager. It allows you to shift from being a reactive firefighter, constantly putting out small blazes, to a strategic leader who sees and avoids the fires before they even start.
Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is, what tools work best? The truth is, there’s no single magic bullet, no one-size-fits-all answer, because every team is different. Many of the tools we already use, like Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence, have started to bake AI directly into their platforms. This means the AI is already working with your existing data, helping you with everything from writing user stories to summarizing long comment threads. Then you have tools like Motion, which are built from the ground up to be AI-first. They’re designed to handle everything from scheduling your day to generating entire project plans in seconds. For me, the beauty is in the mix, a custom combination of what works best for your specific needs. There are tools that are great for just automating one small task, like an AI-powered note-taker, and then there are massive platforms that can manage your entire portfolio of programs. It’s like choosing the right bat and glove for your position, and maybe even a custom pair of cleats. You don’t need to buy a whole new uniform to play the game, you just need to upgrade your gear.
Now, for those of us who have a knack for building things, the “Can you build your own tools?” question is the most exciting one of all. A few years ago, the idea of a non-technical manager creating their own software would have sounded crazy. But today, with “no-code” and “low-code” platforms, it’s not only possible, it’s becoming a popular way to solve unique problems. You can use platforms like Zapier’s Interfaces or even OpenAI’s Custom GPTs to build simple, custom tools that are a perfect fit for your team. Imagine building a simple bot that you can talk to in a chat window, and it automatically pulls up the status of a specific project, or a dashboard that you can build yourself, that shows only the data you care about, in the way you want to see it. This isn’t about becoming a developer, it’s about being a problem-solver who can now use these powerful new tools to design custom solutions. It’s like being a baseball coach who can design a specialized training machine for their team, a machine that no one else has and that gives them a huge advantage. You don’t need to be a mechanical engineer, you just need to know what you want the machine to do.
Of course, with all this change, the most important question for any project or program manager is, where can I learn all this? The good news is, the information is everywhere. The Project Management Institute, the same people who gave us the PMP certification, has a whole section on their website dedicated to AI in project management, with free courses and resources. You can also find countless courses on platforms like Coursera and edX from places like IBM, all designed to teach you about generative AI and how to use it in your work. Beyond that, the best way to learn is to just start playing with the tools. Most of them have free trials, and the best way to understand what they can do is to just get your hands on them. Try using a free AI chat bot to help you draft an email or a project charter. See if it can help you build a simple report from some data you have in a spreadsheet. This is the new training camp, and the drills are easier than ever to get started with. The only thing you can’t do is wait. The game is already in progress, and the smartest people are already on the field.
In the end, this isn’t about AI replacing the program manager, it’s about AI elevating the program manager. The core job of a manager, the human part of it, is to lead people, to solve complex problems, and to make sure everyone is moving in the same direction. AI can’t do that, at least not yet. What AI can do is take away all the painful, repetitive, and boring parts of the job. It can be your personal assistant, your data analyst, and your risk-assessment coach all at once. For me, someone who has been on this journey for years, it’s the most exciting time to be in this profession. I’ve gone from manually calculating baselines to having an AI predict them for me. I am no longer just a program manager, I am a strategic leader, and that’s a new league I’m thrilled to be a part of. We’re finally out of Little League, and it’s about time.
Ready to step up to the plate and share your thoughts? Tell me about how you’re using AI in your own projects or programs. Are you finding it a game-changer or a curveball? Tag me on social media and let’s talk about it.
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