Meetup Webinar: Applying AI to Agile Projects – Does it deliver tangible benefits?

Speaker

Lloyd Skinner is CEO & Founder, Greyfly Limited

Peter Gross – Founder, Horizon PPM

Nicholas Rohrbach – Co-Founder & CEO, Fortean

Dražen Jarak – Head Agile Competency Centre, Credit Suisse

Synopsis

Predictive Analytics and Artificial Intelligence are trending technologies that are expected to disrupt and revolutionize the project management industry by providing analytical and unbiased capabilities that go beyond human possibilities, towards a model that should help to reduce the risk of project failures.

Depending on the industry and the organisation, projects follow different types of lifecycles and methodologies which raises the question if and how AI could be applied to the different flavours of project delivery methodologies, to deliver the intended benefits of improved predictability and data-informed decision-making.

Especially in technology projects, where the agile methodology follows a people and team focus and a rather exploratory approach to project delivery, this may represent a setup where AI could face challenges to play out its full strengths. But is the application of AI to project management really dependent on what project methodology is being used? Or is it rather agnostic to delivery methodology and the type of project environment? What measures can be taken to make a transition to AI-driven project management in agile project environments worthwhile?

We have invited four practitioners and leaders in the areas of project and project portfolio management, agile delivery, and technology, to discuss those important questions:

Peter Gross (Horizon PPM)
Peter is a specialist in leading Project Portfolio Management and is also the founder of Horizon PPM. Over the last 30 years, Peter has established, shaped, and led the delivery of project portfolios for some very well-known clients including Vodafone, London City Airport, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, the Bank of England, MS Amlin, Legal & General, and AXA XL.
Peter is an advocate of a ‘Hybrid’ project management, mixing Agile with the traditional ‘waterfall’ approaches as needed. He questions how AI (and specifically ML which identifies patterns and outliers from controlled data sets) can be leveraged to support the iterative, dynamic, and evolving data sets typically associated with Agile ways of working.

Lloyd Skinner (GreyFly Ltd.)
Lloyd Skinner, CEO of Greyfly Ltd, is a project professional with 25 plus years of experience working in multiple sectors and projects in both support and delivery roles. For the last two plus years, he has been investigating the use of AI in project management and developing the Greyfly proposition.
Lloyd believes that the project method being followed by a company is immaterial when it comes to AI in Project management because no matter which method that is followed, the same data and project maturity challenges will exist. Can the data be trusted? How much data exists? Therefore, once the data points are defined, there may be process and capability change required before data is fit for purpose.

Nicholas Rohrbach (Fortean)
Nicholas is Co-Founder and CEO of Fortean which is a proprietary AI software designed to disrupt the project management practice. He is an experienced professional in Project Portfolio Management, IT Cost & Charging and delivering complex technology programs within the Financial Services industry.
He believes that AI and ML technology will be able to reduce project failures to less than 1% across all industries, additionally enable organisations to focus on implementing the corporate strategies required for long-term shareholder value.

Dražen Jarak (Credit Suisse)
Dražen has started as a Software Developer in the early ages of internet payments, has moved on to Business and Portfolio management in Axa insurance and Credit Cuisse, to his current position as Lead Agile Competence Center in Credit Suisse. He has lived through various stages and initiatives of CMMI, Lean and Agile transformation, and has first-hand experienced various approaches trying to prioritise IT investments in large organisations.
Dražen is an advocate of product oriented portfolio management based on Agile values.

About Greyfly

Greyfly have experience in successfully delivering full life-cycle, benefits lead, multi-million pound transformation projects and are preferred suppliers to the BBC for programme management.  However, our real passion is applying AI to project management to improve delivery, tackle the real project delivery problem and make cost savings for our clients.  For almost 30 years Greyfly has built its reputation by delivering solutions to the toughest project challenges with a collaborative approach to deliver rapid, high quality results at an affordable price – and now using the latest in AI tools and techniques.