AI in Project Management: Hype vs Reality in 2025PRINCE2 Agile Course

00:00:17 Yassin Abbas: So. yeah, it’s really nice to see. Well, that’s a very good number of participants today. Thank you so much for joining us.Who is PRINCE2 for?

00:00:30 Yassin Abbas:PRINCE2 is a customer-focused project management methodologySo, welcome everyone. Today’s webinar in AI, the specific subject for today is the ‘AI in Project Management: Hype vs Reality’. My name is Yassin and I’m excited to be hosting this session alongside an expert in the field. Our presenter for today, Emmanuel, has over 20 years of experience in project management. She is a trainer, she’s coach, author, thought leader who has helped thousands of professionals worldwide, she has a tonne of making complex topics, simple and practical as well, and today she will help us separate the hype from reality when it comes to AI in Project Management, Emanuela your team.. It offers a set of principles, practices, and processes to enable an organisation’s key managers to justify a project. It helps them understand “why should we do it (the project)?” and “are the benefits worth the costs and risks of doing the project?”. It also focuses on how to manage a project effectively to ensure it still is a worthwhile investment in a changing business environment.

00:01:30 Emanuela Giangregorio:PRINCE2 was developed by the UK government in 1996 as a generic project management methodology. Thank you, Yassin. Thanks for having me here and also thank you to everybody that’s joined and everyone’s really busy. So, I appreciate you taking your time, hello to those that said hi in the chat box and everyone else. Good morning, good afternoon, and perhaps good evening to some as well. So last year was a bit of a roller coaster ride for many of us into AI things. Up and down of new technologies being sort of arriving, we haven’t get used how to use each time I get used to using a version of ChatGPT there’s a new version or an AI software tool that launched new AI systems and it’s been fantastic. As for some of us, the writers thrilling others, it’s been a little bit scary. I think a lot of people, from what I’ve seen, they’ve decided not to get on the ride. They stay on the cute little carousel, which is maybe not using AI properly in projects, but just playing around with tools like ChatGPT to make recipes or recommend holiday itineraries. And even so, there are still some people that are staying away from AI, believe it or not, in 2025 now yeah. So, 2024 was fantastic, 2025 we arrived with more in AI as well. So, as you know things like AI agents have become really popular. If you look at these companies and I’m showing on the screen here, they span various industries. We have large global blue-chip companies in manufacturing, in pharmaceuticals, in insurance, GlobalPR, and comms agencies down to companies or organisations that are based in the UK and part of the UK Government, and we also have Qatar Foundation.Focus of PRINCE2

00:03:15 Emanuela Giangregorio:Principles PRINCE2 is based upon a set of Now actually these organisations are some of the examples of my clients. So, what I’m going to be sharing with you today in this hour that we have together is my real-world practical experience from what I’ve seen regarding AI adoption in projects specifically. I know there are a lot of stats out there, there’s a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, but really what I want to share with you and then also exchange of your questions and some thoughts with you as well on what is the actual reality here in 2025. So, a little bit about me, in case you’re wondering why my accent doesn’t match my name. I’m South African Italian; I was born in South Africa to a wonderful Italian father and a South African mother. I grew up there and I moved over to the UK more than 20 years ago. I live on the South Coast in a place called East Sussex if anyone knows the UK. I’m a project management consultant and coach and work around the world, have done for many years, as Yassin said, over 20 years. So, my field pretty much is in project management and of course more recently a strong interest in AI. So, if you’re interested in my work, you can find my books on Amazon, the online courses that I run in AI on my website, and feel free to follow me on LinkedIn.7 principles

00:04:32 Emanuela Giangregorio: which guide all aspects of the method. Since it is a project management methodology, it describes the roles and responsibilities of all members of the But less about me and more about what we’re doing today. So is AI in project management, hype or is a reality here February 2025. I’m also going to be talking about what you need to do to enable ethical, efficient and effective use of AI in projects. So also letting you know about Q&A, I think it’s dull for you to have to listen to a whole session and wait for the Q&A until the very end. So, what I’m going to do is pause halfway through and take any questions that you have up until then. Yassin will be my copilots today, so you’ll be looking at any of the questions in the chat box and then you can flag up those questions with me when we pause halfway. So please do make a note of any questions you have as we go along and then also, we’ll have some Q&A at the very end as well. Now some of you might have seen this prediction by Gartner. As you may know, Gartner is a research organisation specialising in technology research and their research team have predicted that by 2030, 80% of Project Management tasks will be run by AI, 80%. So those of you that Project Managers, think about everything you do and think that by 2030 there’s a possibility that 80% all your tasks that you do in projects will be run by AI.project management team

