The Future of Project Management: PPM Primavera and ChatGPT’s Role
Recently, The Economist published a chart showing the jobs that ChatGPT is likely to take away from people. The list of “endangered” jobs includes telemarketers, teachers, traders, and professionals in the sectors such as securities and commodity contracts, insurance carriers, data processing and hosting, information services, and publishing.
Technically speaking, ChatGPT is a “generative” Artificial Intelligence. Simply put, it is nothing but a chatbot with the capability to come out with its own answers to our questions. Millions of people right now are having intelligent conversations with this tool. If ChatGPT can speed up a human job by at least 50%, companies will not hire people for the job – instead, they will give the job to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT and Primavera
Project Management does not figure in the list – at least not yet. But ChatGPT is not bad news for project managers. Any profession that wants excellence will need to adopt AI in whatever form it appears. One of the ways to use ChatGPT for project management is to integrate it with PPM software such as Primavera. Chat GPT 3, an advanced version, has an API that allows developers to build conversational AI applications. When the API is integrated with Primavera, it can enable PM professionals to generate human-like responses to text input.
There are many ways in which ChatGPT can contribute to the field of Project Management, and help professionals in this field become more productive. Sooner or later ChatGPT will become a subject of PPM courses and PPM training programs. And it will not be a surprise if PPM Certifications can also take into consideration a professional’s ChatGPT exposure. Here are a few areas where ChatGPT integration with Primavera can make a big difference in managing projects:
Summarisation
ChatGPT is primarily a Language Model – a “large language model” at that. It means that the tool can analyse large bodies of text and data that reside in Primavera, and have that as a basis for summarising project documents, reports, and other long-form text instantly. We can instruct it to include specific topics or subjects and give it a specific word count as well. ChatGPT with Primavera can create reports for all stakeholders including team members, vendors, and stakeholders.
Intelligent Conversations
With Primavera, ChatGPT becomes a Project Management chatbot with which project managers can have engaging conversations. Instead of going through voluminous documents, they can instantly get answers for specific questions such as: “What is the project status?”, “What is the timeline for building construction?”, “How much is left in my budget?”, and so on.
Decision making
The ability of ChatGPT to “think” on its own helps it cull out information and generate insights at a more granular level and on different aspects. This ability can go a long way in helping project managers in the “executive-level” areas such as problem-solving and decision-making. For instance, with ChatGPT professionals can make informed decisions in delegating tasks and managing team members. ChatGPT can even objectively recommend team members who are suitable and available for specific tasks, going by their skills and workload.
Predictive Analytics
As ChatGPT gets trained with Primavera’s database, it can conduct real-time analyses and offer specific predictions. Its predictive analytics capabilities could come in handy when there is a need to project a project’s future status and assess and mitigate potential risks. The chatbot can also generate alerts on potential delays, resource requirements, based on its reading of project timeline, budget, and risks, and project progress.
Learning
ChatGPT can work with external content as well as Primavera’s data concerning local projects and portfolios, and come out with industry best practices, project management methodologies, as well as guidelines for specific projects. This way, ChatGPT with Primavera can be used as a learning tool for training and professional development.
PPM Courses and Training of the Future
It is important to note that ChatGPT is not going to replace enterprise applications. Instead, it is there to add a smart chat feature to them. With ChatGPT, Primavera can provide a more engaging experience to its users. Considering such benefits, project management students and professionals who pursue PPM courses and PPM training should pay special attention to the aspect of making better use of ChatGPT in their work.
Coexistence makes sense
Professionals will continue to use Primavera for all key domains: from robust scheduling to advanced dependency management. There are many areas in that ChatGPT does not have any meaningful role to play. As it stands today, it cannot implement organizational breakdown structures and work breakdown structures, resources, activity constraints, and Gantt charts. It cannot schedule work the way Primavera does. Besides, Primavera too has its own intelligence as it has a long history of processing small and large projects, programs, and portfolios around the world and in different industries.
Hence, it is important for project managers to find a way out to enjoy the best of both worlds: Primavera and ChatGPT. They both can coexist in the enterprise and project management software ecosystem, with their integration providing unthinkable benefits to project sponsors, teams, and clients alike.
