Welcome and session overview

0:04 Wonderful to meet you. Um, hi Sallaqu from DC. Um, he's a scrum master. Wonderful, that's great. Ijaz from Dallas, Juana from Boston, Kuldeep Siddharth from Frankfurt, Stacy from Oh, I'm missing out on that because there are so many responses coming in. Savita from Bangalore. Hi Mohammed from Saudi. Hi Soumya. Hi Nagamani from Hyderabad. Deepthi from UK. Hemal from Pune, working as a delivery manager, great. Hi Sachin from Pune. Hi Prem Kumar. Hi Vidya from Hyderabad. Hi Jessica from US.

0:44 Hi, hi Rafi from Hyderabad. Hi Kalpana from Bangalore, working as a project manager. Wonderful. Uh, hi Uddhav from Pune. Okay, so many introductions coming in and I think we have a lot of participants joining us. So unfortunately, I will not be able to read all of your introductions, but thank you for the participation. It's great to see all of your wonderful introductions. So I will also like to introduce myself. I'm Shweta and I will be hosting today's webinar.

1:12 Uh, and today's topic as you can see on the screen is AI in Project Management. How to boost productivity and deliver more. And we all know that AI is everywhere. But beyond the headlines, what does it actually mean for project managers? Can it help you save time, make better decisions, manage risks effectively and ultimately deliver projects more successfully? These are all the aspects that we are going to be covering in today's webinar and we have a wonderful speaker join us today.

1:36 I'll introduce her shortly in the coming slides. So without wasting any more of our time, I'll quickly take you through a few ground rules before we begin. Just to ensure that we have a very smooth webinar. So if you have any questions, I request all of you to put your questions in the Q and A box. So what happens is when you share your questions in the chat, due to the high volume of messages that we receive over there, we might miss out on those.

2:00 If you share your questions in the Q and A, we'll make it a point to address your questions towards the end of the webinar. If not, as, uh, you know, as Luiza might not be able to explain it as and when you post the question, but towards the end we will surely take it up. Please use the chat box effectively and keep conversations related to today's topic. Uh, please don't share any WhatsApp message, uh, you know, group links.

2:16 We don't want to spam our participants. And finally, one of the most asked questions that we have for your attendance certificate. We will be sharing a poll towards the end of the webinar and you can share your full name and you will receive the certificate, the slide deck and the recording to your email ID. And, uh, let me quickly walk you all through, uh, what we do at Simply Learn. I just want to understand from your, uh, side if you have attended our webinars before.

2:44 Is this your first time? If it's your first time, please mention first in your chat. Uh, if you're attending for the second or third time, you can mention that as well. So many people saying first time. First time, first time, second, okay, first, second, third. All right, so many first timers too. That's great. Okay, thank you all for your responses. Uh, so now that we have so many of you joining us for the first time and some of you saying you've attended a lot of webinars with us.

3:12 Uh, thank you all once again for joining in. For anyone who's joined us before, great to see you all back for another webinar. And for all of you who are joining us for the first time, I'll quickly walk you through what we do at Simply Learn. Uh, so at Simply Learn, we help learners transform their lives by empowering them through digital courses. And currently, we have helped over 15 million learners advance their careers across 150 plus countries.

3:40 And we do these through global partnerships. So on the screen right now, you can see some of our key industry and university partners. And today's webinar is delivered by Simply Learn in collaboration with Virginia Tech, continuing and professional education, one of the leading institutions known for its commitment to innovation, technology and lifelong learning. So VT also provides a course in Project Management. Also, we'll talk about it towards the end of the webinar. And, uh, here are just some numbers we wanted to highlight here.

4:08 So our learners have reported an average 50% salary hike and we maintain a strong 4.8 out of five learner rating. and an 80% graduation rate. So what really drives these outcomes is our approach to have industry relevant curriculum, live sessions led by expert practitioners, hands-on projects, real-world case studies, and dedicated learning support. So our goal is to ensure a wonderful learning experience for all of you in the next one hour and we would love to have your complete attention till the very end of the webinar.

0:40 So you might be wondering what we're gonna cover. So I'll quickly take you through the agenda for today's webinar. So we will start by exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the role of project managers and where it fits across the project life cycle. Then we will get into some practical applications. So there will be a live demo segment where Luisa is going to walk you through how AI can help you create project plans faster, analyze risks more effectively and even optimize your resume for different project management roles.