00:06:03 Emanuela Giangregorio:. This includes higher levels such as the project board, as well as the Now back to real world and what I’ve seen to date. Certainly, that’s not the evidence I’ve seen right now as in we know we’re close to that, but certainly it is a possibility. But essentially what this prediction is suggesting that within four years. Largely, project management tasks will be done by AI that’s using 20% of the work that what we do, which is actually would be great for me as a Project Manager. It would be fantastic if 80% of the work can be done by AI, because that absolutely frees me to focus more on things like stakeholder management, better communication, relationship building and all the important things that we need to do. Now what I’m going to do with you today is 2 key things. Talk about where are we now? The truth about AI adoption in project currently in my own practical experience with my clients and then I also want to share how to get to where Gartner says we’re going. There are several organisations like these you can see on the screen here you’re familiar with most of these brands, if not all of them. These are examples of early innovators in AI. For more than 10 years, they have actually been at the forefront of AI innovation. All of them use AI in their projects and some of them also have AI-assisted or AI-powered project management tools like Oracle for example. If you are working for one of these organisations or similar organisations, it’s very likely that you are part of a project team then that has high levels of AI adoption in projects.project manager

00:07:44 Emanuela Giangregorio: and team manager roles. PracticesBut not everybody is lucky to be working for these types of organisations where we have high AI adoption, so perhaps now is a good time Yassin to run our pole. I’m interested to see with everyone here. What is your current usage of AI in your project? I’m not talking about AI in general like using ChatGPT to come up with ideas for non-project things. But the questions here are specifically in projects. Thank you.It also covers a wide range of key

00:08:32 Emanuela Giangregorio:project management practices – business case, organizing, risk, plans, quality, issues, and progress. Success on a PRINCE2 project is measured by how well it enables the project’s benefits to be realized by the customer organization.Right, so I’m seeing quite a lot so, at the moment we have mostly are saying occasionally. Secondly, not yet regularly not applicable. A lot of you are using ChatGPT and Copilot, some of you none at the moment.Processes

00:09:03 Emanuela Giangregorio:PRINCE2 also includes a full OK, I think we have all our results in the poll, Yassin.project management lifecycle

00:09:08 Emanuela Giangregorio: which explains which role takes key decisions at crucial times during a project. PRINCE2 recognizes that on Thank you and I can share the results on the screen. So, let’s see if I can share all results, how does this work?projects

00:09:21 Emanuela Giangregorio: there are all kinds of products (outputs) produced by teams of people with various specialist skills. These teams have myriad ways of working and PRINCE2 does not try to guide how they should work. Yassin, can you see the results on your screen as a user?Instead, PRINCE2 simply defines the interface between the project and these teams in terms of reporting, accountability, and the work to be done.

00:09:25 Emanuela Giangregorio:Enhance your skills with our expert-led courses

And essentially this lack of human capability, along with the fact that we have a lack of a strategy and this disparate attempt at AI implementation and the lack of tools and data, has led to a situation where we have general AI underutilisation in projects. Or inefficient and ineffective AI utilisation, so it is being used but it’s not being used well and it’s actually taking more time than it should be. Now remember our focus here is in projects, those client examples that I shared with you many in fact most of them are using AI in the operation. For example, in the pharmaceutical organisations, they rely heavily on AI tools for early drug discovery and those sorts of things. The insurance industry example I shared with you there, they are using AI tools for fraud detection and for automated underwriting. So, organisations are using AI tools but when it comes to in project management, this is something that we find is certainly lacking. So now the time I’d like to kind of pause with a bit of questions, if there are any. Yassin, I don’t know if we have any questions in the box yet. Can you let me know?

00:19:56 Yassin Abbas: I’m sorry. Yeah, not, not yet, but I’m sure that.

00:20:00 Emanuela Giangregorio:Instructor-led Can you upload that survey for us to download, please? Are you talking about the stats that we did? I think you talking about the survey from the poll that would be fine. Wouldn’t it be Yassin I think because it’s confidential?PRINCE2 Agile Foundation course

00:20:14 Yassin Abbas: We can share, we can share the story of that survey.£1,299 +vat

00:20:18 Emanuela Giangregorio: See all datesYeah. And you’re going to get access too, you’ll get the webinar after session as well.Who is Agile for?

00:20:25 Emanuela Giangregorio:History of Agile So, you’ll get the recording, which you can share with colleagues too.Engineers in the software industry in the 1990s created Agile approaches when they were trying to address problems with software projects being consistently late, over-budget or delivering low quality software.

00:20:27 Yassin Abbas:Today many industries outside the software industry use Agile approaches. Focus of AgileActually, Ingrid has a has shared a interesting question. Is there a tool you recommend other than Excel?Agile approaches do not concern themselves with the wider questions about whether a project is worth it, or whether the benefits can be realized afterwards. They do focus however on delivering value to the customer by delivering products incrementally, in the most efficient manner possible.

