How Project Managers Can (and Can’t) Use AI to Do Their Jobs Better — Thoughts from Collabry CEO Rachel Formaro

Innovation, collaboration, and creative thinking—employing these skills make project management one of the most rewarding jobs in the world (to our consultants, anyway!). And yet, any métier has its stretches of drudgery—from coordinating meetings to managing budgets—and project management is no exception.

That’s where AI can help, says our CEO Rachel Formaro. “It’s possible that consultants could delegate some of the more nonglamorous tasks of project management to AI,” she says. Such tasks could include pulling or synching up reports, managing or projecting timelines, tracking project progress, and keeping an eye on project budgets.

Of course, ensuring that AI performs such tasks accurately and effectively is the first step. But once that’s achieved, “AI could free up our consultants to drive innovation and problem solve, as well as to focus on the more human pieces of their role, such as strategy, goal setting, personnel management, and team encouragement,” says Formaro.

Indeed, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, project management will still need a human touch. “AI can’t do trust,” says Formaro. “Humans need relationships, and they need connection and community. Part of the purpose and fulfillment we derive from our work is via the people we meet and the way we engage with them, and that still needs to exist.”

Furthermore, Formaro feels that as consultants begin to use AI to do some tasks, they’ll need to devote even more effort to ensure that the teams they oversee are truly connecting. “It is through genuine, caring relationships that we build trust and camaraderie.”

Formaro also believes that, if harnessed judiciously, AI could bring life-enhancing benefits to the greater world. It could, for example, make workers so productive that the four-day workweek could be a reality for more and more people. “If used to bring about the four-day workweek, AI could have a far-reaching, positive impact—on families as well as in helping us achieve our mental health and environmental goals.”

Tempering such enthusiasm with a caveat, Formaro hopes that AI doesn’t merely become the next shiny little box that threatens to overtake our days. “We’ll have to set up boundaries,” she says. “Hopefully, there will be a degree of thoughtfulness as we move into this next frontier.”