The Future of Project Management: Integrating AI for Optimal Efficiency
5:30PM May 9, +0000
Speakers:
Nathan Ingram
Beth Livingston
Keywords:
ai
gbt
project
chat
project management
beth
website
prompts
client
change control process
replace
proposal
create
nathan
training
remember
problem
join
business
wp
Have our captions running momentarily here. Hey Kelly from North Carolina.
Jeff is also from North Carolina
All right, captions should be working correctly now. If you're just joining us in zoom, welcome, we're glad you're here with us today. It is about three minutes before we start officially four minutes. Before we start officially with this training livestream all about the future of project management using a I Beth Livingston from the WP project managers Academy is here with us. I'm going to drop in our link bundle over in the chat. Right there you'll have the download link for today's slides as well as the AI prompts. The replay is there the link is there as well. If you want to go back and rewatch this later, we'll have the video up about an hour after we finish maybe a little bit less. It'll be a public replay. You can share that with anybody that you'd like. Check in question today is how have you been using AI in your business or in your world in some way? Let us let us hear what you've been doing. Kelly said she's been using it for content ideas brainstorming branding user journey. Yeah, it's really really good for that. Stacy has been using code snippets yet and Chris has been using it for a lot of code. Welcome, everybody. We're glad you're here. We're about three minutes away from getting started with this training live stream all about the future of project management and AI Patricia it does really well for letters of recommendation, doesn't it? Really something anything like that. That's that's writing is that's really in the sweet spot of chat GPT.
All right.
Glad everybody's here. If you're just joining us in zoom make sure you pop up in the chat say hello tell us where you're logging in from today. I'm going to drop in a link bundle again that's got the download link for today's slides and the prompts that Beth will be sharing as well as the replay link and if you've not seen it yet I themes is becoming solid WP you can follow our rebrand and public there at solid web.com and the YouTube channel link which is there in the chat. I think they just posted something they a day or so ago. Keep up to date with all the things that are happening. I iThemes Training here will become solid Academy at some point during the summer. We're working on the logo for that right now and got to see some of the first glances yesterday. We'll be sharing some of those in a week or two probably. A Manu from San Jose. Checking question today is how have you been using AI in your work or in your world in some way? Let us hear from you in the chat. Any creative things you've been doing or fun things you found to do with AI chat GPT
we are about a minute
away from getting started now at best Livingston.
All right, so
welcome everybody. Several more folks are popping in to zoom
now
alright mana has
been using AI for research graphics, voice cloning. Yeah. Very cool that that new movement. Have you been using that Microsoft tool that lets you create a voice based on just a small snippet.
Pretty amazing. Welcome Feeny from
New York. All right. 30 seconds away. If you're just joining us in zoom, I'm going to drop in our link bundle. Again. They're in the chat pop up in the chat. Grab that. You can download today's slides. And the AI prompt that first link
just about ready to get started.
All right, Beth,
are you ready to go?
I am. Alright, let's
start. The recording. We'll be live in just a moment. Well, good afternoon, everybody and welcome to another live AI iThemes Training livestream Webinar. My name is Nathan Ingram. I'm the host here at I iThemes Training and I'm joined today by my friend Beth Livingston from the WP project managers Academy. Beth is a project manager management guru and teaches people in the web world and other worlds how to manage their products more effectively. Beth Welcome back. iThemes Training how's it going?
Hey, it's going really well.
Hey, Nathan, real quick. I saw in the chat where Sherry says that she's being prompted to join as a member before she can download the slides and I don't know why that's happening. But for me, I will check on that right after this is over. All right, but it wasn't saying that can't download the slides.
Interesting.
It was working earlier. I've gotta go check and check on it. I was finishing that up right at the end of the right before this started. So I thought that I will have that by the time that Nathan has the replay up. I will have that link fixed so you can get the slides and it's the prompts that you're most interested in. I'm sure so and you will be once I'm finished because this is fun.
It is fun. We've been in the pre show having a good chat about how people are using AI in their world and everything from generating marketing language to cooking to code snippets. Lots of fun. So Beth give us just an overview of where we're heading in the next hour. Okay, so
I like everybody else i My immediate thought when chat GVT came on this on the scene and I started seeing what it can do is like oh my god, how's it going to replace me? What are the things that can do to replace me so I started going through all the project management stuff as to how which things can be done with AI and oh my gosh, it's not a replace me as a teacher of project management, project management's project management. But the way we go about pulling this stuff together for projects is going to be so much easier. In fact, so much so that I'm totally redoing the academy based on AI because I want to take the long way around when when you can get a head start it might it's not going to do it A to Z for you, but it gives you a head start. So that's what I'm gonna show you today is all the stuff I've discovered. I'm by no means an expert. I've just been dabbling and I'm going to show you what I've discovered. Very good.
