GBMC News
Keep up to date with our developments.
Winter 2024
Enhancing Productivity and Efficiency in Project Management through AI by Gavin Oh, Managing Partner, GBMC
In the fast-paced world of project management, professionals are constantly seeking ways to improve productivity and efficiency. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened new avenues for achieving these goals. By leveraging AI technologies, project managers can streamline processes, enhance decision-making, and foster better collaboration among team members. This article explores the various ways AI can transform project management practices and offers actionable insights for professionals looking to integrate AI into their workflows.
Understanding AI in Project Management
Artificial intelligence encompasses a range of technologies, including machine learning, natural language processing, and automation tools. These technologies can analyze vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and perform tasks that traditionally required human intervention. In project management, AI can assist in various areas such as planning, resource allocation, risk management, and performance tracking.
Summer 2024
Project Management Professional Exam Takers Succeed – George Merguerian
Over the past few years Global Business Management Consultants has seen a huge surge in individuals seeking to attain the PMP® (Project Management Professional) credential that is granted by the Project Management Institute (PMI.org). As many people are taking advantage of the summer break and using some of that time to prepare for the exam here are some tips that may help you in your journey for success.
Spring 2024
Can AI cancel “Noise”? By George Merguerian, Senior Partner
I have just finished reading “Noise” a formidable book published in 2021 by authors Daniel Kahneman (who unfortunately passed away recently) Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein. The book discusses thoroughly how biases create flows in human decision-making and therefore perfectly relevant to stakeholders involved in projects.
What do we mean by biases? Psychologists categorize this as decisions that are made based on instincts rather than rational thinking. The 2011 book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Kahneman – explains this very well. The main idea of that book is that we have two modes of thought:
“System 1” which is fast, instinctive and emotional and “System 2” which is slower, more deliberative and logical. This is also a great book that project managers can read to enhance the quality of their work. Project managers deal with and resolve issues, make decisions on choices on a daily basis to facilitate the advancement of their projects.
Winter 2023
GBMC’s catalogue for 2024 programs is now available featuring a wide range of project management certification, basic project management skills development, risk management, agile and organizational development programs.
GBMC offers expert support in project management best practices and assists private and public organizations worldwide in overcoming project challenges in 14 different languages.
Download our new 2024 program catalogue here
Autumn 2023
Using Project Management to Achieve Personal Goals – Tony Eve
At 41,000 feet the warmth from the early morning sun’s rays is non-existent. It has long been a personal goal of mine to make a skydive from above 30000’, something referred to as a HALO jump (High Altitude Low Opening). It’s 1st July 2023 and I’m about to realize that goal.
Six of us are about to leave the relative warmth of a modified Piper Cheyenne 400LS aircraft: its metal walls; its landing gear; its safe supply of oxygen. The world outside that door is 54 degrees below freezing, and nearly airless. I’m keenly aware of that fact when my personal oxygen bottle is switched on and, as part of the handover effect, it suddenly becomes almost impossible to exhale. We’d been warned about that alarming “HALO waterboard” effect —that it would only last a moment, and that it meant that it was officially time to get out into the big, bright, cold world outside the plane. So I did.
It’s on reflection that I see how my years of project management experience, quite intuitively, helped enormously in facilitating this experience.
Summer 2023
Why Project Management – A Short Overview
Introduction & Challenge
Project management is about people, working together in joint participation and synchrony in order to achieve a goal. In 1982, in the landmark book, “In Search of Excellence”, Peters and Waterman observed that our problem is that our fascination with the tools of management frequently obscures our apparent ignorance of “the art”, i.e., management is about people and not tools such as Microsoft Project, Earn Value Management etc. Faced with competitive pressures in an increasingly more global economy, and in rapidly changing and technically challenging environments, companies have no choice but to adopt more flexible strategies and structures to speed improved quality products or services to market and customers.
As a result, projects in the global economy are more complex than ever before. This complexity comes in various forms:
- Technical complexity associated with science and technology’s quest for creative and innovative solutions to mankind’s challenges,
- Environmental complexity that involves societal, political or religious impacts on projects,
- Organizational complexity introduced by multiple and fragmented communication channels across geographical regions, with contracted and/or partnering companies, departments,
- Social complexity involved with people working jointly (and virtually) while being culturally different stemming from different beliefs or values,
- Value relativism complexity that stems from the human characteristic allowing values to shift in a direction of preferred outcome, and
- Wickedness, the characteristic of non-linear problems such as IT and R&D; whereby, one does not know the outcome until it is found.
Some forty years later and we’ve seen the development of different types of Project Management techniques such as ‘water-fall’, ‘agile’, ‘stage & gate’, ‘hybrid’, etc.. however at the core the same fundamental challenges that require a consistent method and approach are still required.