1:32 Then we will move on to prompting techniques because knowing how to ask AI the right questions is quickly becoming like a superpower, right? Even for project managers today. And finally, we will wrap up with a roadmap to help you become an AI powered project manager, along with time for your questions and the next steps. So if you have ever wondered, how can I actually use AI in my day-to-day project management work, you're definitely going to want to stay with us till the very end of the webinar.

2:17 And now comes the part that I have been waiting for and I'm sure a lot of you would have also been waiting to know about it, our speaker. So it's my absolute pleasure to introduce Luisa Virgis, a highly accomplished project management and agile instructor with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations and professionals deliver successful projects across predictive, hybrid, and also agile environments. And what makes Luisa a particularly exciting to learn from is that she doesn't just teach project management.

2:50 She helps professionals understand how to apply it in the real world and I think that is what is most important in today's times. Her expertise, if you were to think about spans from PMP, agile, scrum, leadership, and now the practical use of AI to improve planning, communication, reporting and also team productivity. And one another important point to highlight here is that she has mentored countless professionals on their certification and career journeys, helping them bridge the gap between theory and execution and she's one of our trainers at Simply Learn as well.

3:50 So today you're not just learning about AI in project management, you're learning from someone who has spent decades helping project managers adapt, solve and stay ahead of change. So I encourage all of you to stay engaged, take notes if you want, and drop your questions in the chat as we go along. So Luisa, we're really excited to learn from you. The stage is all yours. I'm sure everyone's waiting to hear your introduction. A lot of them through the PMP certification, but also learning about agile, learning about using AI for their project management work.

4:50 And very excited to be in this webinar today, sharing a little bit of what I know and my experience with the webinar participants. That the project managers who thrive in the next five years will not be the ones who resist AI, they will be the ones who deploy it most effectively. So I hope take a moment to let that sink in. And a few years ago, project managers who mastered agile gained a significant advantage. And today, we are witnessing a similar shift with AI.

5:40 But the only good news is that AI is not here to replace project managers, it's here to amplify the capabilities of great project managers. However, the impact, the potential that it has, it's unprecedented. We have not had a similar tool that help us in such a significant way in our project management profession. So even though we want to say, well, this is just a tool, like other tools we've had at hand, it is also unprecedented in the way that it can shorten the duration of a lot of our routine tasks that we perform, in the way that it can analyze and it can help digest loads of information that we've never had before.

1:00 So I think it is important to kind of understand where project managers sit with this AI. The Project Management Institute, PMI, has been conducting research very frequently because changes are happening so quick that perhaps a survey from two years ago is now outdated, right? So the most recent research is saying that 20% of project managers are already using extensive or have strong practical AI skills today. And I want to put a pin on this, Shweta, that we're going to come back to this, this data, because it is very important.

2:00 20% of project managers are already using AI extensively or have practical AI skills. Two in five project professionals are using generative AI in over half of their project work. And this has doubled in the last couple of years, right? So perhaps two years ago, people were using it more timidly, to answer a question here or there, but now two out of five project managers are using it for more than half of their work. And in terms of our PMOs, our project management offices, they are projected to use AI in decision making by 2026 as of as much as 80%.

3:00 So 80% of those PMOs, those project management offices, are going to be relying on the analysis that the quick support that AI can generate in making those decisions that are critical for organizations. So AI is here, it is only going to grow and it is here to stay. Thank you for sharing that perspective and also talking to us about how quickly AI is reshaping this profession right now. Shweta, on that note, could you also walk us through the difference between a project manager who works with AI, one who fears AI and one who is actively leading with AI?

3:40 What separates these three mindsets and why does it matter so much for career growth and projects? Yes, that's that's very important, Shweta. And it's interesting because I even encounter these kind of three profiles, even just during our PMP boot camps, for example, right? There are people who are like, AI is not my thing and I don't want to use it, and I am used to doing my things without AI, right? And so, you know, they may be managing projects successfully, but more and more, they're going to be spending more of their time on routine tasks that other project managers are going to be performing in minutes, while theirs is taking perhaps hours, right?

