Dr. Te Wu has spent the better part of two decades managing projects of all sizes for Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Government, and cause-driven non-profit organizations. He is renowned for taking even the most dynamic and purpose-driven organizations to greater heights of innovation, growth, efficiency and profitability.
He is available for interviews to give his informed take on how A.I. will significantly impact project management, both, for better and worse; and how corporations, nonprofits and the U.S. government can steer clear of its misuse in managing large scale projects.
As the project manager for OATS (Older Adult Technology Services) – a division of AARP, Guttmacher Institute – a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide, the United States Armed Forces, and many household name consumer brands from food to transportation; Wu and his firm PMO Advisory train employee teams, streamline project budgets, improve methodology and production, expedite project timelines and increase profits for high profile organizations.
Dr. Wu is the current chairperson of the Project Management Institute’s standards committee, where he is developing the newest standards for portfolio management, to be used worldwide, for the project management industry. He also a Tenured Professor of Project Management Studies at Montclair State University for graduate and undergraduate studies, and a Graduate Program Coordinator for his department.
Dr. Wu is hopeful about A.I.’s capabilities to streamline certain project management tasks, but warns that over-reliability on A.I. could have disastrous effects on large scale projects. Citing one example of where A.I. can be helpful, he says, “A project is an investment in the future. One of my clients is a worldwide Midwest manufacturing company with 6,500 employees. Their fan club and merchandising actually brings in almost 25% of their revenue, which is very unique.
We created a new office for them called ‘Strategic Projects,’ where we had six people go around the company, counting projects and assessing their costs. They stopped counting at 3,000 different projects. This is an example of where A.I. can help, in theory. A.I. can help you quickly analyze this data and help you make proposals for consolidation to avoid project overlap.”
Conversely, says Wu, “Over the next 20 years, we will still need human scrutiny to support A.I. Projects are typically new endeavors, so they might lack the sufficient data to program into an A.I. engine.”
He also warns, “If a company relies too much on the A.I. to choose, plan and execute large scale projects, over time they lose the very competence they need in order to analyze and scrutinize the data. The organization no longer has that capability, which is similar to what the outsourcing craze did to organizations in the 1990s and 2000s.”
Wu also points out that once we come to rely too heavily on A.I. to make our project management decisions for us, it may reduce our ability to cope with any type of unanticipated change or problem, adding, “A boat can carry people, but it can also sink people. When used responsibly, A.I. can increase insights and productivity, but when used recklessly it can harm a project. Finding that delicate balance will be the challenge.”