Impact of AI in Project Management and How to Get Started

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If you’ve ever worked in project management you know how difficult it can be to juggle between meeting deadlines, coordinating all team members and trying not to exceed the budget.

Multitasking is a reality for most project managers and it can get hectic.

But did you know that 1 out of 5 project managers has seriously considered leaving the profession last year?

Multiple factors can lead to this, with stress and burnout at the top of the list. 

The good news is that AI in project management can take a big part of this burden off of project managers. The goal is to free their time, allowing them to focus on those areas where their skills are crucial.

And we're not talking about some distant future. AI systems are already widespread in project management and other related fields, and the AI industry continues to grow rapidly.

In this article, we'll explore how AI in general, as well as AI-powered voice assistants , could transform project management in the near future.

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AI project management is already a thing, especially in the IT industry. Let's take a quick look at where we are today:

• Companies that invest in AI report a 15% productivity increase in their projects. Time is the most crucial resource for every project manager and any AI tool that can save time is more than welcome in your day-to-day activities.
• Companies lose up to 12% of their resources due to poor project management. Artificial intelligence could improve resource management by enabling managers to see the bigger picture and make smarter decisions.
• According to the Global Survey on Artificial Intelligence Impact on Project Management, 52% of project management professionals believe that AI will take a significant role in project management within the next five years, acting as a digital assistant to project managers. The same survey lists the top 3 reasons why project managers embrace AI:

1. AI tools increase their level of productivity.
2. They improve their performance and reporting.
3. AI tools help them improve the decision-making process.

As you can see, AI is already widespread in project management, but that could be just the beginning.

According to scientists working on it, AI could completely revolutionize the way we see traditional project management. Here is what we can expect in the future:

• According to Gartner, 80% of project management tasks will be eliminated or replaced by AI by 2030. The tasks that AI will most likely replace include reporting and supportive administrative tasks.
• What's more, according to an estimate, 25 years from now there will likely be AI software capable of managing the entire project on its own, with little human supervision.

Is there a reason to worry? Could AI completely replace project management professionals and lead to unemployment?

Researchers from Paris ESIEE graduate school claim no need to worry. AI will eliminate some mundane tasks, but it won't be a threat to job security.

AI will simply allow project managers to focus on the most important tasks, which can only be solved by human beings. Creative thinking, project planning and problem-solving are areas where humans still can’t be replaced. 

In fact, project management will continue to be one of the most sought-after professions, especially for project managers with a lot of experience.

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Here are five areas in which AI project management tools could help you the most.

Many project managers spend most of their day doing busy work instead of focusing on their priorities. A lot of these activities could be outsourced to AI-powered voice assistants in particular.

Here's what you can do through voice commands:

• Handle inbound calls
• Make outbound calls
• Analyze conversations
• Integrate voice assistant with other communication platforms
• Transcribe voice to text

One of the main reasons why executives and project managers switch to AI voice assistants is because they want to decrease the number of calls during the day.

As you know, many people call to ask technical things that keep repeating and don’t have to be answered by you personally. With all these calls, you sometimes probably feel like you’re stuck in a machine.

Well, artificial intelligence enables you to put those calls on autopilot and let your virtual voice assistant handle them. You can create interactive voice menus that guide the callers through all possible scenarios of things that they may want to ask or do.

Also, you can use your AI voice assistant to make outbound calls. People usually use them for simple but repetitive calls that have to be placed like appointment reminders, phone surveys, and similar.

Another way AI voice assistants can save you a lot of time is transcription. If you get a lot of voicemails during the day, a voice assistant can transcribe them for you so you can read them in written form. 

If you’re more of a visual type of person, skimming messages will allow you to read them much faster than actually listening to them.

On the other hand, you can also use it to transcribe your own speech to text and dictate your emails on the go, while you’re doing something else.

Not to mention that you're not only saving your time, but you're cutting costs because an AI voice assistant can take on the jobs of multiple human assistants. It's also available 24/7, whenever you need it. Finally, there's less room for errors that can come up in human communication.

As a project manager, it can be difficult to keep up with communication. You get hundreds of requests and responses weekly, and the worst part is that people write to you through different apps, from text messages to emails.

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like if someone could sort out all the messages for you and collect them in one place?

Well, you don’t need to hire a personal assistant to go through all your messages and voicemails because a voice assistant can take a huge part of that off of you.

Voice assistant platforms support integration with different channels, such as SMS, email and API.

First, most of the minor requests could be handled by the voice assistant, and you don’t even have to be notified, except if someone explicitly asked to talk to you.

Second, the platform enables you to centralize communication, which can save you a lot of time on a weekly basis - all those hours you’d have wasted switching from one app to another.

It isn’t just about protecting your time, but it’s also about protecting your focus. As you may know, it takes us at least 20 minutes to return to a state of deep work after every interruption. Multiply this with the number of notifications you get daily and you’ll see scary statistics.

There’s no need to check your notifications and different inboxes when you can forward all your communication to one place and then check it when you want to.

Also, if you have an assistant working with you, this makes their life easier as well. They can go through all the messages at once and mark those that only you can respond to.

Modern voice assistants like vTalk.AI go beyond capturing and transcribing spoken words. Our software is based on a powerful NLU engine that helps you analyze conversations and understand your customers/partners even more.

Neural language understanding is an important part of NLP (natural language processing) that enables softwares to interpret human conversations.

Thanks to machine learning and NLU, some voice assistants are able to recognize certain language patterns, syntax, context, feelings and speaker's intent.

