Chapter 3 – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

Teaching Tip: The 15th Edition Ties AI Into Your OM Class

Our new 15th edition, just released, brings the topic of artificial intelligence into the course with AI in Action boxes and new material throughout the text. But we have gone a step further through our Instructor’s Resource Manual, a fantastic teaching tool. If you are new at teaching the course, you will find this 400 page guide an invaluable resource. Each chapter now contains an AI in the Classroom section, created by Prof. Jon Jackson at Providence College, providing 15-20 minute exercises. Here is a sampling from 3 early chapters:

Chapter 1
All firms, regardless of industry, can use productivity measures to track process performance. This exercise is designed to explore relevant productivity measures for different industries with the help of an AI-powered chatbot. Student groups can explore the following types of
facilities/firms (each group will pick one):
 Manufacturing facility  Market research firm
 Warehouse facility  Accounting firm
 Retail store  Financial services firm
 Restaurant  HR department
Students can use the following AI prompt structure: ROLE: I am a manager in a [insert facility/firm here]. GOAL: I want to measure productivity (an output divided by an input). REQUEST: generate 5 measures of productivity.
In groups, students can compare AI responses, evaluate the validity of the productivity measures (connecting to Chapter 1 definitions), and identify the best productivity measures to implement.

Chapter 3
A work breakdown structure (WBS) can provide a hierarchical description of a project into more and more detailed components. This activity is designed to practice this process for fictional projects around campus with the help of an AI-powered chatbot. Student groups can explore the following projects (each group will pick one):
 College graduation party  Student art exhibition
 Charity 5K event  Entrepreneur shark tank
 Intramural sports tournament
Students can use the following AI prompt structure: ROLE: I am the project manager for an upcoming [insert event here]. GOAL: I want to create a work breakdown structure to break the project into more manageable components. REQUEST: generate a work breakdown structure with 4 main tasks, each with 2 subtasks. For each subtask, also provide a short description and an estimated duration to complete the subtask.
In groups, students can compare AI responses, identify if any main tasks are missing (or unnecessarily included), and evaluate the accuracy of duration estimates.

Chapter 4
AI-powered chatbots can be helpful to enhance our understanding of confusing topics, but it isn’t guaranteed to provide accurate information. This in-class activity (15-20 minutes) is designed to get us in the habit of being critical of AI output, and if necessary, re-prompting the AI-powered chatbot to give a better answer. Student groups will try to answer the following questions with the help of the AI-powered chatbot:
 When does a 2-period weighted moving average equal the Naïve approach?
 When does the exponential smoothing method equal the Naïve approach?
 When is it best to use MAD vs. MAPE?
In groups, students can critically assess the accuracy of the AI responses (referencing material in Chapter 4) and identify more effective ways to prompt AI-powered chatbots.

For a desk copy of the 15th edition, please click on this link.

OM in the News: The Navy’s Project Management Struggle

A rendering of what the USS Constellation will look like. The frigate is still under construction.

Managing large projects (see Chapter 3) is usually a difficult task. And this is certainly true in the case of the U.S. Navy’s construction of the new frigate, the USS Constellation. Physical construction of the ship began in mid-2022, and after more than 2½ years, the project is only 10% complete, reports The Wall Street Journal (March 22-23, 2025).

At this pace, including the 2 years of design time before building began, the ship will be completed in a total of 9 years—around twice as long as it took an Italian shipyard to build the vessels it is based on. The Constellation, the first in what is expected of 20 to be built, will cost $600 million more than its original estimate of $1.3 billion.

Most countries are faster at building. Of 20 different frigates made recently or set for completion soon in 10 different countries, all but one were or will be built in less time than the Constellation. (Frigates are the medium-size warships).

The Navy has made so many changes in the Constellation that a ship that was supposed to share 85% of the design of its Italian parent now has just 15% in common. “We have an insatiable demand for capabilities at times…we struggle to say stop,” says a Navy administrator. More changes came as the building progressed. The overall changes caused the ship to gain weight, to 10% above the initial plans. That means the Constellation will be slower than the original design for the ship.

U.S. naval shipbuilding has fallen behind in some key metrics. In the 2000s, attack submarines that used to take 6 years to build now take 9, and aircraft carriers that used to take 8 years now require 11. The delays have contributed substantially to massive cost overruns, only 1/3 of which can be attributed to shipbuilding inflation.

