10 AI Prompts Every PM Needs (And How to Make Them Work for You)

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[00:00:04] Kelsey Alpaio: All right. Hello everyone and welcome to the latest in our community event series. We're so happy you were able to join us here today. My name is Kelsey Alpaio. I'm the executive editor for the Digital Project Manager, and today's session we'll focus on 10 AI prompts. Every PM needs and how to make them work for you.

And I'm excited to introduce our guest for today. So Mashhood Ahmed is a speaker.

On AI and project management. He has 20 plus years of global experience as a PM and is currently developing an AI powered assistant for every project manager on every project. So Mashhood, thank you so much for joining us today. And before we dive in here, I wanted to ask you about all of the traveling that you've been doing to talk about ai.

So first of all, where is the coolest place you've been to recently and. What is the silliest question you've been asked about AI in one of your sessions.

[00:00:59] Mashhood Ahmed: [00:01:00] Okay. Uh, coolest place I've been recently. Hmm. That's a tough one. Not in recently, but recently being more, most of the US and Canada. So that's, uh, I mean, you take it as granted.

Uh, the most coolest thing I went to was PMI Global, PMI, Africa Global in Tanzania. Right. And I went to an island called Zanzibar and they, I with dolphins for real, right? So that was the coolest, that's awesome experience I had through this, uh, this, this speaking engagement as a hobby. And the second question is, uh, what are the question?

Uh, somebody asked. I. To be honest, I can't recall. I think all questions are smart questions, everybody. The background, and it's our role as a speaker, trainer, and coach and mentor to help develop their team, right? Everybody's at a different level in their [00:02:00] practice.

[00:02:01] Kelsey Alpaio: I love that. Yeah, that's a great answer.

No, no silly questions. So if you do have any in the chat, let us know. Um, and let's see, is that poll, has that poll closed or are people still answering it? Oh, here we go. All right. So it looks like most people use AI regularly or every day. Um, there's a few people who have only tried it a couple of times, um, but not a lot of pros and nobody who has never used it.

So really great signs. I think this session will be really valuable for all of you. And I know personally when I first started using ai, I. Didn't totally buy into the hype at first. You know, everyone was talking about how it would save time and take all of these boring tasks off my plate, but every time I gave it a shot, I ended up spending more time trying to get it to say what I wanted or cleaning up the mess that it gave me.

And so eventually I realized that the problem wasn't [00:03:00] the ai, it was me and it was my prompts. And I realized that before AI could actually help me, I needed to really embrace it. I needed to figure out. Which tool to use, how to craft prompts that would actually work and tweak them to fit my style and what I wanted.

So that's what today's session is all about. Real prompts built for project managers that will help you cut down the back and forth and get you to the good stuff faster. So before we dive into some screen sharing here and having the shoe to actually. Walk us through some prompts. Ms. Shoot, I was wondering if you could share a high level overview of the way project managers should be thinking about AI and prompt creation.

Like what are some of the core AI prompting skills PMs should be building?

[00:03:46] Mashhood Ahmed: Mm-hmm. So, um, it's very important that you prompting skills, right? You did not mention prompt engineering because, well, that's one of my thing that I don't like the word prompt engineering. To me, that's all about prompting [00:04:00] skills, the way we learned how to use internet web browsers and emails like.

Have, learn the skills and new norm that there in and for us all the time. So the important, there are a number of ways you can learn how to use general ai. There's no one right way and the best practice, the more you practice, the better you get. But in essence, what you really need to do is you really need to provide the clear instruction, what you would like prompt to do.

You need to provide the clear context of the situation, and then you also need to provide your role or your persona and how you would like AI engine to perform. And then you provide input and input gators, and also the response tool. Combination of these will help you write a better prompt, and as you experience more prompts, you will improve your skills and you will see the quality of responses as well as genetic AI is [00:05:00] improving faster than you think.

[00:05:04] Kelsey Alpaio: Great. And, uh, your, your mic sounds like it's cutting out just a little bit. I don't know if you're able to.

[00:05:10] Mashhood Ahmed: Move it

[00:05:11] Kelsey Alpaio: closer or anything like that? Try

[00:05:12] Mashhood Ahmed: that one. I'm gonna move a little closer. Okay,

[00:05:15] Kelsey Alpaio: great. Um, and for this next question here, I think we have another poll as well, um, for folks if we can send that out.

But I'm wondering if there are certain platforms that are better than others for PM use cases or is it really up to personal preference?

[00:05:33] Mashhood Ahmed: It's up to personal preferences. I have used strategy, I have used Gemini, uh, Microsoft Co-pilot, uh, Mistral and bunch of others, other tools. All of them do a great job.

