How project managers can become AI trailblazers

Generative AI adoption needs trailblazers. Project managers (PMs) — who work across many teams, tasks, and timelines — can become the luminaries to inspire gen AI use throughout an organization. They can show how gen AI brings creativity to projects while helping teams meet deadlines. Here’s why and how project managers can lead the charge.

Why project managers can (and should) lead the way

Project managers have a 20,000-foot view of their projects and can find opportunities to use gen AI in ways that in-the-trenches project contributors might not have discovered. With their cross-functional view of an entire project, PMs know where and how gen AI can improve business performance — and help the project meet goals and deadlines.

As the glue that holds a team together, PMs are in a unique position to encourage adoption of gen AI. Many, if not all, project team members touch base with PMs regularly. When a PM uses gen AI to meet milestones faster, identify critical paths, or brainstorm fresh approaches to a project roadblock, everyone gets a firsthand lesson in gen AI’s benefits. This creates a positive feedback loop for deeper gen AI adoption throughout an organization.

PMs are also experienced multi-taskers. They gather people and ideas, manage timelines, and anticipate, prevent, and troubleshoot problems. And they continually communicate progress all across the organization. When they identify delays or resource gaps, they can tap gen AI for inspiration.

Leading by example

“Show, don’t tell,” is a good approach for inspiring lightbulb moments while using gen AI on a project. When PMs integrate gen AI into their daily tasks, they show colleagues a better way to work. That’s a faster way to illustrate gen AI’s value than teaching with a slide deck.

Ongoing project work like solving problems, running meetings, completing routine tasks, and research are part of every PM’s day. These tasks offer the best chances to show how gen AI contributes to successful projects:

• Creative problem-solving: Gen AI can bring fresh perspectives to projects. For example, PMs can encourage marketing teams to ask gen AI for ideas on increasing social engagement around a new product.

• Improvements in meetings: PMs use gen AI to take meeting notes, analyze meeting summaries, and pinpoint topics that keep coming up. With AI handling the note-taking, everyone can be fully engaged in the conversation. When meeting summaries are shared, everyone can work from the same list of discussion points and action items.

• Automation of routine tasks: PMs can ask gen AI to analyze deadlines and team-member availability to adjust project schedules. Or they can use gen AI to automate and speed up other routine jobs like summarizing research.

• Research: PMs might be new to the product, division, or customer they’re supporting. Gen AI helps them hit the ground running by quickly researching topics, summarizing information, and surfacing insights that might be new to them. PMs can share research with other team members who are also new to the subject.

The PM AI checklist

Here are the top three things project managers can do right away to become gen AI trailblazers:

1. Up your prompting game. Prompt writing is a foundational skill, and well written prompts generate better responses. Be specific and iterate. Tell gen AI what you need it to do (summarize, write, track, or research). Make prompts a conversation. Fine-tune the prompts as gen AI’s answers reveal areas for improvement or further exploration. (Download our latest Gemini prompt guide.)

2. Share what you learn with project teams. An in-progress project is the best place for team members to test their new skills and gain confidence in using gen AI. Create a gen AI knowledge base with NotebookLM and share it with teams looking for new ways to apply gen AI to project tasks.

3. Get in the habit of creating summaries with AI. Ask gen AI to list the key points of a research document and share with others. Reduce long meeting notes to a list of action items for project participants.

Be the trailblazer gen AI needs

The best way to become a gen AI trailblazer is to become a confident and frequent gen AI experimenter. And because project managers are involved in everything from budgeting to marketing, they have endless ways to experiment.

A recent study by the Project Management Institute showed the virtuous cycle of PMs using gen AI: the more they used it, the better results they got.* In fact, gen AI power users reported benefits across all areas of project management, from project scoping and scheduling, to cost and quality management. These users also reported improved professional performance and opportunities.

As PMs share their successful applications of gen AI, they’ll encourage other early adopters, who’ll earn more wins — and spread the word.

* Project Management Institute, “First Movers’ Advantage: The Immediate Benefits of Adopting Generative AI for Project Management,” 2024.