The Navy complains U.S. shipyards don’t invest enough in staff and equipment, much of which is decades old, some harking back to before WW2. Shipyards also struggle with labor shortages, especially in the skilled trades.

Classroom discussion questions:

Summarize why U.S. shipbuilding projects do not meet project schedules.
If you were project manager for the Constellation, what might you do differently?

Teaching Tip: Why NFL Players Are Studying Project Management

On the topic of project management (Chapter 3), you might find this story of how former NFL football players are tackling that subject interesting.

Will Rackley has gone from competing in the NFL to analyzing business operations at Atrium.

It turns out real NFL retirees who enter the project management business are learning to make an impact in different ways. “You can’t just start knocking people out of their cubicles,” says Will Rackley, a former pro offensive lineman who is five weeks into a job as a business operations analyst at the staffing firm Atrium. “It can be a culture shock when stepping into a corporate setting, as opposed to how things are done in a locker room.”

Rackley hasn’t gone soft—and toughness is a big reason why he and other ex-NFL players are coveted job candidates, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 10, 2025). Managers often struggle to recruit people who can take, and deliver, candid feedback. A gridiron pro accustomed to coaches who yell, cuss and call out mistakes in postgame film sessions isn’t likely to wilt under a little constructive criticism.

The former NFL players looking for regular jobs generally aren’t Hall of Famers with set-for-life money. Often they are men who were pushed out of the game by injuries or younger, cheaper draft picks. They have dealt with disappointment and regrouped.

Rackley was a third-round selection back in the 2011 NFL draft. This year, he was a No. 1 pick when Atrium Corp. scouted for someone to analyze internal operations and suggest improvements. It turns out Rackley had excelled in the project-management program that Atrium and Microsoft run in partnership with the NFL. But he had to compete for the job with about 150 people, mostly nonathletes with traditional résumés.

The project-management program that trained Rackley recently opened applications for its second cohort of 20 NFL veterans who will study full time for 8 weeks with Microsoft instructors. It is designed to build technical skills and fill in blanks on the résumés of former players who missed internship and entry-level job opportunities while training year-round to reach the pros.

“This curriculum gives them mock projects and a credential they can take to an employer and say, ‘I may not have as much job experience, but I have technical training in addition to my playing career.’” says Atrium’s VP.

OM in the News: Agile Project Management is Driving Hardware Innovation

The agile principles of project management (our topic in Chapter 3) are rapid iteration, cross-functional collaboration and customer-centric design. They have transformed and accelerated software development for several years. These agile principles are now becoming more popular in hardware development as well, writes Industry Week (Jan. 24, 2025). Here’s how:

Continuous prototyping: Agile hardware teams leverage rapid prototyping and digital twins to iterate on designs in faster and faster time cycles, reducing the time from concept to production and increasing the amount of iteration and innovation. For example, Omnirobotic creates and manufactures robots that automate challenging industrial tasks and leverage rapid prototyping and cloud-native CAD to accelerate their product development process. By quickly iterating on 3D-printed prototypes and incorporating feedback into their designs, they have significantly reduced development time and improved efficiency.

Integrated digital workflows: Cloud-native platforms enable hardware teams to be much more agile. One reason: they enable real-time collaboration across global teams, breaking down silos between design, engineering and manufacturing. Everyone will work from a single source of truth, accelerating innovation.

Agile teams and supply chains: Many factors—including new tariffs, regulations, supply chain disruptions, war, politics, etc.—are causing companies to need to change suppliers, locations, products and personnel faster than ever. Cloud-native tools and agile process support this. There’s simply no time to deal with old-fashioned special computers, software installs and file-based copying.

Customer feedback loops: Agile product development will prioritize early and frequent customer feedback, ensuring that products meet real-world needs and reduce the risk of costly redesigns. With cloud-based computer-aided design (CAD) and product life cycle management (PLM) tools –as seen in Chapter 5– manufacturers can interact with digital prototypes in real-time, leaving comments, annotations and suggested modifications directly in the design. Additionally, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can allow manufacturers to experience digital models in immersive environments and provide contextual feedback before manufacturing begins.

Classroom discussion questions:

Explain the difference between “agile” and “waterfall” approaches to project management.
What are the features in agile that make it useful in hardware and software development?

