Beyond disruption: embedding AI in project management to drive enterprise transformation

AI isn’t coming. It’s already here

Four out of ten CEOs believe their company won’t be viable in 10 years if it stays on its current path.

Fortunately, AI can help.

At this year’s PMI Global Summit in Barcelona, I connected with PM and PMO leaders from around the world. One message echoed across sessions and conversations: AI isn’t coming. It’s already here — and it’s changing how we lead and deliver projects.

What used to be considered disruptive is now essential. Doing nothing with AI can mean missing opportunities. For organizations under pressure to move faster, deliver more value and stay ahead of change, the time to act is now.

The case for change: 3 perspectives

• Managed Services
  Projects have end dates, but transformation is constant. That’s why leading organizations are turning to managed services. They help handle PM spikes and talent challenges and enable better costs and better outcomes. No wonder the managed services market is expected to grow.
• Transformation
  In our Annual Global CEO Survey, 42% of CEOs believe their companies will not be viable in 10 years if they remain on their current paths. I lead our PMO Managed Services. My job: help our clients transform to stay ahead of the curve with services designed to navigate the complex and ever-changing landscape of transformations. PMO bottlenecks can create gaps between strategy and execution. And AI is in the middle of all of this.
• AI integration
  According to that same survey, almost half of CEOs say that their biggest priorities over the next three years are integrating AI (including GenAI) into technology platforms as well as business processes and workflows. Without doubt, AI intersects and integrates with program management and PMO. Project managers and PMOs who can seamlessly integrate can be much more impactful, and those who don’t make the jump risk being left behind.

Bringing together transformation and AI

At PwC, we are doing a great deal to transform our own business. As an example, we’ve developed a knowledge management AI that helps our PMO teams get up to speed faster and find resources and material for clients to expedite delivery. And we created a Responsible AI toolkit that includes a suite of customizable frameworks, tools and processes designed to help address the unique risks of AI and GenAI. We’ve also invested in driving and building AI solutions both within our business and for our clients. PwC made major early investments in this opportunity: We became the first enterprise reseller of OpenAI, and spent $1 billion to expand and scale our AI offerings. And we recently launched our AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows.

AI is not the disruption — it’s the enabler

AI was a central focus at PMI Barcelona, and rightly so. It’s not a buzzword anymore — it’s a core driver of modern delivery. At PwC, we’re already embedding AI into our strategic PMO services — enhancing how we:

• Forecast and plan
• Align talent to value
• Deliver programs with speed and precision

Our perspective is simple: AI doesn’t replace PMOs. It supercharges them. To see AI’s impact on PMOs, let’s look at two challenging areas: roadmaps and resource management.

Roadmapping traditionally involves manually identifying milestones and deliverables across a complex portfolio. But this requires knowledge of all the programs and the strategy, not to mention continuous work to keep it maintained — so the risk of the roadmap becoming stale can be extremely high.

By leveraging GenAI for roadmapping, we can analyze vast amounts of data to help with strategic planning and forecasting and identify trends, emerging technologies and impacts to the roadmap and strategy. GenAI can also create customized and adaptive roadmaps tailored to the specific needs of the program and each project.

Similarly, resource management traditionally has been ad hoc and reactive. GenAI can help you predict and fine-tune resource needs based on project requirements and historical data, confirming the right resources are allocated to the right tasks at the right time.

Let’s move forward, together

Change isn’t coming — it’s here. And we’re optimistic. Because with the right tools, the right model and the right collaborator, transformation is possible.

If your organization is navigating pressure to do more — faster, better, and smarter — we’re here to help you adapt, innovate and lead in your journey as well as integrate AI into projects wherever appropriate to deliver more value.

Ready to close the gap between strategy and execution? Let’s explore how AI-powered PMO services can help reduce risk, boost delivery speed, and improve visibility — all at enterprise scale. It starts with a conversation.

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