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Will A.I. Kill the PMO? Part 3 in Our A.I. in PM Series

October 17, 2022 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Yes, but ... human relations and creativity will be hard to replace.

If you’ve followed this series so far (See Part 1 and Part 2 on the PM College blog), you’ll know that we’re looking at both sides of the Artificial Intelligence in project management debate. I’m not ready to sign on as an enthusiast, but there are some powerful arguments to be made for its positive effects. Still, as someone who remembers the hype about how the World Wide Web was going to bring about global peace and unity, I’m taking it all with a grain of salt.

That said, the comprehensive study of A.I. in project management that I cited earlier in the series has some interesting observations about how A.I. may—or may not—change the role and capabilities of the PMO. Looking at their findings in context of our recent State of the PMO 2022 study, two plausible predictions emerge:

  1. Low-performing PMOs (as defined by the State of the PMO study) are likely to find themselves increasingly irrelevant, as AI automates most project management data processing and reporting tasks.
  2. High performers, on the other hand, have the potential not only to survive but to achieve even greater capabilities.

The study's eight co-authors are split on the question of how PMOs will be affected, but this seems to be because some of them view PMOs as administrative overhead--bean-counters and fact-checkers whose roles will be handily usurped by the rapid and accurate data collection and analysis of A.I. Looking at the profile of PMOs represented in our State of the PMO study, it's clear that the low-performing PMOs fit that description. Their top practices include convening meetings, compiling reports, and calculating project performance ... all tasks that a bot might take over.

Maybe the study authors who foresee a bright future for PMOs have more experience with high-performing PMOs, where business-savvy communicators align work with strategy, creatively address risks and opportunities, and nurture talents in thier project staff. They stress that human relations skills and creativity will be very difficult to replace with mere software, and that giving project leaders less busywork and more time to focus on important issues and responsibilites related to strategy, culture, and professional development, will put their roles far beyond the reach of today's A.I.

In our recent webinar, there were clues to how these two models of PMO differ. We asked webinar attendees to respond to a number of interactive polls during the course of the event. Not everyone participates in these, of course, and a webinar audience is a self-selected group of highly motivated/interested parties. Still, when you see that, of the Enterprise PMO leaders in the group, 58% report that upwards of 75% of their project managers report within the PMO, it's a clue that these organizations are in step with a major trend in high performers: the centralization of project talent. By contrast, among the departmental PMOs, most had less than half of the project managers in the organization under their direct management.

Another of the webinar polls asked audience members to informally gauge their PMO's maturity, on a 1 - 5 scale. Of the 28% who scored at Level 1, those with departmental PMOs were over-represented, while the 16% who scored themselves as Level 4 or 5 were primarily EPMOs. I feel like this audience was quite honest about their process maturity, as more than half of them rated their PMO at Level 2 or 3--exactly where we have come to expect to see maturity seated when our consulting practice assesses it.

So, if you are worried about A.I. and your future, we'd advise following the path of high-performing PMOs, whose profile is clear: strategic, forward-looking, highly capable business leaders focused on creating value.

And for more insights from our webinar, tune in to this blog next week, when we will be answering three thorny questions asked by our attendees.

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About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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