Have you ever tried to herd cats? It’s nearly impossible, because cats tend to be unpredictable. At times, trying to bring predictability to a chaotic project can feel a lot like trying to herd cats. Luckily, AI can help.
AI can monitor project performance and feed you the latest data-driven analysis which allows you to make decisions based on more accurate information. It can help you predict deadlines that might be missed, team member productivity, for example, are they falling behind on tasks?
Emergent risks and quality levels. Those predictions allow you to make better decisions by answering questions like
- What’s the probability of delivering on time?
- Will the project come in under budget?
- Which team member is best assigned to a specific task?
- Will schedules need to be compressed? and
- Which risks need to be responded to?
Not only can AI monitor performance and help you make data-driven predictions, it can begin developing an overarching story for your project. What do I mean? AI is powered by algorithms. These algorithms learn as they go. As they digest more and more data, these algorithms can feed your AI assistant more accurate information that can be used to improve performance. This continuous learning cycle produces a higher level of data-driven information called business intelligence.
Business intelligence tells a story about what’s already occurred, what’s currently going on, and what’s predicted to happen in the future. In this way, AI can act as an early warning system alerting you to challenges ahead, things like low team member productivity, underutilized resources, and heavy workloads.
AI might not be the magic wand that answers all your questions, but an overarching story that digs deeper into the data and guides you towards the root causes of these challenges goes a long way. At the end of the day, you want to know how your project is doing and where it’s headed. To the extent AI can help you better predict the outcome and provide you with a story that alerts you to the deeper patterns, the greater the likelihood your project will be a bonafide success, and you won’t waste time trying to herd cats.s