So, what can it actually mean for your business?

It enables dynamic conversation flows between the callers and your voice assistant. 

Voice assistants can be programmed to recognize certain trigger words and to offer additional information or help, even before the customers verbalize it.

For example, if someone’s tone starts rising and their voice seems irritated, the voice assistant could offer a transfer to an agent or manager that could solve the issue.

This could improve the overall experience with your clients because they’ll no longer feel as if they’re communicating with a chatbot.

Also, it could speed up some processes, because the voice assistant can be trained to connect the dots between the speaker’s input and tasks that need to be completed.

Since artificial intelligence was introduced to project management, a big shift happened. Project managers are now able to outsource many tasks to AI assistants, leaving them more room to focus on the most important things.

Here are the biggest benefits of artificial intelligence in this field:

• Saving time. Outsourcing some of the calls to your AI assistant instantly frees up your time to focus on other more important things.
• Better organization. With AI assistants, you get to have everything in a single dashboard and you don’t have to switch from multiple inboxes. Voice assistants are easy to integrate with other communication tools such as email and voicemail.
• Automation. AI allows you to automate tedious repetitive tasks and take them off your to-do list.
• Cutting costs. The truth is that a human assistant could do most of the tasks that we outsource to AI. However, it would take them much more time to complete those tasks, and you’d probably need more than one assistant. AI allows you to cut costs and outsource tasks to AI systems instead of having to hire multiple people.

If you want more details, you can check how AI and machine learning helped transform some other industries. We have articles about conversational banking, IVR payments and about how AI transformed the hospitality industry.

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Here's a typical workday of a project manager with just a little help from your AI voice assistant.

You arrive at your office and see that your assistant is not there, they asked for sick leave.

In normal circumstances, that would mean you’d have to handle dozens of calls by yourself and it would eat up all of your time.

But you remember that you’ve purchased a virtual voice platform! Thank God!

Now, you can let your voice assistant handle all inbound calls during the day, and you can answer only if there is something really urgent. And more often than not, it’s not that urgent.

You can set up a voice assistant to answer the calls for you and people can leave you voice messages that can later be transcribed to text. You can either listen to your voicemail or get it printed, in the form of an email. Whatever works better for you, depending on whether you're a visual or auditory type.

If you need to do a quick survey you can automate outbound calls as well and let your voice assistant collect and organize data for you.

AI voice assistant isn't only saving you time, but it's protecting something more important - your focus.

You can also use a voice platform as your own FAQ assistant. It's safe to assume you get asked the same questions about project progress over and over again.

You can record answers to the most common question and set up voice software to respond instead of you. That way, everyone will get information and assistance, but you won't be spending your time repeating yourself.

The best part is that advanced voice assistants, such as vTalk AI, offer support in different languages that get translated automatically. You no longer have to waste time translating international messages or hire additional people to do so.

Our voice assistant is ideal for project managers working in a multinational environment, requiring them to be able to switch their focus quickly.

Once you experience what it's like having a virtual voice assistant, you'd wonder why you haven't tried it before.

And the best part is that other parties won't see any difference. People generally respond very well to the use of AI assistance because they guarantee 24/7 support and consistent quality of service.

If you're unsure whether to hire a personal assistant, call center agent or data analyst - why not have them all?

You can cover multiple roles, 24/7, with no additional costs.

Of course, we're talking about our advanced AI voice software that can do all this for you.

Here are some of the vTalk AI features that may benefit everyone in the project management space:

• Automating incoming and outgoing calls
• Converting speech into text
• Translating voice messages and texts
• Automatization of emails and SMS
• Conversation analysis based on keywords
• Data Analytics

Ok, so how do I get started?

You can set up your own voice assistant in minutes! The best part is that no coding skills are required and you're guided to build your own voice assistant in a user-friendly environment, step by step.

First, decide who you want to use vTalk AI to talk to. You can use it for communication with your team members, but also external collaborators, participants, or the general public.

You can add different intents for each group of people and create scenarios of what needs to happen when they call. Perhaps a voice assistant should handle calls on its own, or in some cases you want people to be able to ask to switch to a human agent or talk directly to you.

You can record the calls if you want to access them later or use our analytics tool to analyze the quality of the calls. vTalk AI allows you to analyze large quantities of data every day, which wouldn't be possible to do without the help of AI.

As a project manager, your focus is the most precious resource you've got. You have to protect it and use your time wisely, in areas where no one can replace you.

Those areas certainly aren't repetitive tasks and calls that now take most of your day and leave you little time to focus on the bigger picture. What are you waiting for?

The future is already here. Why waste any more time when you can outsource many of your daily tasks to AI-powered project management tools, such as a voice assistant?

If you want to see firsthand how AI virtual assistants can protect your time and focus, sign up for vTalk AI and let us handle the repetitive tasks for you. Free up your schedule to focus on things that only you can do!

AI is used in many different aspects of project management. First, it's used for administrative tasks such as scheduling, data entry, sending reminders and transcription. It's also used to analyze large quantities of data, predict certain patterns and help make better decisions.

AI can improve the productivity and efficiency of project managers by eliminating repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on the things that matter the most. It also improves the decision-making process, lowers the chance of mistakes and can provide valuable insights.

Many studies show that AI will take over many repetitive parts of project management and that it may replace part of the job done by human agents and assistants. However, that doesn't mean that project management professionals will no longer be needed, it just means that their duties could change in the future.