I forgot to get you to share your screen Beth. Let's do that. And then we'll dive right in. As Beth is getting that set up. If you're just joining us in zoom. Let me drop in the all the links there. The link to download today's slides is asking you to log in. That's an issue that Beth is going to get fixed right after we wrap up today. So you'll be able to download the slides. As well as the AI prompts. I just given in just a few minutes for her to click whatever button needs to be clicked on that in to unprotect those downloads. Also, let me just remind you we are this is being recorded. So we'll have a replay up in about an hour after we wrap up that link is also in the chat. It will contain the transcript, the video replay and everything that comes up in the chat log as well. So all that will be accessible to you when we wrap up. You can also share it it's a public link. If anybody that you know you watch this, you think somebody else might enjoy it, please share it. Finally, if you have questions during today's webinar, we welcome that. Please use the q&a link in zoom, just mouse over the shared screen, click the q&a and that will pop open the q&a window for you. I would recommend that you just keep that open throughout and as folks ask a question. There'll be a little thumbs up icon under the question that you can click if you would also like to see the answer to that question. And when we get to the end, we'll do a q&a with Beth based on the number of up votes. So with that I'm gonna disappear and turn it over to you Beth, let's talk about AI and project management. Okay, great. Thanks,
Nathan. Oh am I and my issue with you not being able to download download the prompts and stuff yet that is a testament to the best practice of always test it when you're not an admin. Before you say hey, I'm done with that it's but it's fixed. So you always got to do that. So that was one of my I didn't I didn't go through my checklist like I should. Okay, so here's what we're gonna talk about today. The future of project management, integrating AI for optimal efficiency.
So what you're going to learn is what AI can do to help with project management, and then also what AI cannot do, and also how to use chat GBT one form of AI to streamline each of the project management stages in the project management lifecycle lifecycle, and so the slides and prompts will be available at the end, but a few minutes after the end. Hold on one second. I need to
bring up my notes and they have disappeared one moment. I'm going to escape that one second. And start it again so that my notes will appear. Thank you.
Okay, a little bit about me. Um, I was a first grade teacher a long, long time ago, I went back graduate school studied instructional design. I became a training specialist, technical writer, business analyst, project manager that was my life and corporate world. When I left the corporate world, I formed my own WordPress agency. It was called something else it was called WP roadmaps and now it is triad web advisors. I'm a frequent word camp speaker and meetup organizer and I am the director of the WP project managers Academy. So that's who I am. That's why you should listen to me because I know project management. I don't know a lot about a lot but I know project management Okay, so here's the main thing to remember about AI. It's not new, right? All these chat bots that you've been seeing for years. That's AI, facial recognition. That's AI transcription services that we've all been using, especially recently since accessibility has become a thing. transcription. So that is AI. And you know how when they recommend you watch these movies on Netflix, so you might like these other ones? That's a recommender system. That's also AI, but the one we're going to focus on today is the one that's gotten all the press lately which is chat GBT there's two. For those of you who may not be familiar, there are two main ways to use chat to GPT. And there's two current versions. So the two main ways is using an API or not using an API. So if you want to build on top of this, this not only look I'm not a technical expert by any means, this technology that that AI is that chat GBT is built on. If you are going to build some sort of something that you might want to sell or or something like that, then you're going to need an API. That's for a custom solution. For most of the things that you're going to use it for, especially when it comes to project management, you're not going to need an API. Now some solutions require you to build your own data and then train chat GBT how to use that data. That goes that's above my paygrade as well. But those capabilities are there. So I mean, the sky's the limit in terms of your imagination, or how you might want to go about productizing your business or your services. It's every night I lay awake at night thinking of all these different ideas and ways that this this technology can be used for the good of the people and not to come and destroy the people as some people are afraid that it might do. Okay, there's version 3.5, which comes with the free version of chat GBT. And then there's also version four. For version four is faster, and gives you in some cases, a much more robust response than 3.5. But in my experimentation, I've also found that in some cases 3.5 gives a better answer. So if either way you're not happy with the results you get, you should try it with the other version. If you know, for I think you only read you can only get four if you are part of the premier version, which is $20 a month. I think I signed up as soon as it happened, and I don't remember how much I paid for it. I was so excited about it. Okay, so before we look at how to use AI in project management, it's important to make a distinction between the development lifecycle of a website and the project management lifecycle. There's some overlap, but here's how they're different in respect to AI we need to look at that. So much of the technical stuff that we do, can ultimately be replaced with AI now Don't, don't freak out. Don't get scared yet. There's still a human factor in this too. So what I did was I asked chat, GBT, which of these four activities can be replaced with AI? And so what it said was that, for planning AI can help with gathering and analyzing data, but it lacks the ability to fully understand business goals, user needs and stakeholder requirements. I under design can generate design elements and layouts, but it can't fully comprehend the user experience. AI can help automate code generation and identify bugs but it can't develop complex functional features and functionalities. Like when you're acting as a problem solver, it can't do creative problem problem solving. Doesn't have a deep business under deep understanding of business logic. Okay, when it comes time to that's under develop, it can help generate the code, but it does it can't do those real complex things launch. It can help with testing and optimizing performance, but it can't handle the strategic aspects of launching a website like marketing, user acquisition, stakeholder communication, but some of what we do today ourselves can be written that can be replaced with with AI.