OM in the News: Disney World’s Start and Project Management

When Disneyland in Los Angeles opened in 1955, it was, in many ways, a disaster, writes The Wall Street Journal (Jan,6-7, 2024). There were rides out of service, restaurants that ran out of food, soft asphalt that consumed the heels of women’s shoes—all of it broadcast on national TV. Little wonder, then, that there was trepidation as the Walt Disney company approached the 1971 opening of the far more ambitious Walt Disney World, here in Orlando, especially as the word spread that it might not open in time. So, when Dick Nunis, the head of park operations, took control of the project, he was given carte blanche to do whatever it took to open the gates on Oct. 1st.

“There wasn’t anybody on that property who thought we were going to open on time,” said Dick Evans, one of the park’s managers on opening day. “And opening on time was critical to the company. We were at that point in debt up to our eyeballs. We’d borrowed close to $400 million to build phase one of Walt Disney World. And within a week of the time that he came on the property, the entire perspective changed. The energy level changed. He came in there like a tornado.”

Nunis, who recently died at the age of 91, fired contractors who got in the way, held meetings at 5 a.m. and put signs up all over the property that said the park would open on Oct. 1st. He made sure construction workers knew that their families were invited to the park a week before opening. He flew palm trees in on helicopters the night before the gates opened.

Not only did he understand the logistics of what it would take to hire thousands of employees, motivate construction workers and oversee the myriad details of opening a resort, he had worked closely with Walt Disney for a decade and knew how the company’s founder would have wanted it done.

Chapter 3 in our text deals with project management and the critical role of the project manager, Nunis, in this case. What does Disney World look like 62 years later? With 77,000 employees (called “cast members”) and six parks (Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon, Hollywood Studios, and Blizzard Beach), we see that the stakes in project management are high.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the responsibilities of a project manager?
What are the 3 phases of the management of projects? (Hint: see page 62 in your text).

OM Podcast #11: Project Management in the Real World

In our latest podcast Jay Heizer speaks with a real world project manager, Dr. Dan Bumblauskas, who is currently Executive Director of Convergent Technology Alliance Center and Associate Dean and Professor of the Business College at Missouri Western University. He and Jay discuss a variety of aspects of project management, including tools, risk management, and strategies to keep within budget and on schedule.

Transcript

Word of this podcast will download by clicking on the word Transcript above.

Instructors, assignable auto-graded exercises using this podcast are available in MyLab OM. See our earlier blog post with a recording of author and user Chuck Munson to learn how to find these, or contact your Pearson rep to learn more! https://www.pearson.com/us/contact-us/find-your-rep.html

OM Podcast #3: Managing Large Projects

Welcome to our latest Operations management podcast! Today, Jay Heizer and Barry Render delve into the topic of managing large projects, which is a topic in Chapter 3, Project Management. What makes a project successful? Why do so many fail to meet their objectives? What is a “megaproject”? All three of these questions are answered by our authors.

Instructors, assignable auto-graded exercises using this podcast are available in MyLab OM. Contact your Pearson rep to learn more! https://www.pearson.com/us/contact-us/find-your-rep.html

See you for our next podcast on May 8th for a discussion about the strategic decision making at McDonalds.

Guest Post: What Does a Super Bowl Parade Cost?

Dr. Misty Blessley, Associate Professor of Statistics, Operations, and Data Science at Temple U., shares her sports preferences with us today.

Next week, the winners of Super Bowl LVII will be honored by their hometown fans in a Super Bowl Parade. This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. Everyone loves a victory parade, but how does a city plan for a parade that might not happen? As a faculty member at Temple University, upon seeing the Eagles clinch the NFL Conference Championship, on Sunday, January 29th, I looked into parade operations. In 2018, the parade celebrating the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII win was held the following Thursday. Public transit was halted to Temple’s campus, which disrupted a joint event with Institute for Supply Management.

If the parade were to be held on the Thursday following Super Bowl LVII, it would disrupt a Supply Chain Management consulting event. My first stop was to Google, When is the Super Bowl parade in Philadelphia?, and the response was,“omg, please stop Googling this until the big game actually happens.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 30, 2023). As of earlier this week, Mayor Jim Kenney, “… doesn’t really want to talk about it.”(NBCSports.com, February 7, 2023).

The EA Madden game is going with an Eagles victory (Fortune, February 6, 2023), as are the legalized betting organizations. Still, we forge on with consulting event planning. I took a picture of a long line of portable toilets north of City Hall, which were in preparation for Pope Francis’ visit in 2015. It is to be food for thought about all that goes into planning a parade. “Kansas City officials are planning a multimillion-dollar parade for Feb. 15…,” (The Kansas City Star, February 2, 2023).