00:20:37 Emanuela Giangregorio:These products are likely to do what the user/customer needs because the customers have been involved in a constant cycle of defining and prioritizing requirements, developing, testing, and providing feedback. You’ll see on the slide that I’m going to share with you soon. Who’s that from, Ingrid?Delivery of working products

00:20:42 Yassin Abbas:Agile methods are delivery teams doing the work – whether part of a project or not. They focus on questions for the team such as ‘what needs to be delivered next week?’, and ‘is the working software what the customer needs?’ Yes.Collaboration

00:20:43 Emanuela Giangregorio:

, take this concept even further by suggesting a detailed plan for each ‘sprint’. A Scrum sprint is based upon the key Agile concept of a ‘time-box’ – a fixed period of time typically ranging from between 1-4 weeks.00:33:04 Emanuela Giangregorio: So finally, I think the slide has changed. Yes, it has I think there’s about 15 tools on this slide that I’m sharing with you now. This is not even all the tools they are, but I’ve chosen 15 tools. These are examples of AI-powered project management software tools. How do you choose one? Do you choose 1 based on a recommendation? Do you choose 1 based on a requirement specification? I would both right and you know, listen to your recommendations, read reviews about these tools, but do be very clear about what your requirements are and some of the constraints that perhaps your organisation has regarding budget and so on and then choose the one that is the best for your organisation. For example, you’ll see on the bottom left there there’s a tool called Forecast, this one here. They are really saying if you look at their website, they’re targeting larger organisations with much higher usage numbers of the tool. The tool actually Forecast is one of the first tools, the first project management tool that was built with AI from scratch. A lot of these other tools like Monday, Asana, Trello, etc. Were a commonplace project management tools and then more recently they’ve built in AI capabilities. Some of these tools that brought in the AI capabilities have kind of brought in OpenAI, GPT models and then they have to sort of modify them. But tools like Forecast for example, is one of the first tools that was actually built from scratch for large complex projects and has the AI capability built in but again, it’s not suitable for all organisations.Delivering working products

00:34:44 Emanuela Giangregorio:At the end of every Scrum sprint a Scrum team delivers working software to the customer. Delivering working software at the end of each sprint guarantees that the software is never delivered late. The customer receives ever increasing increments of working software until, at the end of the final sprint, they receive the fully built and tested system.Those of you that are interested in finding where you can compare and shortlist tools, these are the two websites I recommend. You might be familiar with them or not, but again Capterra and G2 Crowd. So, let’s just say you want to figure out what tool I should get maybe you’ve listened to what we’ve said on the webinar here and also you might do some of your own research, and perhaps you end up with short list of five. You can go to Capterra and to G2 Crowd and then compare those five tools. Read the reviews and see to what extent they satisfy your needs and maybe from there you can short this that to two tools and then get some demos of those tools and then finally make a decision. I’m well aware that some of the people here has little to no decision authority in your organisation, so you can’t like affect what the organisation does across the team or the broader organisation. So, it’s just for you to choose what works for you and then also some of you here might have decision authority. So, for those of you that do have decision authority and can play a role in selecting the right tool for the enterprise or the department or the team, do it right from the start. Start with a requirement specification, do the research, select and test, then run a pilot, and then finally evaluate if the tool works. And if it does, then roll it out and recommend to the broader organisation that this would be the best one for you.Time-boxes and team plans

00:36:14 Emanuela Giangregorio:The Agile concept of time-boxes or iterations fits in neatly with PRINCE2’s concept of a team plan because there can be one or more time-boxes within a team plan. PRINCE2 doesn’t prescribe how many time-boxes a team plan should contain because that’s a decision for the self-organizing Agile team members.The reason I’m sharing a screen a slide, at least when we go back here. Where the robots vacuum cleaner on it. This is my Christmas present from my sister, normally we don’t give Christmas presents. She’s basically Brisbane, Australia and in December, this box arrived at my door, and I said to the Amazon person like this is not for me. This is must be a mistake, he said Well, it’s your name I know you by now because he delivers a lot. And he said it’s definitely for you. And I opened this box, and I saw this robot vacuum cleaner. I thought, my God I don’t need this like, my place is not that big. When I started using it, I realised, my gosh absolutely do need and I love it. That reason I’m sharing this with you now is when I first got it, I just get excited about things and I just accepted it and got it going and it was doing an OK job. And I to read the instructions properly and I watched some videos from the manufacturers of the product to see how you can get the most use out of it and actually what I learned was I was using less than 50% of the capability of this amazing robot vacuum cleaner. Once I learned how to use it properly, I was using it to its fullest extent. OK, so this is the key thing when it comes to the tools. It’s not only about getting the tools in place, but also very much about ensuring that we are able to train users to make the best use of the tools.PRINCE2 Agile

00:37:37 Emanuela Giangregorio: addresses si