There are so many impactful quotations about planning. Here are just a few that you might recognise:

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” Benjamin Franklin

“An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” Dale Carnegie

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are meaningful and very true thoughts there, but how do they stand the test of time in our  changing world where enhancements like agile workflows, robotic automation, and artificial intelligence are impacting the future landscape of project management at large?

While it’s clear that effective planning is essential, so many project managers struggle to plan successfully. Part of the reason plans fail is because of uncertainty, which is inherently difficult for project managers to incorporate into project plans.

How to Plan to Succeed

New technology has helped project portfolio managers incorporate uncertainty into their project plans. This new technology is called ‘Planning Intelligence,’ the art (or increasingly the science) of intelligent forecasting, or smart forecasting, a world of predictive analytics and predictive scheduling supported by intelligent planning systems and technology. Planning Intelligence combines several key methodologies into one super tool to reduce uncertainty and enable both planning and forecasting with confidence.

The human brain simply wasn’t built to manage all the moving pieces of complex project portfolios. In my world, we’re talking a thousand projects and hundreds of project managers reaching across the world – now there is a human brain challenge to track and understand!

Enter Planning Intelligence aiming to help people do what they do best with predictive scheduling technology.

What Is Planning Intelligence Technology?

Planning Intelligence combines the art and science of intelligent forecasting with advanced simulations that are easy for you to use. The technology provides insights into when a project is at risk and what resources or tasks represent impediments to delivering according to plan. This type of technology allows you to identify and triage problems before they happen.

Project managers can quickly and easily scenario plan by changing priorities, adding new projects or dependencies. The technology also enables readily adapting to changing resources and priorities. This level of intelligent insight allows project leaders to level up their strategic lens to make the best decisions for the organization. The core of this new wave of technology reduces uncertainty and allows teams to develop plans with confidence. 

Planning Intelligence Technology will allow your team to:

• Build Accurate Schedule Forecasts with a predictive engine that incorporates constraints like prioritization, dependencies, due dates, and resource availability. 
• Estimate your work more effectively through best-case, worst-case task estimations. Unlike other project management tools that use a single-point estimate, the Planning Intelligence predictive scheduling engine also incorporates the inherent uncertainty in work.
• Maintain a balanced workload for their workers and resources via automatic resource-leveling. Reduce over and underutilization to increase productivity and avoid team burnout
• See insights on time management, performance, and risks to the project schedule before they happen. 

What Project Management Companies Offer Planning Intelligence?

Planning Intelligence is a revolutionary project management technology developed by the company LiquidPlanner which dubs itself The Planning Intelligence Company. In 2008 LiquidPlanner introduced the magic of predictive scheduling to planners everywhere. Ever since, they have been obsessed with improving their automated scheduling technology to relieve the market’s unsolved problems like missed deadlines, the chaos of change, unmanaged uncertainty, and time waste.

In 2021, LiquidPlanner leveraged over a decade of customer and market feedback to design, build then launch their next-generation product, introducing Planning Intelligence to the market. Their approach goes beyond business intelligence and artificial intelligence with an  algorithm-driven engine that frees people to do what they do best – to innovate, be creative, and build relationships.

LiquidPlanner puts prioritization at the core of its planning intelligence technology. LiquidPlanner uses a structured prioritization system where projects and tasks are prioritized from top to bottom. This methodology makes priorities clear to the entire team across the project portfolio. Priority-based planning makes your team more productive because it takes the guesswork and politics out of planning.

Why Invest In Planning Intelligence Software?

Planning Intelligence software can make your teams much more productive. There’s immense power in ensuring everyone is working on the right priorities. Readily available insights into how to optimize or scenario plan is well worth the investment. If you’re still wondering if this level of project management software can help you, consider these questions: 

• Do you spend a lot of time manually updating project timelines?
• Can you do best case – worst case scenario modeling easily?
• Are you able to accurately see if your team can take on a new project?
• Does your organization fight over shared resources often?
• Do you deliver projects late or over budget?
• How accurate are your project estimations?
• Is your team over or under-utilized often?

If you struggle with any of these common issues, then it may be worth it to upgrade to a more sophisticated scheduling engine like LiquidPlanner.

The Future of Planning Intelligence

Consider how much project management has changed over the past decade or two. Some things have changed drastically, while other problems still persist. Some may worry that technology like this will take away jobs. But the reality is that this technology will make your job easier, enabling you to deliver more value to your team and your company. Here’s how: 

1.       Planning projects will become much more of a science than art as technology continues to advance. Timelines will incorporate uncertainty from the start with closer to 100% prediction accuracy.
2.       Planning Intelligence and other AI will free up project managers’ time to work on the most important tasks and complexities of their people and teams
3.       Leading disparate project teams anywhere and everywhere that they are individually located, into a single purpose-driven powerhouse

Having led some of the largest PMOs in the world, I clearly recognise the value of Planning Intelligence Technology. Project managers need this level of planning intelligence, and the software needs human project managers. 

To me this all seems to be perfect in its ‘symbiotic relationship’ and frees the project manager to work with the people. The future will be people-centric, and technology will take care of all the other complexities.

Do you agree with my future project management predictions? Let’s discuss it! Please share and comment your perspective. 

About the Author

Keynote speaker and coach, Peter  Taylor is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’, along with many other books on Project Management, PMO development, Executive Sponsorship, Transformation Leadership, and Speaking Skills.

He has built and led some of the largest PMOs in the world with organizations such as Siemens, IBM, UKG, and now Ceridian, where he is the VP Global PMO. Peter has also delivered over 500 lectures around the world in over 25 countries and has been described as ‘perhaps the most entertaining and inspiring speaker in the project management world today’. To learn more about Peter, you can visit his website, www.thelazyprojectmanager.com.