I’ll be cheering for the Eagles, but my heart belongs to the Pittsburgh Steelers. If you are like me, this Super Bowl commercial is for you – https://www.youtube.com/watch v=4taNFpPmZag . Still, enjoy the game!

Classroom discussion questions:
1. How can project management be used to plan a parade? What activities will most likely need to be crashed/require crashing cost payment?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Philadelphia’s and Kansas City’s positions? Win or lose, what do they mean for city officials, planners and for workers employed in the hometown, in terms of productivity?
3. How can forecasting be used in the planning process?

OM in the News: Why 99% of Big Projects Fail

Oxford economist Bent Flyvbjerg is an expert in the planning of “megaprojects,” huge efforts that require at least $1 billion of investment: bridges, tunnels, office towers, airports, telescopes, the Olympics. He’s spent decades studying the many ways megaprojects go wrong and the few ways to get them right. His new book How Big Things Get Done, is summarized in The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 4-5, 2023).

Spoiler alert! Big things get done very badly. They cost too much. They take too long. They fall too short of expectations too often. This is what Flyvbjerg calls the Iron Law of Megaprojects: “over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.”

His work can be distilled into three pitiful numbers:

• 47.9% are delivered on budget.
• 8.5% are delivered on budget and on time.
• 0.5% are delivered on budget, on time and with the projected benefits.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa Spain is a rare example of proper project planning

Flyvbjerg found that the complexity, novelty and difficulty of megaprojects heighten their risk and leave them vulnerable to extreme outcomes. “You shouldn’t expect that they will go bad,” he says. “You should expect that quite a large percentage will go disastrously bad. Despite the fact that trillions of dollars had been spent around the world on such projects, nobody knew if they stayed on schedule or budget.”

Over the years, he compiled a list of 16,000 major infrastucture projects: skyscrapers, airports, museums, concert halls, nuclear reactors, roads and hydroelectric dams across 136 countries—not just megaprojects, but projects of all shapes and sizes.

What he found is that people struggle with projects for a simple reason: They’re people. Humans are optimistic by nature and underestimate how long it takes to complete future tasks. They ignore previous mishaps and delude themselves into believing this time will be different. Megaprojects are also plagued by politics as much as psychology.

What fascinates him more than the failings of the 99.5% is why the 0.5% succeed. Many projects are late because not enough time is spent planning, which is the most efficient way to shrink risk. You don’t start digging before you know exactly what you’re doing. Frank Gehry experimented with designs and tinkered with models in his studio for two years before starting to build the Spanish Guggenheim Museum. That meticulous planning was the reason the architectural wonder opened in 1997 on time and under its $100 million budget.

Classroom discussion questions:

Chapter 3 deals with this subject in detail. Relate Flyvbjerg’s work to Figure 3.1.
Tie PERT to his optimism in underestimating completion times?

OM in the News: John Deere’s Approach to an ERP Upgrade

In Chapter 3, Project Management, we discuss the difference between the waterfall approach to controlling projects versus the agile style of management. With the first, waterfall, well-defined projects have changes small enough to be managed without substantially revising plans. The projects progress smoothly in a step-by-step manner through each phase. But many projects, like software development, are ill-defined and need an agile approach with constant feedback and adjustments. Such projects are tackled incrementally and small chunks meet limited objectives.

John Deere had invested heavily in a traditional ERP upgrade in Australia, with poor results. Dealers complained that the new system was too hard to use and unintuitive. For example, one process that had been 5 steps turned into 27. Data was inconsistent and often inaccurate, and the system crashed often. After numerous expensive attempts with ‘off the shelf’ ERP software developed by the waterfall approach, John Deere decided to take an agile approach as it upgrades its U.S. Enterprise Resource Planning System (the topic of Chapter 14), says Industry Week (Aug. 11, 2022).

The old non-customized “off the shelf” ERP systems were just not able to keep up with John Deere’s innovations. For instance, Deere sales teams will be using tablets with video demos and financial data in the field to present new products to customers. Similarly, management wanted current data with product availability and payment data immediately available via a tablet.

