AI, it's just two letters. But if you believed the hype, those two letters will steal our jobs.
That hasn’t happened and it’s not going to.
But now artificial intelligence and machine learning are finally a reality in a number of industry segments. Project Portfolio Management, or PPM, is one of the most exciting areas because of the importance of managing corporate investments effectively and because of the inherent uncertainty around projects. Nowhere is the benefit of AI going to be greater than in planning, and especially when it comes to ensuring the right projects are selected and allocated in the right way.
This is an element of planning that has long caused problems for organizations of all types. It relies too much on subjectivity – business cases based on high level guesstimates and approvals driven by personal priorities and pet projects. Well AI doesn’t play favorites!
When you allow AI to sit on top of the review and selection process you gain:
- Visibility into outlier estimates and forecasts, allowing flawed proposals to be identified
- Insight into the capacity and distribution of work to identify ‘hot spots’ and gaps
- Identification of capability gaps that risk derailing your most important initiatives
And most importantly you get an approach that doesn’t lose interest or get bored. AI focuses just as much on the hundredth proposal as it does on the first, and it goes back and validates its analysis every time new information becomes available. That way you not only know you are approving the right projects; you find out as soon as something changes and you need to respond.
If you don’t select the right projects, you’ll never achieve the right outcomes. So why not try supporting your planning process with AI?