Microsoft showed its commitment to using artificial intelligence through its partnership with OpenAI. At this point, they’re most well-known as the creators of ChatGPT. The company’s Dynamics 365 release wave 1 plan showed how Microsoft would introduce hundreds of AI capabilities within their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. Project managers stand to benefit significantly from Copilot by using AI in project management.
The Microsoft Azure Open AI language model powers AI assistant Copilot. Making Copilot available for project management functions is meant to improve the efficiency of project and practice managers. Both roles typically require a lot of time spent on task planning, creating status reports, and performing risk assessments.
AI project management introduces the possibility of reducing these time-consuming tasks from hours to minutes. Setting up project plan templates requires tapping into best practices and other knowledge depending on the project.
Generative AI takes a lot of the legwork out of the most time-consuming part of project creation. By entering natural language commands, project managers can quickly build a plan using previous project templates. After describing the plan, Copilot sets up a hierarchal task structure for your project, including durations.
From there, project managers can edit, add and remove tasks. In addition, they can set up dependencies between different tasks. Copilot can also recommend which resources to assign to projects, ensuring you don’t forget to account for a valuable asset.
Copilot generates results based on prompts and information from the Dataverse table supporting Dynamics 365. You’ll need to upgrade to the latest version of Copilot before integrating it into modules like Project Management and Business Central.
You can enable Copilot in Project Management by following the below steps.
Any company looking to use AI project management capabilities in Dynamics 365 should ensure that the technology gets used in a responsible and ethical manager. Azure Open AI does include safeguards to prevent the generation of abusive, destructive, or offensive content. However, companies should set up policies for reviewing content or output for appropriateness, completeness, and accuracy.
Task planning involves breaking down project goals into specific tasks. That means figuring out when activities must happen to achieve your objectives. These tasks must be organized into a manageable format to ensure you can effectively track the progress of your project daily.
Your tasks let you know what people you need and the expertise required. That way, you can ensure you have those assets in place when the time comes to complete the tasks. Inaccurate task planning can mean not having a resource available when needed, jeopardizing your project.
Copilot provides project managers with realistic task plan recommendations. It gives them suggestions for durations and how much effort will likely be required for a task. Not having to perform this research manually speeds up the overall project creation process.
Machine learning algorithms powered by Open AI use the project name provided by a project manager to come up with relevant tasks. The task suggestions become more specific as project managers add more project details.
You can start using AI-generated tasks to create your work breakdown structure (WBS) with the following steps:
Risk assessments help project managers evaluate how project outcomes and objectives could change based on a risk event. Copilot enables you to assess risks and provides suggestions for mitigation plans. AI project management also tracks ongoing issues that come up in a project. It uses project metadata like the scope, budget, and schedule to determine factors that might hinder progress.
The mitigation plans from Copilot consist of recommended steps to address and minimize the impact of identified risks. Taking a proactive approach with Copilot gives project managers additional tools to mitigate project obstacles to keep it on track.
You can start using AI-generated risk assessments with the following steps.
Project managers can use Copilot to set up AI-generated project status reports based on factors like key performance indicators (KPIs), work, and financial activity. You can set up status reports with the following steps.
AI will continue to influence future technology in new and exciting ways. Internet eBusiness Solutions can ensure that your organization remains at the forefront regarding business innovation. Contact one of our experts to learn how we can help you use AI to your advantage.