How Data and AI are Transforming the Potential of Project Delivery.

Ahead of an in-person event on the same theme, this Delivery podcast episode brings together Lawrence Rowland - Independent AI Consultant, Sarah Crawley, Tech Entrepreneur at SymTerra Construction, and Hank Malik Knowledge Lead at Nuclear Waste Services, to explore how IT has and continues to transform project delivery; the big wins and the challenges of leveraging new technology.

The abiding message from this wide-ranging conversation is that DATA and AI are a way of connecting people to projects:

They connects us:

• to people and their expertise
• across functions, industries and sectors
• to our data and our learning from previous projects
• to the multiple alternative outcomes of what we are doing

This brings opportunities and it also brings responsibilities to ensure that IT is used in a way that really enables the delivery team, rather than just making life easier for the project organization; that it is used in a way that is mindful of data ownership, privacy and security; that it is used in a way that is innovative and imaginative, whilst always grounded on what's real and deliverable.

For details of the associated event, run in collaboration with BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, on 8th May, in-person at Canterbury Christchurch University and online:

Event Information - APM South East Network: What has IT Ever Done for Us?

Projects are all about storytelling; enabling us to make sense of the world around us and to organise socially to change it. Brin Hodgskiss, Emer O'Donovan and Donnie MacNicol explain exactly how and why stories are significant in project delivery and how the advent of AI will make human storytelling even more important in the future. In a wide-ranging discussion, they explain:

• the critical skill of managing the narrative of your project
• how storytelling creates extraordinary levels of empathy and rapport between narrator and listener
• why it is important to make sure you tell the story people need to hear, rather than the one they necessarily want to hear
• the meaning and value of internal storytelling and how by changing your perspective, you change your story and will change your project

Along the way, they offer some powerful stories of their own of how AI and storytelling are being used together in large infrastructure projects, the transformation of the NHS, and the development of the next generation of music products such as the Spotify virtual DJ.

Three very different applications of data and analytics feature in this podcast episode. James Lea from Project Science talks about predictive analytics, Sarah Crawley from Symterra explores progress reporting and performance, and Donnie MacNicol of Team Animation introduces the concept of human-centric data.

The common themes in each approach are the growing democratization of data; with data and information available to and for the benefit of delivery teams, who are increasingly enabled and engaged by the opportunity to query the data for themselves.

Along with some brilliant personal stories, our three speakers cover topics as wide-ranging as:

- project dashboards and data visualization

- the pressure for open data standards

- the need for engagement and buy-in across the organization

- the politics of truth and the irrationality of single fixed values in estimates

- the emerging new forms of interaction with and response to data

Project Science www.projectscience.co.uk

Symterra www.symterra.co.uk

Team Animation www.teamanimation.co.uk