Are you looking for ways to optimize your project management tasks so that they are solved faster and more efficiently? In this article, we explore how AI can help with project planning – based on an example project about replacing windows in my house on Bornholm, Denmark. Let's get started!
In this article we use DocsGPT, our own tool to generate and edit text with AI. You could achieve basically the same with e.g. ChatGPT, but that would probably require you to manually move text back and forth. With DocsGPT, it all happens directly in Google Docs – you just open a document and activate the DocsGPT extension.
I have written a general project description so that both we and the AI get a common understanding of what we are working with. You can of course also use a description of your own project if you prefer.
Description: I have a house in Bornholm in Denmark with my girlfriend. We would like to change the windows of the house to new ones. There is a local shop nearby where we can buy most of the materials we need. Me and my girlfriend can do most of the work, but we need a professional to help with re-doing parts of the brick walls. We start the work on July 1, 2023.
We start by creating an overall project plan. In principle, we could just ask the AI to suggest some points for the plan – or maybe you already have a project plan template that you need to use in your work. In that case, you can simply add it. In this case, we cover the following topics in the project plan:
Project scope and goals
Identifying key stakeholders
Project timeline and duration
Risk assessment
Resources and materials to be used
This forms the basis of what we ask the AI for: our project description and the points above as a bullet point. To generate a project plan from this, we mark both the project description and the points in the document and then use the function "Create from" under the tab “Generate” in DocsGPT. That function sends the selected text along with our instructions in the input field to the AI.
In the "Create from" function, we write the following prompt:
Make an overall project plan in a table in two columns; one with the topic and one with an outlined plan for each topic based on this description and topics
And then we click on the "Create from" button. So here we go - and it actually looks really good! 🎉
To insert the project plan into the document, we just press "Copy" and insert it where we want it in the document.
To do that, we mark the project description in the document again and use the “Create from” function again. This time we write the following prompt in the input field:
Create a project timeline for this project
And then we click on "Create from". In my case, I get a series of bullet points with a project timeline divided into different phases.
We can also choose to turn this into a table if we prefer. Here we mark the bullet points we have just inserted into the document and again use the "Create from" function.
This time we add a little more to the prompt so it reads:
Put this plan into a table with different project phases. Assign a responsible for each task, add the duration in days as well as the start date for each phase.
Out comes a project timeline in tabular format:
Pretty cool, right? Now we both have an overall project plan and a more detailed timeline for the project. There are many ways we could have adapted it – either with a different project or by asking DocsGPT for a different format – but this is a solid starting point for working with project management using AI.
Often one would like to illustrate a timeline like this in e.g. a Gantt-diagram - at least I have done some of them earlier in my work. Fortunately, this can also be done with the help of AI.
👉 Check out the short guide here for how to have ChatGPT create a Gantt chart for you.
