AI in Project Management: What’s Changed, What’s Next, What’s at Stake

Can you give us a brief recap of your professional journey and how have you become a pioneer of AI implementation in Project Management?

My career has always revolved around positioning project management as a core driver of strategy and value. From my early roles in banking and pharmaceuticals to leading multi-billion-euro transformation initiatives across industries, I saw that organizations consistently underestimated the strategic role of projects — and the people who manage them.

This conviction led me to a global advocacy path. I served as Chairman of the Project Management Institute (PMI) — the world’s largest project leadership association — and helped drive its shift toward the Project Economy: the idea that work today is organized increasingly through projects, not processes.

I’ve authored books like the HBR Project Management Handbook, and most recently Powered by Projects: Leading Your Organization in the Transformation Age, to show how project leaders are no longer back-office executors — they are front-line changemakers.

Through the AI in Project Management (AIPM) initiative — which I co-lead with Ricardo Viana Vargas — we began exploring what AI really means for the future of project work. In 2023, we launched our first global survey on AI’s impact in the field. In 2025, that survey expanded to 870 respondents across 97 countries, and the insights are clear: AI is no longer optional — it’s transformative.

Personally, I’ve been experimenting with AI copilots in my own projects. And I can confirm: the technology is already replicating many of the traditional PMO’s functions — with speed, scale, and surprising accuracy. What’s needed now is leadership that knows how to harness this potential.

What are the most surprising insights that emerged from your second global survey on AI in Project Management?

Three key insights stood out:

1. AI is becoming embedded. In our 2023 survey, most organizations were still exploring AI in isolated use cases. By 2025, over 70% expect AI to co-pilot portfolios within three years. We’ve moved from experimentation to integration.
2. The traditional PMO is at a crossroads. Its traditional functions — tracking progress, enforcing process, aggregating status — are being automated. Organizations that cling to the old model risk irrelevance. The new PMO must focus on value delivery, strategic navigation, and data fluency.
3. Human capability is the true differentiator. Our survey found that organizations investing in AI literacy, change leadership, and ethical decision-making are seeing far better results than those focused solely on tech tools.

These findings are available in our 2025 AIPM Survey.

As of today, what outcomes, KPIs and governance controls do CEOs and boards expect from AI adoption? How can professionals act as the bridge between AI tools and business value?

Boards are evolving their expectations. They’re no longer satisfied with activity-based metrics like project completion rates or milestone reports. Instead, they’re asking:

• Are we accelerating value creation?
• Are we reducing strategic risk?
• Are we investing in the right initiatives at the right time?

AI enables answers to these questions through real-time forecasting, benefits tracking, and scenario modeling — but only professionals can interpret and act on those insights.

That’s where modern project leaders come in. We serve as the bridge between intelligent tools and business value. We ask better questions. We connect insights to strategy. And we ensure that technology enhances — not replaces — judgment.

Three areas – scheduling, risk mitigation and forecasting – report the biggest gains from using AI. Which AI tools are emerging as best-in-class to maximise results?

We’re seeing strong momentum across four categories:

• Predictive scheduling: Tools like Proggio, Forecast, and LiquidPlanner are outperforming traditional platforms by simulating risk-adjusted delivery timelines based on real historical data.
• AI copilots for project leads: PMOtto.ai, which we helped co-develop, is already being used to automate updates, flag risks, and simulate scope decisions — in natural language, across hundreds of tasks.
• Intelligent dashboards: Wrike AI and Smartsheet AI are leading the way in live portfolio monitoring, replacing static dashboards with real-time, prioritized actions.
• Communication insight engines: Tools using NLP (natural language processing) can now analyse meeting notes, team chats, and even sentiment to surface hidden risks.

As we outlined in our HBR article, the goal is not to add more tools — it’s to embed intelligence into the workflow itself.

To what extent are early-career roles at risk of displacement by AI? What structured, practical reskilling programmes are most effective for closing the AI skills gap?

Entry-level project roles — especially those focused on reporting, data entry, and timeline tracking — are the most exposed. Our research suggests that 60% of PMOs plan to automate these roles in the next 3–5 years.

But there is a massive opportunity here — if organizations shift from displacement to redeployment.

We’re seeing successful reskilling programs that include:

• AI literacy for project professionals (what AI can do, and what it shouldn’t)
• Prompt engineering basics (to maximize productivity with tools like ChatGPT)
• Business storytelling and insight framing (to turn AI output into boardroom action)

Some companies are reimagining junior project roles as AI project copilots — embedding new talent where machine intelligence meets human intuition.

What is your advice for professionals to navigate and thrive in the current work environment?

Here’s my message to project professionals:

1. Embrace AI — but don’t chase it blindly. Learn how it works. Understand where it adds value. Then lead its application with ethics, purpose, and strategy.
2. Upgrade your role. You’re not here to report progress. You’re here to deliver transformation.
3. Be a sense-maker. In a world flooded with data, your ability to interpret, frame, and guide matters more than ever.

As we said in our HBR article: “AI won’t replace project managers. But project managers who use AI will replace those who don’t.”