Management also recognized the advantages of agile project management. These include faster delivery of new functionality, better alignment between users and developers, and giving users more ownership of new processes. Deere found that another distinct advantage of the agile approach is that as incremental improvements are made in the system both user and customer satisfaction improved. And improved morale supports even more changes. This closer connection between users and developers is expected to bode well for enhanced responsiveness to future changes in Deere’s business processes.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. The use of an in-house agile approach to ERP development will require changes in the John Deere organization. What are some of these changes?
2. The growing digitalization of business suggests what other changes may be coming Deere’s way?

Guest Post: Project Management in the Mississippi River Wetlands Reclamation

This month, Prof. Howard Weiss discusses project planning. Howard is a recently retired Temple U. colleague.

A massive coastal restoration project in Louisiana could test whether new wetlands can be created
faster than they’re disappearing under waves and rising seas according to Scientific American (Mar 11,
2021). The goal is to deposit land-building sediment to restore much of the 2000 square miles of marsh along the Louisiana coastline that has already been lost and the forecasted 4,200 additional square miles that will be lost over the next 50 years if no action is taken.

This $1.5 billion project was first proposed over 7 years ago and is in the second step of Project Planning, “Define the Project,” as indicated in Figure 3.1 of your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook. The goals have already been set
 Time: Over one year, beginning in late 2022
 Cost: $1.5 billion – $2 billion
 Performance: Redirect more than 12% of the Mississippi River’s flow into a marsh over the next 50 years. The capacity will be 75,000 cubic feet per second.

The project definition stage is very complex as seen in the following steps that must be described for
this project:
 Planning process including general description of implementation
 Analysis tools used including cost/benefit analysis, benchmarking
 Stakeholders involved in planning
 Authorization for goals
 External operating environment factors and effect on plan
 Formulation of objectives variables
 Building strategies including capacity, organizational structure, resources needed, timeline
 Accountability – identify performance indicators for each objective
 Fiscal impact of plan including operating budget and capital outlay budget

This is not the first coastal restoration project. The projects are of two types – restoration projects and
risk reduction projects. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CRPA) has begun over
150 projects in 20 parishes (counties) and over 60 miles of barrier islands. Of course, as we have seen in Chapter 8, “Location Strategies,” attitudes and pollution are important considerations. Project opponents argue that
the fish industry would be greatly affected because the balance of fresh and sea water would change.

OM in the News: Building a Hospital in Wuhan, China in 10 Days

Among the serious issues facing China as the coronavirus continues to spread, are the impact of the border, factory, and store closings, and shutdowns which are beginning to affect global supply chains from auto parts to iPhones (see our blog on Feb. 2, 2020). Facing criticism that the official response to the outbreak was delayed, the Chinese government has stepped up containment. One of its initiatives was to build two new hospitals in Wuhan –in 10 days! Since our Chapter 3 video case study, “Project Management at Arnold Palmer Hospital,” details that 60 month construction task (which included 13 months of planning), this OM project is worth discussing with your class.

Here is how The New York Times (Feb. 4, 2020) describes the task, which began on Jan. 24th:

Construction teams of 7,000 workers with armies of trucks and excavators dug and scraped around the clock. The city government completed a feat recalling the SARS epidemic of 2003, when Beijing built a hospital in a week. For China, the new Wuhan facility would also serve as a potent symbol of the government’s drive to do what needs to be done. Leaders pledged to build the 1,000-bed complex in 10 days and vowed that another new 1,600-bed hospital would be ready by Feb. 5.

Wuhan, a city of 11 million, has been eerily quiet since the authorities locked it down, preventing residents from leaving and severely limiting public transportation and private cars. But the roads around the hospital building site were packed with cement mixers, trucks and other construction vehicles. Migrant workers and suppliers of materials were roped in to build the complex. Workplace safety precautions included temperature checks to try to detect signs of coronavirus infections. By Feb. 3rd, ambulances begun transporting patients to the new hospital.

Classroom discussion qestions:

How did this project differ from the construction of the Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando?
Could this project be replicated in the US? Why or why not?

OM in the News: Keeping Up With the Agile Craze

When you are covering Chapter 3 (Project Management, p.67) you will find The Wall Street Journal article (Aug. 13, 2019), “Keeping Up With the Agile Craze,” a great article to share with your students. Agile denotes a set of tools long used in Silicon Valley to keep complex software projects from falling behind schedule and becoming obsolete before they are done. Now, says WSJ, it’s spreading to other products and services buffeted by rapid change.