4:40 So with time, this productivity gap is going to become a competitive gap. Okay, so your knowledge of project management may be essentially the same, but you're not producing at the same rate. And we know that time is money. So the the project manager who ignores AI, it is going to start losing relevance, especially at leadership conversations. Why? Because it's taking them more time to process the same amount of information that other project managers are processing in minutes, right?

5:20 And then we have the the project managers who are fearful of AI. And I get a lot of these students when we're teaching them how to use AI for their project work that they have to submit during coursework, and they're like, this feels like cheating. I don't know, I'm scared of using AI because it's makes it so easy. And it, it, it, you shouldn't fear AI. Again, it's just a tool. It's like if you would tell me, I'm afraid to use a hammer to to work with this nail.

0:10 So it is telling me what are my top five resumes? We have to add a technical project management skill section. And it is telling me what to consider. One thing that I can also include in my prompt is to say, don't fabricate information. If you have an information gap, highlight it to me so that I can provide more information. So after I see this, this is where that human in the loop, this dance, or this pushback that you're going to have with AI.

0:40 So you're going to say, you know, uh, I actually have experience in this and this, or um, you know, please, let's see. I am going through perhaps to copy paste a previous experience that was not in my resume so that I can then start this conversation with AI. So that with more tailor information, it is going to give me a better output. So this is what I would recommend in terms of updating a resume. You are going to then read this information, bring more information perhaps, more experience that was not there, so that you can help craft.

1:20 I would not ask the tool to completely redo your resume for the reasons that I've already explained. Okay. Let's move on to another, uh, another scenario, okay? Let's, let me hear in the chat, uh, some ideas of a basic project that we can use for this example. So put in the put in the comments, I'll select one. A simple project, maybe one that you're working on. So describe your projects to me, and we will use that to create a quick project charter.

1:50 So I'll give you a few minutes to do that, because I think it will be interesting if we can get some ideas. Just give me a simple idea of a project that you are working on or some fictional project, it doesn't even have to be true. So what I'm going to start doing while I while I read your questions, okay, I'm going to say, you are an experienced project manager. And, uh, are going to produce a draft project charter for a, now let me see.

2:30 Uh, to the a project remediation, let me see. Uh, supply chain transformation. Okay. Acquire a new medical center. Let's do this one. That's an interesting one. A project charted for a project to acquire a new medical center. So now I've given that a basic information. Now I am going to need to at least give it some constraints, right? So the budget for the acquisition process is $2 million. And the timeline is six months. Okay. Involve legal department, IT department.

3:20 And HR department. Um, and now I want to specify what the output is going to be. For now, I'm just going to ask for a project charter. So make the project charter, two page maximum. I'm going to say include basic milestones. And I'm going to say, and I think this is important is do not fabricate information. If you do not have it, instead, highlight it as an assumption. So that then I can see, what is the AI assuming to be true?

4:00 I don't want it to just create a project charter with assumptions that I don't know what they are. I want to know what the AI tool is assuming to be true. Uh, let's see. So we have the role, we have the basic information. We have some constraints. We are giving it some direction about who needs to be involved. And we are telling it about what the output that we want. So we're saying, I want a project charter, it needs to include milestones.

4:30 And it needs to have assumptions. So now let's see what this gives us. Okay. So imagine it's Monday morning, your boss just called you and say, hey, we are going to be naming you a project manager for this new acquisition project. Can you please draft a project charter, okay? So instead of a blank page and a full cup of coffee, you have the If you're interested to enroll in this program. This is this program is in collaboration with Virginia Tech.

0:20 Or even for the PMP course, you can click on a yes and our team will be reaching out to you at the earliest to help you with any inquiries or questions you may have. So, I'll just quickly launch the poll for all of you. Yes. Uh, if you want to talk to a learning advisor, please go ahead and click on a yes. Um, there are a lot of benefits. There's a lot of support that we provide, so think about it.

0:40 Uh, you know the right call to make, right? Uh, and with that, I think, as you guys respond, we will also try to take up a few questions. Uh, there are so many in the chat and in the Q&A, and I think Luisa has responded to a lot of your questions in the chat and shared this hashtag log at the prompt as well. So, I'll just move on to see if you've missed any questions. Yes, uh, for people asking about the certificate of, uh, attendance certificate, yes.