It's the same question that if you are working in A PMO, you have five project managers who is the best project manager? Yes, one of them be better, right? But again, all of them will be a good experience project manager. So, uh, it's a personal preference. [00:06:00]

[00:06:01] Kelsey Alpaio: Great. And do we wanna close this poll and see? Okay.

So it looks like for most people chat, GPT is the tool that has been approved by their organization. Uh, Gemini and copilot are up there as well, and there's a couple of others. Um, so yeah, I think we're gonna be playing around in a couple of tools today. Is that right, Mashhood?

[00:06:23] Mashhood Ahmed: Yes, we'll be playing with chat, GPD and Gemini.

That's a tool used by the most of the people and anyone who selected the option. Others, I would love to know what other tool you are using. You can just type into chat. I will check that one, uh, afterwards.

[00:06:39] Kelsey Alpaio: Great. All right, well let's get into some prompting. So ud, I'm gonna let you take over here and share your screen and show us some use cases.

[00:06:47] Mashhood Ahmed: Awesome. So first I would like to do my, um. PM assistant. That application building, just talking about the page that [00:07:00] all of you can go right now. Go to PM assistant ai, then click on. There you have a page where you can put your first name, last name, email details, how you read about us, and you can simply select DPM April 16th today.

Right? And by doing that you will download the AI Chrome Guide as over 130 prompts that you can use, customized, and make them your own. Okay. So what we are gonna do for this exercise today is we will go over a series of prompts and one of the big thing is within project management that I struggle sometime is meetings.

Because I'm spending four to six hours in a meeting. I come back, I'm looking at my notes, I forget what happened. And the key one is when two people start talking technical, I lose them. Okay. Now what I have been experimenting and with these [00:08:00] generative AI tool is enable the meeting transcription in your Microsoft, in Zoom, Microsoft Teams or whatever tool you are using.

If transcription, use that transcription, put in chat, GPT, Gemini, or any of your favorite. Um, engine and then run some prompts. So in front of you is like a sample, um, meeting that I have not run yet. Uh, Kelsey gave me this meeting transcription this morning. So we are gonna try this out. And the first prompt I will be working on is, and I'm gonna copy this prompt into the chart GPT window and read from here, which is I'm working as a project manager, help me as, uh, ai.

Project management assistant, I will enter meeting transcription. Use this transcription to answer my next prompt. Very simple, simple, prompt. The component here is I'm telling the generative AI I'm doing. I'm working as a project manager so it understand my context, [00:09:00] and I would like generative AI to help me as my AI assistant.

Two. Answer the question based on the transcript. So I'm setting up the boundaries, I'm telling what the rule is, and I'm just saying, Hey, let's just follow this and I'm gonna copy the same prompt here and then I'm gonna hit enter here and here at the same time, and back to the meeting and copy and simply paste that meeting.

So Chad, you please say, absolutely, go ahead and paste media transcription. I just based transcription in both places and now each looks differently and you know, there are some differentiation, some ideas. So for example, Gemini, I put the meeting transcription. I did not ask it to do anything, but it's automatically telling me key updates and decisions that happened in the meeting.

Um, and if I scroll down, it's giving me by role. [00:10:00] Meaning the product manager will do this. Development team will do this, marketing will do these two activities, content, these three activities and so on. And then action items, which is provide end of the day update on a Stripe integration. Qa, uh, Sam, complete mobile response by Friday.

Provide Tommy update. Jordan, do this, uh, Alina do this. Kai do this potential blocker and concern at, list everything for me. It also tells me next step, so out of the box, just simply put the meeting transcription and just tell your role and how you would like it to help you. It'll automatically please suggest some of these actions for you.

Now let's go to chat g, PT and see what it's doing for us. So I'm gonna past a meeting here, so it.

So now here the few common output I [00:11:00] can generate. It can generate action item, table risk, um, project schedule, key stakeholders, charter meeting summary. So I'll say, uh, let's start with action item table. Okay. I simply say, gimme the action item table. Now it's gonna create an action item table for me in a format like this.

Okay. Now this is something useful for us as a project manager. You come out of the meeting and you are like, okay, who's gonna do what? By just playing with a simple product like this. You have an action item table. You can read it always a hundred percent. Read every single line, every single word that any generative AI is generating, because at the end of the day.

You can't say that it was generated by Gen AI generated by you. It has your name as a project manager. So now you can see that I have all the action item tables here. [00:12:00] Now you can copy it into the Google sheets or you can download it and you can do more. Um, 'cause of the time we have to run 10 prompts.

