Project Management with AI: Plan, Manage Risks, and Communicate

Project planning involves a constant flow of documents, decisions, and communication, and AI can help with all of it. When used well, AI tools can reduce the time spent on first drafts, surface risks and considerations that are easy to overlook, and help project managers communicate more clearly with diverse stakeholders.

This workshop gives participants hands-on experience applying AI to real project challenges, building both confidence and judgment in knowing when to lean on AI and when to push back on what it produces. Participants leave with practical prompting strategies and a clearer sense of how AI can make project work more efficient and less overwhelming.

Learners will have the opportunity to:
1. Craft effective prompts for generating project charters, scope statements, and work breakdown structures
2. Use AI to brainstorm risks, develop response strategies, and draft risk register content
3. Experiment with AI-assisted stakeholder communication, including status updates and meeting summaries
4. Practice generating and refining project schedules, milestones, and task breakdowns
5. Explore how AI can support resource planning, cost estimation narratives, and budget documentation
6. Work with AI to review and improve project documents for clarity, completeness, and consistency

Topics
Session 1: Defining and Scoping Your Project with AI
- Introduction and AI Prompting Foundations: Get oriented with Stanford AI Playground and other AI tools to explore what makes a prompt effective for project planning tasks.
- Project Charter and Scope Development: Use AI to draft project charters, scope statements, and work breakdown structures, then practice prompting for revisions and refinements.
- Risk Identification and Response Planning: Prompt AI to brainstorm risks by category, assess probability and impact, and draft risk register content and response strategies.

Session 2: Executing and Communicating Your Project with AI
- Schedule, Milestones, and Task Breakdown: Generate project schedules, milestone lists, and task breakdowns with AI, then stress-test and refine outputs through follow-up prompting.
- Stakeholder Communication and Meeting Support: Draft status updates, meeting agendas, and stakeholder reports, and practice tailoring tone and detail level for different audiences.
- Resource, Budget, and Document Review: Use AI to draft resource narratives and budget justifications, and practice using AI as a document reviewer to catch gaps and inconsistencies.