So what chat
GBT can do it can help you to streamline when it comes to project management and helped you streamline processes can help you generate ideas on anything, create content and communication. It can reduce errors, and it can help you make better decisions. And so by embracing this AI technology, project managers business owners whoever can focus more on the strategic activities and let AI handle the repetitive and time consuming tasks. Now, I know those of you who are designers may feel that this has never been that, you know, there's that there's that angst about but I'm a designer I'm a creative and that's true to a certain extent, but if there's a guy out there who wants to DIY his website, it's going to be a lot easier for him to do it and do a pretty nice job of it using AI and sadly, but here's what J chat GBT cannot do it can't provide real time data. Remember, it only goes up to two that at the end of 2021 at the current time, and so it can't tell you anything about current conditions. You cannot conduct research on specific companies. It's not going to get your customers to like you or trust you remember people who do business with who they know like and trust. It cannot understand or replicate human emotions and empathy. At least not now. But if anybody's seen 2001 A Space Odyssey we should probably be a little bit concerned. Anyway. It cannot create entirely unique and innovative concepts. It cannot adapt to unexpected situations. That's the biggest deal when it comes to project management. And so that's why I highlighted in red chat GBT cannot manage projects for you, but it can certainly make the job a whole lot easier. So we've looked at the website development lifecycle, much of what can work can be replaced with AI. Now let's look at the project management lifecycle and how AI can
play a role with that. So I break the
project management lifecycle down into these five stages. They're not exactly phases. They're more like stages. So you've got your pre proposal section, you get into the proposal phase or stage, the discovery stage, the managing of the project stage and then the closeout stage. So let's look at some of these individually and then do some demos as well. Okay, so the pre proposal, usually have some sort of pre proposal questionnaire that might be a questionnaire that resides on your website. It might be a meeting that you have with the client, but it says questions that you ask at least enough information so that you can create a proposal. It can generate creative solution ideas. I'm gonna show you that in a minute. It was really kind of cool how it figured some things out that I probably wouldn't have done analyzing competitors and I have a warning next to that and I'll tell you why in just a few minutes. industry trends but only through 2021 and some forms of market research. But again, you're not going to get anything that's super super current. So here's something you can try out to see how well chat GBT does I have not taken on a new project lightly. So I haven't had the opportunity to do this. But when you go to do your pre proposal discussion with the client, record the meeting, then use AI D script or otter AI or something like that to create a transcript and then provide the transcript to chat govt and ask it to create a project brief and see what happens. I'd be interested to see. Okay, so now we're gonna do a little demo. So I have to get this out of my way and I have to go over here to chat GBT and I'm gonna move that over so we can take a look at this.
And now I have lost that okay
okay, sorry.
I'm looking for my note that tells me
out there it is. Okay.
You know, when you when you create something with chat GVT it tells you
it gives it a name. It names
it for you and then it's all down the left and you'll see that in just a minute.
Let me go back. And it's hard to be moving
around between three things like this.
Kind of in that other window. There it is. Okay, ah,
Nathan, if you're not seeing chat GBT right now let me know but I think you are we are
seeing chat GPT Okay, great.
And
now, now now I see where my problem is trying to figure out
where this is,
because I had these written down but they're written in my notes and if I switch back to my notes
and I don't remember which one of these this is, well, you know what, we're just gonna do it the easy way. I'm gonna exit out of that for one second. And
we'll just do it live. That is probably the easiest way to do it anyway. Okay, so I'm gonna click on new chat. I'm gonna switch it to version four. And I'm gonna
put this in here. I need to create a website for a directory listing for local restaurants. What combination of WordPress plugins will give me the most flexibility in how the individual posts are submitted, stored and displayed? Okay, this is simply a question to try to come up with a solution because maybe I've never done any kind of directory listing before, right? So I just want to know, instead of going into a Facebook group and saying which plugins should I use for this? You can just ask chat GBT.
Oh, come on now. Here we go.
It's, you know, it's the middle of the day. So it's a little slower than usual. But look how fast it's doing this. So it's given me suggestions. It's given. It's given me URLs for different plugins to use. What do you use on the front end? What do you use on the back end?
Yeah, was this incredible or what?
I mean, so now you've got a good start towards the technical solution, or just some ideas to go research because you've never done this kind of website before. All right. I'm gonna say stop generating, because you get the idea, right. Um, we don't need to look at the whole thing.
And we're at and again, in
that what I'm giving you as a download is just I'm giving you these prompts. So you can do the same thing and test it out for yourself. So I'm going to say stop generating. But anyways, just giving you everything that the search and filter that you would need and here's some plugins, a and these are the plugins that I would use y'all I've done this before. These are all the plugins that I would normally use for this anyway. So Oh, that was the other thing I forgot to tell you is always check behind chat GBT. Don't ever take anything it says For, for the gospel. Cuz sometimes it gets a few things wrong, but it's pretty close most of the time. Okay, so I'm gonna go back to my slides.
And
so it can help generate creative solution ideas. Now, this is the one where I gave you the, the, the warning. And the reason that I even put analyzing competitors on here is because I asked chat, GBT, what can I use chat GBT for in the pre proposal process, and it said, analyzing competitors and market research. But if it only goes through 2021 That's not exactly right. Is it? So I went ahead and said okay, what what let me let me let me come up with a something to try to get it to analyze competitors. So I asked it, identify and analyze the primary competitors of Colfax furniture mattress, focusing on their website design strengths and weaknesses. Assess how these competitors present their products user experience and overall website aesthetics and determine the opportunities for Colfax Furniture and Mattress to differentiate itself and create a competitive edge if I go back to chat GVT
I have to exit out here in order to do that.
And that was way down here that did this one this morning. I think yes, chat CBT for lead generation.