1:20 Uh, right after this poll, I will quickly launch another poll for the certificate of participation and once you fill up the poll, you will be receiving the slide deck, the recording, and your certificate within the next 48 working hours. Uh, if you don't receive it in the next 48 hours, please write to us. So, I would request all of you to wait for 48 hours before you write to us. All right. So, that's answered. Uh, Schweta, can we answer a question that we have on the Q&A box?

2:00 Uh, which asks for AI tools that are specialized in scheduling and to make LinkedIn profiles. So, you are going to find nowadays, specialized tools for everything and new tools pop up every day. It's it's incredible the amount, the rate at which new tools are popping up. So, it is very hard to like keep up with all of them. I would say for scheduling, Primavera is one of the most helpful tools and it does have it is a tool that you can also, um, use along with AI.

2:40 For LinkedIn profiles, you don't really need a specialized tool. You can just use any, uh, generative AI tool like Chat GPT, like Gemini, like Claude. You don't really need anything more specialized than that. That is the beauty of these tools is that they are so sophisticated now and they are so comprehensive. Then you that you can use them for most things. Unless you really need something super, super specialized. Even scheduling, you can, uh, get some support from a tool like Chat GPT.

3:00 So, I wouldn't encourage you to first explore some of these more comprehensive and more user-friendly tools and then if you need something more specialized, I would encourage you to to look at what tools do you already use. So, what do you use for scheduling? If you use already Microsoft Project, then you can tap into the AI function of Microsoft Project. If you are using Jira, tap into the AI function of Jira, right? So, it will be more like wiser to use those tools that you are already comfortable and familiar with or the tools that your company is already providing the licensing for you, as opposed to you going and searching in the market for something very sophisticated.

3:40 Because again, usually there is no need for that. Thank you Luisa, thanks for addressing that question. Um, and there are so many more but in the interest of time, we will not be able to take up many of your questions. Um, so, right now we've answered as many questions as we can and if you want any more details about the course, you can scan this QR code and you will see the landing page. Here you can, you know, see the course structure, curriculum, all of that.

4:20 So, I hope that clarifies a lot of your questions. Uh, and with that, I think I will have to move on to the certificate of participation. I'm going to quickly end this poll right here. If you have missed the poll, you can head to the course page and you will be able to click on an option to talk to the advisor and our team will reach out to you. And right now, I'm launching the poll for the certificate.

4:40 I request all of you to fill your full name in this poll. So, you will be receiving the certificate, uh, based on the information that you fill here. Your email IDs are already captured. And in case you're not able to see this poll, you can write to us at webinars@simplylearn.net. Just mention In this session, we will be building a full stack AI product in four hours. If this is something that you think is, um, interesting and you would like to participate, please scan this QR code and there will be an option to register for this webinar.

0:20 And this is happening in two days. It's 27th June, Saturday. And the timing will be 6:00 PM IST to 10:00 PM IST. And it would be 8:30 AM ET to 12:30 PM ET. All right, so I hope all of you got a chance to take a look at the, um, scan the QR for anyone who is interested. And I hope all of you got the opportunity to fill the poll. Right? So, with that, I think we have extended the time by 10 minutes and I would also like to thank Luisa before I wrap up the session.

0:40 Luisa, you've been a great speaker. I've always loved hosting you and I'm sure the audience also got great insights. They've been really engaged throughout. So, once again, thank you so much for joining us. And is there any, um, last word that you'd like to leave with our audience? Oh, thank you so much, Rmadan. Thank you for all the, uh, heart and like emojis that I am seeing on the screen. I really just love sharing my experience.

1:13 Um, I invite you all to continue to be engaged with Simply Learn. And maybe I will see you in my, uh, next PMP cohort, some of you. That would be wonderful. Yes. Um, we also hope all of you join us. So, with that, thank you so much, Luisa. And I'm going to quickly end this poll right here for everybody. And I would also like to take this time to thank each and every one of you who stayed with us till the very end.

1:36 Um, this was wonderful. Having all of you saw a lot of questions. You guys were great. And I hope to see you all in the upcoming webinars as well. If you have not seen the poll, once again, I'm telling you, please write to us at webinars@simplylearn.com. And with that, I'm going to end this webinar. Thank you, everybody, and see you.