Agile practices include: (1) breaking big projects down into a series of smaller tasks: (2) meeting daily to report progress and eliminate obstacles: and (3) completing tasks in time periods called sprints. When applied wisely, agile principles save time and speed teamwork on projects that are complex or have an uncertain outcome. The approach requires big changes in the way people work, however. That means learning to work on self-governing teams and take criticism before a group without turning defensive. At worst, agile devolves into a swamp of annoying jargon and tedious rituals.

Some 75% of North American employers are using agile practices according to a survey of project managers by the Project Management Institute. Agile techniques can speed productivity by 20% to 50% and improve the quality of products and services. But the principles need to be tailored to fit particular teams, their mix of work and the company culture.

A GUIDE TO AGILE JARGON

Scrum: A popular framework for putting agile methods into practice.
Kanban or scrum board: A display showing one sticky note for each task in progress, aligned in separate columns based on their status—to-do, doing or done.
Waterfall method: A traditional method of organizing projects, moving an entire body of work in steps from planning to designing, testing and launching.

Backlog: A prioritized list of everything that needs to be done to complete a project.
Sprint: A work period of a fixed length, usually 1-4 weeks, that ends in a demonstration of work accomplished.
Stand-up: A meeting held at the same time every day when team members report on work completed, tasks planned for that day and obstacles in the way.

Classroom discussion questions:

What is the difference between agile and waterfall projects?
What are the advantages of the agile approach?

Guest Post: Student Perspectives on the MyOMLab Project Management Simulation

Wende Huehn-Brown is Professor of Supply Chain Management at St. Petersburg College in Florida. She continues her review of our five OM simulations.

This post will focus on the Project Management simulation which uses a construction industry scenario. (My post last month looked at the forecasting simulation).The majority of students felt this simulation reflected how things likely worked for a project manager, even finding the pressure to perform engaging and realistic.

Students get immersed in planning needs and quickly learn decisions cannot be focused on profit entirely to achieve customer expectations. Making decisions and seeing the consequences of those decisions was viewed a valuable learning experience. The process of evaluating feedback is practical and several students reflected the need to better plan their life similarly!

Students often see many job opportunities in project management. This simulation gives them an appreciation for what they do, as well as how unforeseen circumstances beyond their ability to control are likely necessitating attention back to their critical path. One student even commented that he now understands his own need to be more flexible adjusting plans at home.

In this simulation, half of the students said they completed the simulation more than once as they felt motivated to better master the lesson. Students often mentioned their ‘light bulb’ moment was when they discovered they did not plan enough slack early in the project. Learning that trying to offset plans around natural disasters and other issues was much harder to fix later in the project.

About 30% of the students mentioned using Excel to plan and track progress. They found the simulation a great extension, building upon what they learned in the study plans and other MyOMLab assignments. While many found this virtual simulation challenging, the majority of the students felt enlightened and appreciated the opportunity to test their project management skills.

OM in the News: Will A.I. Take Over Project Management?

Managing a project well takes more than just making a great plan in advance and sticking to it. Interdependencies within a project and external changes make outcomes unpredictable. Estimates and many forecasts are at best intuition; at worst, guesses and handwaving. By 2030, 80% of the work of today’s project management (PM) discipline will be eliminated as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on traditional PM functions such as data collection, tracking and reporting, according to a new report by Gartner, Inc. “AI is going to revolutionize how program and portfolio management leaders leverage technology to support their business goals,” says Gartner’s VP.

Providers in today’s project software market, such as Microsoft Project, Primavera, and Trello, are behind in enabling a fully digital project management. The market will focus first on providing incremental user experience benefits to individual PM professionals, and later will help them to become better planners and managers. Gartner thinks that by 2023, technology providers focused on AI, virtual reality (VR) and digital platforms will disrupt the PM market. Generally, the goal is to avoid getting to the end of a project and being surprised.

Data collection, analysis and reporting are a large proportion of the PM discipline. AI will improve the outcomes of these tasks, including the ability to analyze data faster than humans and using those results to improve overall performance. “Using conversational AI and chatbots, PM leaders can begin to use their voices to query a PM software system and issue commands, rather than using their keyboard and mouse,” says the Gardner VP. “As AI begins to take root in the PM software market, those managers that choose to embrace the technology will see a reduction in the occurrence of unforeseen project issues and risks associated with human error.”

Classroom discussion questions:

Will project managers become obsolete?
How will AI software change the field of PM?