Oh, first I said how can chat to BTUs be used in the lead generation process? Those were the list that gave me and one of those things was analyze competitors right here right so I said can you please give me some more detail regarding how you would go about implementing number four above, which is lead qualification. integrating it with your CRM, and then it came down it can it gave me a list of things to carry out in order to implement in order to integrate chat GBT with my CRM. It's a little bit. This is one of those situations where you would have to train chat GBT to certain data. So that's a little over my paygrade but I was interested. I wanted to hear what it had to say or see what it had to say and then I said, Can you give me more precise details about numbers three and four in the above list. One of those was how do I train chat GBT and it gives me all the data, all the steps and then how to integrate it with the CRM and it gave me all the steps. The other one I wanted to show you in regard to this was
let's see. It's back down here
Okay, so I
said make a list of markets marketing agencies located in Greensboro who build websites with WordPress have an annual income of 500,000 or greater list the name of the company data that it is, but it comes back and tells me it can't do that. But then it gives me the instructions for doing it myself.
Which I think is great. Um, let's see.
I'm trying to find the one I wanted to show you. Oh, here we go. I think it's this one.
Here's a list 10
questions you would ask chat GBT when doing local market research. And then I asked the questions. And this didn't really give me a lot of information that I wouldn't already have that I wouldn't already be able to find out that I wouldn't already know on my own. So I wasn't real happy with that. But that's not the one I wanted to show you.
Yeah, I thought it was organized on Sorry. See, I probably should have just redone all of these and done them in order. So I didn't have to search. Give me one moment. Let
me go back to my notes
and see what I got there. Web analysis and competition. Okay, that's what I'm looking for.
I'm getting it together
okay, we could just sing the Jeopardy song while Don
had all these things. There it is. Alright, so this
is where I asked about competitors for Colfax furniture mattress, which is an actual company here in Greensboro. And then it says after conducting thorough research, I've identified three primary competitors. Alright, there's reasons these are not really the competitors for that furniture store. Because the front of that furniture stores local and regional. These are national chains. And but anyway, it goes on to say what their strengths and weaknesses are. But then when I asked that question about Kofax furnitures website, it told me it couldn't tell me that and so I wanted to show you all of that to say in that area. Now, there are probably going to be some people who will build and there might already be out there I couldn't do the research on every single kind of tool, but I'm certain there's going to be people out there that are going to build these tools that will enhance this market research product process. And eventually will become more and more current, the
data that it uses. Okay, back to the slide deck. Okay, so just
take caution. That's all I wanted to say is take caution. Okay, so during their proposal process you can use chat TBT to create a project plan does a really good job. I was shocked if you do project briefs did a really good job on the project brief too, and it'll create a sitemap y'all. It'll help you create an estimate. It'll help you prepare the proposal, especially if you have a template that has placeholders in it where you can replace stuff and I'll show you what that looks like in a minute. Of course, revising and editing your proposal, like you could say, make that paragraph sound a little friendlier, right and it will do it and then following up with emails. It'll help you right you can help it will help you write those follow up emails to your proposal. So let's see. I'm going to project plan, restaurant website, floral website and then the development estimate. Okay, now I'm gonna go back to chat to be tea
and that
was see part of my problem is that I look at that over there and then I can't remember what I just read. Because you know, when you're doing a presentation like this, you get a little nervous. So can't even remember my own name.
Oh, Project man. See now I can do this. There we go. Okay. And that's the one I'm looking for. I think this is the one I'm looking for. Yes, it is. Okay. No, it's not.
There it is. Okay. Create a project plan with phases, activities and tasks for a website for a restaurant. The website will have an online ordering and pickup functionality, but no delivery. It will contain 50 to 100 images of the food items and a menu with the following types of foods and I just gave it the categories. So it comes down here and it. Now granted there. There needs to be way more activities and time tasks than this, but it's a really good start. And if you got a whole lot more specific in your prompt, you would get a much more well laid out project plan. You can even tell it what you want to call the phases right? So you can get a little more, a little more in depth and you're gonna get a better because this one just has three ag three tasks under each activity. But still, I think it did a fabulous job and then you would just come in here and you could add in the things that you feel you need to add in or you could use the project plan we give you in the project managers Academy if you join there and use a combination of what tat GBT tells you and then what the template that I've given you. Now the other one having to do with project planning, like Scotty other way
No, it's this way. Yeah. Okay, so then I took that
project plan, and I said create a project schedule for the following project plan. Phase one begins on May 15.
And it did, okay.
Of course, all dates are estimated and may be subject to change. So you would never take this out of the box and give it to a client of course, but it's a it's a huge way to get started, right. This gets better y'all. Okay, so then I say put the above in a table to be copied to a spreadsheet. Great. And then I say wait a minute, that's not I need more. So I said add a column to the above table and show the number of days for each row based on the start and end dates. So I got it to calculate the number of days I'm going to scroll to the right. So it told me how many days each one of these things is going to take and then I said using an hourly rate of $75 an hour I just picked that out of the sky. Add a column for estimate and add the estimate for each row. Create an additional row and total all the single estimates into a total estimate. And so
it did that
did not do Oh yeah, did that hold on? I gotta scroll. Well, apparently did it.
