FEATURED PAPER
By Qiankun Wang
SKEMA Business School
Hefei, China and Paris, France
ABSTRACT
In this decade, AI has undoubtedly been one of the most influential technologies. AI has changed the way people live and work, and project management isn’t an exception. There is always controversy about the use of AI technology. This article first explains the need for the company to use AI technology and studies why AI is full of controversy. After considering the advantages and risks of AI, this paper proposes several AI technologies that project management can adopt. Also, quantitative analysis was performed using the Multiple Attribute Decision Model method. In the end, we concluded that using Machine learning-based project management is the optimal option.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Project Management, Machine Learning, Multiple Attribute Decision Model
INTRODUCTION
In every era, the emergence of new technologies will have a huge impact on people’s lives and working methods. Application of these technologies will greatly improve work efficiency and create huge economic benefits, also bring opportunities and challenges. Therefore, actively understanding and applying new technologies is essential to improve the company’s competitiveness. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued an increasing number of patents for inventions developed by AI, which proof that AI’s innovative capabilities will revolutionize our industries and affect the world economy.
AI was described as “The designing and building of intelligent agents that receive percepts from the environment and take actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals”[1] by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig who are computer scientists known for their contributions to AI. It was born at a workshop in 1956. After more than 60 years of development, AI has achieved breakthrough development. Especially in the 21st century, high-performance hardware and massive amounts of data generated by the Internet have paved the way for it. Various complex algorithms are also implemented, such as convolutional neural networks (CNN), support vector machines (SVM), decision trees and so on. These technologies have been researched by scientists and have produced many new applications such as face recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing, which have brought changes to various industries.
Briefly summarize the process of machine learning. The user provides a large amount of data to the computer and selects the appropriate model and algorithm. The program utilizes the data to adjust the parameters and refine the model. This model will become a black box that predicts the corresponding result based on the input. For example, by entering a large number of pictures with cats, the program learns the characteristics of the cat and can identify whether there are cats in the picture. Complex algorithms allow programs to automatically discover the implicit information in the data, which may be easily overlooked by humans. Therefore, AI is often used to analyze data that people already have and predict possible outcomes which can be useful when people are trying to do risk management. By using visualization methods, AI is also skilled at discovering slowly changing trends of data. One of the applications based on AI is Natural Language Processing (NLP). By utilizing this technology, the computer can finish some simple but repetitive jobs, such as sorting emails, automatically extracting keywords from the emails or messages, and recognize the time point and add it to user’s calendar.
Step 1 Problem Definition
It seems like AI should be welcomed by everyone because of its good performance. In fact, there is still a lot of controversy about whether to use AI. The main reasons are:
(1) People afraid that AI will take away jobs
According to a user survey from Atlassian, 87% of respondents said AI would change their job in the next three years and the same number said that some part of their job could be done by AI[2]. This survey shows that AI technology is gradually being applied to diverse industries and many people are beginning to feel anxious, worrying that AI will replace their work.
(2) People fear failure
Because the AI system is a kind of complex system, some people worry that over-reliance on AI will lead to serious consequences, for example, the car accident caused by autonomous driving technology. AI calculation errors may cause the project to fail.
(3) People fear of abuse of AI
AI is now used in the advertising industry. Websites can provide customized ads for users, which makes people worry about their privacy.
After analyzing the above reasons, we can conclude that the root cause of the problem is: people don’t know how to use AI technology properly in project management.
In this paper, the two questions below will be researched:
(1) What is AI project management?
(2) What are the feasible alternatives for using AI in project management?
More…
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Editor’s note: This paper was prepared for the course “International Contract Management” facilitated by Dr Paul D. Giammalvo of PT Mitratata Citragraha, Jakarta, Indonesia as an Adjunct Professor under contract to SKEMA Business School for the program Master of Science in Project and Programme Management and Business Development. http://www.skema.edu/programmes/masters-of-science. For more information on this global program (Lille and Paris in France; Belo Horizonte in Brazil), contact Dr Paul Gardiner, Global Programme Director paul.gardiner@skema.edu.
How to cite this paper: Wang, Q. (2019). How to apply AI Technology in Project Management, PM World Journal, Vol. VIII, Issue III (April). Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/pmwj80-Apr2019-Wang-how-to-aply-AI-in-project-management.pdf
About the Author
Qiankun Wang
Hefei, China
Qiankun WANG is studying for a master’s degree in Software Engineering at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). In order to gain a deeper understanding of IT projects, he is pursuing a second MSC in Project and Program Management and Business Development from SKEMA in Paris, France. He trained and passed the professional certification of AgilePM Foundations and is ready to apply the knowledge into his future work.
With this double academic specialization, he will be able to create more value for future projects linked to IT. He worked for Hefei Huasheng Pumps & Valves co.,LTD for 4 months as a member of development team and he is passionate about his work.
Qiankun lives in Hefei, China and can be contacted at qiankunwang3849@gmail.com or www.linkedin.com/in/qiankun-wang-ppmbd.
[1] Russell, S. J., & Norvig, P. (2010), Artificial intelligence: A modern approach (3rd ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education
[2] Atlassian. (2017, April 7). 3 ways AI will change project management for the better. Retrieved from https://www.atlassian.com/blog/software-teams/3-ways-ai-will-change-project-management-better
