Can a chatbot replace a project manager?

How a joke turned out to be a bot that took over the operational activities of a project manager. Egor Popov, PMO from YuSMP Group tells.

Egor Popov

PMO from YuSMP Group

When I started joining PMO, I was faced with a lot of additional operating systems that consumed a lot of time. Part of the working day was spent on endless checks: the relevance of the plan for the day, labor costs from developers, the status of documents, deadlines for compliance, and so on.

I started looking for a way to automate my operational tasks and remembered the bot I created as a joke. Back then, managers were joking: “Can a chatbot replace a PM.” With the very first iteration, I wanted to create a bot that once an hour simply writes to the group “Colleagues, is there any news on tasks?” But while I was implementing the joke, I taught the bot to do something more.

How the bot works

At YuSMP Group, we have a table in Google Sheets that breaks down developer plans by day, indicating priorities and notes. Since we have a distributed team, one developer can have tasks on several projects simultaneously. So that each manager has an understanding of the overall load, we use a file.

In the morning, we update the plan and send it to fellow developers so that they are aware. The bot collects information, analyzes the workload of each developer and sends reports to the chat for PMs, indicating which developers (and departments) have an unfilled plan.

The bot collects information and analyzes the download of each developer. Then it performs two actions:

1. Writes a report to the chat for PMs about the download status, reminds.

2. If everything is filled out, he sends the plan to fellow developers.

Further, as a project manager, I must keep my finger on the pulse. It is important to ensure that all obligations to the client are respected. In order not to slip into micromanagement, I monitor at the top level the achievement of milestones or deadlines.

We also keep a list of such deadlines in a table.

The bot monitors project deadlines, checking the information in the table, and notifies PMs:

I pay attention to both of these points when planning.

How the bot helped the accounting department

We have a problem with closing reports on completed work. PMs do not have access to documents (EDI), and accounting departments are not aware of the context of projects. To solve this problem, the bot checks the delta for payments in passports once a week and sends the information to the chat.

PMs then evaluate the relevance of these numbers and mark them with a response to the message. If something is not true, they begin to resolve the problem by communicating in the same chat with all interested parties.

We also plan to integrate the Jira API with this bot (which is almost ready) in order to calculate developer labor costs according to the following rules:

1. For the previous day (if working – should be from 7 to 9 hours).

2. For the previous week on Mondays (each day must be filled, from 7 to 9 hours).

And return the following information:

1. What did the developer do yesterday (on what projects and how many hours did he spend).

2. If the time is filled in incorrectly, tag this developer and remind them of the importance of noting labor costs on time.

3. If everything is ok with everyone, transfer the information to the accounting department (and in the future automatically update project passports).

Of the features

1. I didn't write a single line of code, just a lot of promts in the GPT chat.

2. No hosting required, everything works offline in Google Sheets.

3. It didn’t cost a single ruble (except for generating the image in DALLe).

4. All pieces are independent of each other as microservices, but if necessary, you can take data from neighboring tables, modify it and expand it as you please.

5. The downside is that the script execution time can reach 6–8 minutes, but this still greatly optimizes the project’s performance.

Are projects still needed?

Chatbots are never late for meetings and are always ready to report on their work, and probably deserve a promotion. But they still cannot replace PMs.

Bots can be useful tools for automating routine tasks and simplifying communication. But we must not forget that behind the digital façade there are still people capable of making strategic decisions, analyzing data and solving problems. And chatbots can remain the same good assistants that will help us not to forget about important deadlines and tasks.