Oh, I stopped it because I was in a hurry to go on to the next one, but it would do it. I did test it. It would do the whole thing and then it would total it at the end. Is that the estimate you should give the client? Absolutely not. But it's a good way to get because I tell people all the time. The only way to really get a precise estimate the clip as precise as you can possibly be is to estimate every single task on the project plan. That can be time consuming and a big headache. But not if tachy be taken help you with it first, then you're just adding to it. Okay, I just think this is
amazing. Okay. So
that's how you can create a project plan. Oh, I had a better project brief to show you to let me go back to church up to one to show you if you just wanted to do a project brief from scratch
as long as I can remember what's in the title then I'm good
okay
so I said create a project brief for one person floral design business called C Holmquist designs. Christina Carl, the owner and designer only services to Charleston South Carolina area and personally delivers small medium and large flower arrangements with faces. Yeah, this is my daughter's this the arrangements can be ordered through the websites online store or via direct message on Instagram but she didn't let me do her website indicate the best keywords to use for SEO and blog topics that would enhance local SEO. Okay, y'all won't believe how good this project brief is. Okay. So it gives an overview of what I just told it. Then it gives me my business objectives right here. Okay. It tells me it gives me an idea of what the target audience would be. And here's something I didn't even think about because she mostly does it for individuals, but I didn't think about event planners and hosts that might be part of her target audience. And then it gives me the website structure. Of course this is a little thin, but that's okay. We're just trying to get it to give us a brief. Here's our out here and it gives us a suggested seo keywords and then it gives us some blog topics, ideas, as well as the timeline. And then a little summary paragraph is amazing. And then I said hey, create a sitemap for that website. Right that you just gave me the brief for and it did. And now it's given me the sub pages or the sub things that should be on each of the pages, right? A biography, her design philosophy, a photo gallery, what should be in the shop? See, I didn't think about that she might want to sell vases as well as the flowers. So these things just it just gives you great ideas right? Then the blog and then the contact page.
Now
what I give my students inside the Academy is a proposal template. And so it's got a placeholder text in the little greater than and less than symbols in the in the like it's showing here on the screen like and so if you do that, if you have a template like that, and you have placeholder text, and you create a document that is sort of also a template that you fill in every time so you would fill in that just a list of that of the placeholder text items. So and then you could use chat GBT to go ahead and fill it all in for you. Right? Instead of going through and looking for everywhere, it says individual name one and then having to replace that an individual name to and having to replace that. So what I said was in the following text,
replace the following.
Replace the following client name with the actual client name, the placeholder with such inside the placeholder was such and such and so here's my template. This is the template part right now where this gets good, because I only did the first part of the proposal to show you but I mean, the proposal is huge. So but this could save so much time so it filled in the field in the all of this placeholder stuff everywhere that I have it and then when it came down here to business needs
it listed.
The business requirements that were way way up here in the in the brief these objectives, I told it to use these objectives for the business requirements. Okay, that becomes important in just a minute.
Okay, so, ah,
I'm gonna I'm gonna stop here and go back to the slide deck for just a second.
Now that's not the slide deck, Hold on Wait a minute. Oh, that's because the slide decks right here, okay.
See, and in this case, I need three monitors instead of two. Okay, so we've basically covered the entire proposal phase. We covered most of the things in that stage using AI to assist us in one way or another. We didn't go over revising and editing the proposal, but that's probably kind of self explanatory. You would just give it the text you want it to revise and ask it to revise it excuse me for one moment while I drink some water
and I'm gonna cough
I will be so
glad when the pine pollen is gone from North Carolina. Okay. Now the next stage we have is our discovery. Oh wait, I already did that. I already did that. The next phase is our discovery. Okay. Now I didn't I didn't pick a tool and show you this. But yeah, you can create wireframes from a screenshot. So if there's this website over here and you want the layout to be very similar or the same. There are tools out there you can say I do do a do wireframes from this screenshot, and then you can go move this stuff around like you want to. Even better than that, is that you can draw it on a freakin napkin. Take a picture of it and say okay, now create me a wireframe and it will do it. It will do it now. If you're not familiar with wireframes and when and how you should be using them in your design or project management process. And you probably need to join the because it really does help refine what the client wants in little bitty chunks by starting out with wireframes. Okay, and then content. You could create instructions for your clients on how to write the content. Or you can create sample content. You can say okay, write me homepage content for a plumber who does these into data, the data the data and then say, okay, client, edit this, because it's a whole lot easier for a client to edit than it is for them to write from scratch. And that's what I think one of the big reasons we never get the content from the client on time is because they're looking at a blank piece of paper and they don't know what to write and even if you try to teach them, they still don't know what to write or else they send you stuff that's not good. I wanted to use a bad word but I want that's just not good. So I like the idea of going ahead and writing some copy and then saying okay, here Mr. Client, this is close to what you want. Now edit this to be your voice and be your you're more about your business specifically. Okay, now so once we've got the wireframes we've got the content. Now it's time to narrow down those business requirements into functional requirements and technical requirements. So let's go back to chat up to show you
what I did. there to do. So what I said