I'm gonna, I'm not gonna go much more detail here, but you guys get the idea is that it can do so much for you right off the bat. All right, so I am going over this meeting transcription here. I can say, based on this meeting transcription, give me the attendance, for example, and we'll do it here as well.

So it's giving me the attendance, you project manager, because I said working as a project manager and all the needs for in the meeting transcriptions. Love it. Um, similar thing with Gemini, it's gives me the attendance. Now we already tried the action item table, so I'm gonna skip that one. Uh, [00:13:00] but if you go into AI prom guide from the PMs ai, you will have 130 prompts that you can try.

Now I'm gonna try another prompt. That one is about the work on structure. I have not tried these problems before, so Kelsey gave me this warning. So the prompt says, help me as an ai, uh, assistant to create work structure that breaks e-commerce platform, migration project within which involves moving existing online store.

More scalable platform into high, high level manager tasks. Objective is to ensure transition downtime into tasks such as data migration, user interface, redesign integration and payment gateway and testing functionality. So let's see what does, and I put the same thing in chart and then come by. So here you can see that by just.

Some high level [00:14:00] goal objectives. It start breaking down, creating the work structure for me, and to initiate the project. Project. Define the scope for the three Subtask. Platform selection. Two. Subtask Project planning. Three. Subtask. Stakeholder Communication. Two. Subtask Data migration extraction transformation.

Import ui, ux, you know, backend front end migration payment gateway. Again, EP integration, payment testing. Uh, functionality and security. Functional and security testing. UAT go live. And there you go. So you have the whole project plan ready in front of you. Now you can simply put this in and your project plan schedule, or whatever tool you are using now look at chat.

GBT. It's suggesting something similar. Uh, project management. We need to do planning, stakeholder communication resource. Risk management and progress monitoring and reporting. [00:15:00] Requirement analysis, again, five steps, ui, ux, five steps data migration, five steps integration, another four. Content, uh, sorry.

Development and configuration testing in QA training and documentation and so forth. Now you can see that it's saying, would you like me to turn into? Now, it automatically knows because I have said in the beginning that I'm working as a project manager. You are my AI project management assistant.

Understand what would be the next steps or the next task so I can simply say, yes, please. Uh. Please create schedule table. Okay, I'm not gonna try the gang chart because that takes some time, over a minute. Um, and while it's doing that, I'm gonna go and check the prompt and for that one, perfect. Now you can see that now it's developing a project schedule for me.[00:16:00]

Okay. We did not provide the start date or the end date, but if you go ahead and say, okay, let's use the start date as May 1st, and then it automatically populate all the dates for you and you can always have a chance to update it manually. So you can see that it's really creating the project IDs and the dependencies and everything that we need most of the time is an icon.

You can click to copy table and it can go your spreadsheet or uh, your project schedule. So the next um, prompt is about communication management, and I'm gonna copy it here and help me as an AI PM assistant to develop. Communication that outline how project updates, status report, and important information will be shared with stakeholders for a cloud migration project, which involves moving companies IT infrastructure to cloud based platform, improve scalability, reduce operational costs.

Objective is to [00:17:00] ensure all stakeholders, including IT management, external vendors, receive timely updates, regular meeting status, and centralized communication. Right? So standard stuff, and I'm gonna copy this one and here as well. Now there, excuse me. The communication plan. What is the purpose of communication?

To set clear, consistent communication strategy for this project. Ensure all communication, all stakeholders on the project. Um, ate timely decision making, collaboration. Who are the stakeholders? Again, the names that I have mentioned in the prompt, uh, communication objectives, communication channels. Now it is suggesting some of the things, um, because it does not know a lot about my property or the tools that I use, but if you say that, okay, my company only use Microsoft Teams, then pick up Microsoft Teams.

So those are the backend configurations. But for now, this is. Us like a generic, um, communication [00:18:00] channels, uh, regular status meetings, uh, different types of meetings. We'll have like a weekly meeting and then a monthly stakeholder meeting. And some of the frequent change as required status report could be weekly or biweekly.

So now I can decide as a project manager if I would like to do weekly report or biweekly report. Uh, similar communica email communication communication platforms. Project website communication metrics. Now it's giving me a communication metrics as well and, uh, issue escalation process. Now, one thing about Google Gemini, anytime it generates a table, it gives you an option to export to the sheet.

So if you click on that one, it'll download that sheet for you that you can use in your, um, any other purpose. Basically issues feedback, and that's. Quite a lot of information through on front charge g, pt, um, cloud migration, project, communication plan objectives, [00:19:00] stakeholders, uh, communication matrix. It's giving me type of communication, purpose, frequency, audience format, and owner.