was for each of the business requirements listed in the project brief the following away, that's the answer. I said, list five to 10 functional requirements for each of the business requirements listed in three through eight above. This should have actually been a sub s sub numbers of background and business requirements, but it didn't so I didn't care. I just said show me that. Okay, so here's number one design a visually appealing user friendly website. That reflects the designs brand. It needs to have a responsive design it needs to have a consistent color scheme. It needs to have easy navigation, high quality images and visuals and past fast page load times. Now some of this would need to be quantified because quantify path fast. All right fast. is subjective. But still, it did a really good job of coming up with the functional requirements so that now you can come in here and tweak it and make it even better. Can y'all tell I'm excited about I can't wait. I can't wait to start my next project so I can go through this whole process in real life. But it says showcase the very flower various flower arrangements and bases offered by the business. Implement an easy to use online store integrate Instagram direct messaging for customers because she also takes orders through Instagram. Optimize the website for search engines focusing on relevant keywords for Charleston. South Carolina came up with all of this. I didn't have to do it. So I just thought I just think that was really fabulous. I wish I could come up with some more adjectives. Not being very creative with my adjectives. It's awesome. It's just awesome. And then the last step in the in the discovery phase is to put all of these things together into a statement of work. And so you can do that in the same way that you did that with the proposal you would have placeholders and then these things would be located wherever they're located, and you would fill in whatever you needed. To be needed to be filled in just by maybe adding it to a Google sheet or a spreadsheet and then say, okay, take everything in this spreadsheet and put it over here is save a lot of time because yeah, I think all right now there's one last one last stage already did the discovery demo. I know what we haven't. Hey, that's the biggest part of the project. Everything we just covered right now in the way that I teach. The methodology for project management is most of your time is spent in the planning and the gathering and the organizing and the getting ready to build and that way the build and managing of the project doesn't take very long at all, or it's not very hard. But what it can do for you when you're managing things is you can ask it to identify the risks. Alright, so I wasn't really sure how to ask it that. So I asked it how to ask that. So I said tell me, give me a good prompt for trying to identify risks for a project. And so and this is in the document that I'm giving you, but I'm just going to read this from my notes. Please. We couldn't do demos for every little thing. We'd be here you know till midnight, although I wouldn't really mind that because it's so much fun to do. Okay, but identify risks. Please help me identify potential risks for the following project. And then you would give a brief description of the project, its objectives, and then any relevant details and then you would say, consider risks related to scope, budget, timeline, stakeholders, resources and any other relevant aspects, analyze both internal and external factors that could impact the project success and provide a brief explanation of each identified risk. Now for some clients, you know, you don't really go much into the risk and mitigation thing but if your clients given you content that is always a risk on a project and needs to be called out at the beginning of the project. So if you need help with with the whole risk thing, we can we can teach you that in the academy. A lot of people just don't even deal with it. And then when something happens, they haven't really planned ahead for it so they don't really know how to deal with it. But by identifying potential risks to the project and figuring out if that's if this if this than that. If this happens, then we're going to do that. You really can to two things First, you're doing a really good job of planning for the potential bottlenecks and delays. But also, it makes you look really professional with your client. Because they're like, project risks. I never thought about that. But I guess that's right. Yeah, we should identify those we should figure out how to what we will do if those things happen. That's a good thing, right? And the same thing with milestones. I'm like, like, how can it figure out the milestones? But I so I said, Tell me what a good prompt for that would be. And so and this is in the document I'm giving you. Can you help me identify milestones for my project the project is and you give a brief description, please outline the key milestones or major steps that need to be completed from start to finish. That's huge. All which are the major steps and which are the minor ones. Sometimes I have trouble figuring that out on my own, include any important deliverables or objectives that should be achieved at each milestone. Additionally, if there are any specific timeframes are dependencies between milestones, please mention those as well. It's still in your planning for you. I think it's brilliant. Um, okay, communication. Can you write an outline for a communication plan for a website? Development Project? Performance Monitoring, I asked it how would you go about using chat GBT for performance monitoring of a website development project? And this is where I noticed that my 3.5 answer from version 3.5 of chat GBT was actually better than the than the answer to version four. And then knowledge management, the same thing as I asked it, how would you go about using chat CBT for knowledge management. So real quick, I'm not going to go into the detail of each of those because we're running up to the hour here. But
let's see.
How would you go about
using chat GBT for performance monitoring of a website development project? And then so it says task management and reminders documentation, code review, brainstorming, and problem solving and communication. And then it says, Remember chat, GBT is not a substitute for dedicated performance monitoring tools and it's not designed for real time monitoring or alerting. However, you can still use it creatively to support your website development. Project in various ways. I love it. When it can't do something. It tells you I can't do that for you. But here's how you can go. Here's another way you can find out the answer. I just, you know, people keep telling me that Chad GBT is not thinking and I know in reality it's really not. It's just bringing in this collective consciousness from decades and but it feels like it's thinking right? It just feels like it is. So how would you use chat CBT for knowledge management. And so it says you could collect and organize knowledge prepare the training data, train the model, integrate, this is another situation where you would have to load the data in and then train the model against your own data. Okay, I think that's pretty much it, except here we got close out.
Yes. So
during project close out, you can use it to generate checklists like create a checklist for moving a website from the staging environment to a live environment. It thought of some things that I didn't think about y'all really and I've done that a million times. Or maybe I just wanted to do a checklist because I've never written those steps down. I just have them in my head and then I want to go in and add it in there. Okay, here's one I did for capturing lessons learned. Um, I'm gonna go back to chapter two real quick, because I thought this was really stellar as well. Okay, so here's the checklist. For moving aside, take it back, do the database migration, files and assets migration configuration domain and DNS testing and validation, monitoring, analytics and so on. I keep forgetting to have to go backwards. Based on the order that I did. There's identifying project milestones I just asked it to give me a prompt
Okay, here we go.
So if you do things like I teach it in the academy, then you're going to keep an issues log. So every time there's an issue, it gets written there, and then how it gets resolved gets documented. Okay. So what I did was, I said using the issues and the resolutions listed below, so I just made some up here made some up pretending like they were on the on the issues lab. What are the lessons learned we should learn from these? So my issue was new fields had been discovered that need to be included in the point of sale, export and import into the web online store. Anybody who knows me knows where that comes from. resolution we invert the change control process and increase the project budget by $500. Here's another issue Sally, the project lead on the client side retired and her replacement is not as experience resolution, we invoke the change control process to change the primary resource and added new tasks to the project plan to train the new client representative. So then, it comes back and says, from the issues and resolutions listed above the following lessons can be learned. Be prepared to adapt to new requirements, the importance of the change control process, establishing strong communication channels training and knowledge transfer on and on. So then I said Okay, now the way I teach my my students is every so often you collect these lessons learned together and you go okay, these all go together. This should be a best practice. This should be something we do all the time. Now we should change the way we do things. Because we've come across this problem this many times, or we've been successful so many times with this thing we've been doing let's make that a best practice. So here's what I said. What are some best practices that could be derived from the lessons learned listed? Above stablish a robust change control process foster effective communication and it gives you some ideas on how to do that. Invest in training and development, implement proactive risk management, that's what's talking about a few minutes ago. Yeah. I am just blown away with how much of this stuff that we should be doing and that most people don't do because it's kind of time consuming and boring. We can get chat TV to do a lot of it for us. I'm blown away by this one in
a way okay. So,
we'll share having shown you all of that, what is the future of project management? Well, the bottom line is AI can replace much of what we do from a technical or design perspective or development perspective. So don't Don't get upset. But can because AI also cannot replace the human factor, at least not yet. That's required to manage projects and manage clients. AI can help us streamline, automate, analyze and improve our project management processes. So therefore, it may be wise to focus on these next few months more on improving your project management skills over your technical skills that can easily be replaced because that those project management skills are going to be what sets you apart because everybody else can use the AI tools for design and for all these other things. too. Or the client can use them themselves. But if you can guarantee your client that you can get your projects done on time within budget and that you're aware of all the bugaboos and the delays and the problems that come up on projects, but they don't have to worry about that with you because you're you already have a process in place to take care of those things. Then that's what's going to make you look like a rockstar. That's what's going to make you that's going to be your unique value proposition or your unique selling proposition. So if you believe that last statement is true, which it is, then I invite you to join the web project managers Academy, where you can learn to consistently complete projects on time within budget with features that meet the client's business requirements. Here's the key without sacrificing your own profit. Almost everybody can do that. But they generally are working 60 to 80 hour weeks, or they're the evening of their ROI because they didn't plan well. Okay, so if you join the Academy, there's two memberships at present. One is your basic membership, which is free, and that's your project management, one on one roadmap, and then you've got the premium membership which includes the one on one roadmap but also has the complete roadmap which it includes six project execution roadmaps, six problem solving roadmaps, agency management lessons from 13 industry experts, including Nathan Ingram. client expectations guides like how to set expectations for every aspect of the project. How to Stop scope, creep and retain your profit how to prevent the Content Collection bottleneck, which we all know is a problem. And then ongoing curated content from subject matter experts. And then there's more than 80 templates and tools and already done for you language that you can just copy and paste and tweak and make it your own. I'm gonna get back this episode because seems like there was something else I wanted to tell you there. Oh, yeah,
yeah,
I'm redoing the whole thing. I mentioned it earlier. I'm redoing that whole premium membership to walk through to incorporate using AI. We're all the ways where that can use that we can use it to solve these problems. And so when we're done with that the monthly subscription is gonna go up. But this is what you currently get in the premium program. And you can get certified. This is a way that if project management is your unique value proposition, this is how you let people know that because you've got these banners, these badges on your site that say that they can click on and find out what you did to account to get those certifications. And I'm gonna tell you right now, y'all it's not that hard. It's just some questions. There's a few look at for the for the level two, there's a few little attributes you got to jump through and get some customers to write in. But other than that, it's mostly questions and super easy to get those certifications and set yourself apart from the competition. Okay, so this is what we're doing. That's going to make that price go up is we are rewriting our framework manual to become the definitive website development framework and lifecycle for web professionals. If any of you ever worked in software development, there's the SDLC, the software development lifecycle that's been around since the 80s. And this is fashioned after that, and walks you through every single activity task, everything you'd have to do, what are the inputs? What how do you carry it out? And then what are the outputs that feed into the next activity and tasks? And it's going to include those shortcuts prompts, tips and tricks for streamlining project management with AI. And here's the thing if you guys joined before May 15. With a coupon code solid 23 was really hard for me not to write it seems 23 But it's solid now. If you Oh, you know what, don't do that yet because I forgot to add the coupon code to the website. Running down to the last minute always. But anyway, you get a $14 month discount off the current price. So that'll drop it down to 65 a month. And then that'll be a $35 price off the upcoming price increase. So it's going from 79 a month to 99 a month. So if you just if this is something you think you want to do, I encourage you to do it now. And then, in about 20 minutes, you can get the slides the prompts at WP roadmaps.com forward slash speaking and in about 20 minutes, you can use that coupon code to join also because I forgot to add it to the website. And if you don't want to do any of that, but you just want to hang out with us and you want to talk about project management. And you want to get together every Friday for a chat, which we do every Friday in our Facebook group here. You're welcome to join there. We do ask you some entry questions. That's just keep the riffraff out. We're not we don't hold on to those answers or hold you accountable to any of that. So that is the end of my presentation. I'm sorry, I talked so fast there at the beginning, I mean at the end, but I was afraid that I didn't know what time it was or we came right up on three o'clock. Sorry.
All right. We still have a few minutes for questions and answers. Here though. Let me ask you first question from Kelly. Beth, what tool did you mentioned that does the wireframes screenshot to wireframe tool.
I don't remember the
name of it. I mean, there's several okay, but it's starts with UI something just Google it Google wireframes from screenshots or wireframes, from sketches. And you should get that.
Oh, is it this UI is there a.com? Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. I'm gonna drop that in the chat.
I've typed Yeah, that that one that one looks to be pretty good.
It does. All right. Let's see. Next question from Manu. What AI software are you using to take your recordings to a transcript? They script the script. Alright, and we use otter here on iThemes Training
with D script is that most of my transcripts come from video and with D script, I can take the video. I mean, it gives me the transcript and I can cut out an entire paragraph and it will cut that out of the video and I don't have to do anything.
Very cool. John would like to know it's
AI in two directions, right? It's the the transcript plus it lets you edit the video without actually
editing video. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Good.
John wanted to know if you've compared the responses from Chad GPT to being to Bard in what you think is any better?
No, I haven't gotten that far. Once again, this. I'm not an AI expert. This is not my area of expertise. I was just getting so into it. When When Nathan was saying that he had some opening slots for training. I was like, oh, I want to tell people I want to tell people about how to do this. So I yeah, I haven't done a lot of comparisons.
Yeah, very good. Kelly wanted to know if if she joins the paid membership and complete the training before the AI framework is implemented on your site. You have to go back and recertify or anything or once you're certified, you're certified.
Now you're certified. The AI has nothing to do with the certification. It's about our Do you know how to implement these processes.
Got it
as AI is just a tool right to make it a little bit easier. Last question from Michael, this is the question of the hour. I think in my opinion, is AI becoming one of our competitors for jobs.
It depends on what your job is. I think if you're a copywriter might be tough one for you.
I'm sorry. You just got to accept that. But But here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do. Figure out a way to utilize it instead of let it replace you. Right. Get with a programmer and develop a product or tool of some sort. That's maybe some sort of special way of special prompts. Prompt engineers because I mean, a career right? But the you know, this is the way it is a project change too. Don't run from it. Don't run from it. It's going to be here. It's going to be here forever figure out how you can use it be creative, take shower, it'll stimulate.
Exactly. You see this. And I want to pause for a minute on this question because I hear this all the time. There's a lot of fear around AI in our world and really in any knowledge worker space. I'll tell you you see this in any technological change in history. It's it's professionals and companies who pivot and use the technology do better. The ones that try to hold on to the old way of doing things disappear. And like you know, we've seen this just I mean, if we were just to say in the WordPress space, you know, I started WordPress back in, you know, 2008 was all in WordPress by 2010. You know, everything there was, you know, you had if you want to multi column text, you had to hand code the CSS to make it happen. And then along came page builders that reduce the amount of time it takes to build a page from, you know, an hour or more to just this quick and it's all done. So, you know, it's all about adapting the technology and what we have to be really careful of, I think, and I'm soapboxing here, but what we have to be really careful of, I think, is making sure that what we're delivering is not a commodity. It's always about and Beth you're one of the biggest proponents of this. It's all about being a solutions provider. It's about you know, we're not selling websites, we're selling solutions. We're selling you know, a marketing strategy we're selling, you know, it's it doesn't matter if you have a website, the website needs to accomplish a purpose, and we're selling the means to get to that end, and so on. I'll stop this answer with a quote that I use in a news roundup of a few months ago, from CJ PR who is the founder of brainstorm for us Astra ultimate add ons all those folks in su Jays response to this was look when computers came along, computers did not replace accountants. accountants who use computers replaced accountants that did it. And that's a really great analogy to us in AI. We have to learn how to use the the technology to do what we do better, and to make it simpler and to take all these great processes that Beth has thought about in the project managers Academy and just make it easier. Yeah, so I'm sorry, this is a soapbox there for a little bit. Beth, what do you think? Any comments on that?
No, I couldn't agree with you more. My it's not exactly the same analogy. But we worry about you know, what if if,
like as a teacher, right,
I'm a teacher. That's that's a big part of what I do as well still run my agency. It could this. I'm an online course creator, could this Yeah, somebody can create a course in like no time. But here's the difference. I'm a teacher. Right? If teachers could be replaced by those sorts of things, then when textbooks came out teachers wouldn't have been needed anymore. Now teachers are still needed. Website. solution providers are still needed. Button pushers, not so much.
Exactly right. Alright, folks, we need to start to wrap this one up. I will remind you that one of the segments of our monthly WordPress news roundup, which is you know monthly is on AI news. And so we keep that we keep you informed on what's happening in the AI world. I've dropped in the link in the chat to our next news roundup coming up in a couple of weeks, May 23. Right here on iThemes Training so back it's been great. Thanks for some great examples. And yet another way that we can use AI to make our worlds easier Any final thoughts as we're wrapping up?
Now just remember those caveats that don't ever just plot something that AI did for you out to a client without checking behind it, tweaking it, and just know that it could be making some mistakes, so check behind it
100% on all the links are there in the chat now the the download link for today's slides and AI prompts, which we'll be working here in just a few minutes. As soon as we wrap up and Bev gets the right but box checked will also have the replay up in about a half an hour hour or something like that, at the link that I provided for you. You can share that out go back and rewatch whatever you'd like to do. Well, that's gonna wrap it up for us today. Tomorrow. We're back for the flight course for members. We're talking all about recurring revenue, and then office hours on Thursday for members here on iThemes Training, where we go further together.