So I kind of like this style and the other one, but both of them are great. Or if the other does not give me that one, I can say, give me the output in this method and it'll give it to you in this, in that output. So this is something really cool communication tool. It's suggesting me some of the communication tools, escalation protocols, and now it's saying, would you like to download, um, it in Word or PDF or you would like to, uh, tailor this plan into a stakeholder presentation so you can simply go, okay.

Change it to presentation or change this and this instead of Zoom put teams everywhere because we are Microsoft shop or other way around, you know? And then we'll kind of update that one, and then you can create a PowerPoint or a Word document. From here, I'm gonna go to the next prompt that is about cost management.[00:20:00]

So I'm pretty sure you're getting an idea how this is working. If you go to the PM assistant ai, you can download. So here's the medication, uh, sorry. This is cost management. And the prompt is, uh, assess me in creating comprehensive cost management plan that outline how cost will be estimated budgeted and control for international conference planning project, uh, organizing large scale conference for industry professionals.

Um, provide brand visibility, network opportunity. Plan should include cost, venue, rental, marketing, speakers, fees, logistics, budget for different categories, cost control measures. Ensure project stays within allocated budget. So just that, that information, it says, okay, here's my cost management plan.

Objectives picks up from the prompt. Cost estimation approach now suggesting me some idea that I need [00:21:00] to leverage, um, budget categories and location. So it's giving me some budget categories. Here's the thing that, you know, sometime I, I'm sitting in Canada, so it's picking up the Canadian dollars. And again, sometime it does, sometime it doesn't.

So if you provide like more explicit information, it'll pick up some appropriate things. So for example, I was running a similar workshop few days back. And I mentioned something that I'm from Edmonton, it pick up the local universities because we were talking about that, uh, from there automatically. So it just kind of picks up some values and you may or may not agree with that.

Um, it's an estimate Cost measures have a baseline change control process. You know all those details, tools, some tools. Now it's asking me if I want the budget spreadsheet template that I would like to create. Now I'm gonna go to Gemini and see what Gemini gives me. Purpose, cost, management, object, [00:22:00] cost, techniques, you know, the, because it knows we, um, we are project manager.

So it pick up the four cost from the PIP cost categorization when you rental marketing speaker fees and kill different categories, estimations, budget, and now this. So it's not giving populating any amount. It's just saying, Hey, you go and do your own research and think whatever is appropriate in your country or in your city, in the area.

Okay. Which is perfectly fine. It's a, again, it's a starting point most of the time. It gives us a starting point about. How to go from here to the next step because we as a project manager sometimes have like a blank page syndrome where I'm sitting in front of computer thinking, where do I start? I've been to so many places.

My mind is all over the place. It help us focus on one thing and give us like a starting template [00:23:00] that we don't have. So for the time we only have five minutes, skip all these things. But again, you guys can see that. Much more detailed, much more ideas that I can think as a project manager, how to organize the international uh, conference for this topic.

The next prompt I'm gonna run is a resource planning prompt.

[00:23:24] Kelsey Alpaio: We actually have some great questions from the chat that I'd love to answer with the last five minutes because I don't think we're gonna get to all 10 today. But, uh, you will be able to find them all in Maud's AI prompt guide, um, which, uh, Michael's been putting the.

The link in the chat, Michelle will get to it again. Um, but even just looking at this prompt that you put in about resource planning, we got a question kind of about how precise the prompts need to be. Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, the importance of being precise with your project descriptions or with Exactly.

You want out of a prompt, uh, when you're building these for [00:24:00] yourself?

[00:24:00] Mashhood Ahmed: Yeah, so the idea, what I'm trying to show. The first thing important is if you are using generative AI at workplace, make sure you get some written approval from the management. That's the first thing, right? And if this they say you use Gemini as chat GT versus MR or something else, just follow that instruction because that's very important.

Um. The more context you provide, the better the response will be, right? So if you tell I'm working in Edmonton on this project and this and this area, it'll pick up all that, those level of details, right? So that's more about like, the more context you provide, the better output you will receive. It's all about the context of the project.

Um, I'm gonna try to read some prompt. Okay. Blank Pit syndrome. Yes, totally gets it. Paying for, for Gemini? Yeah. You know, uh, the, there's a cost to [00:25:00] these ones. There's a free ones. Again, if you're using free one, any, put it up there could be available to the public. So please do not put any personal, confidential information or copy information there.

Paid version are are the best one. Does chat GPT have, cus does anyone have custom GPT made to help their work as a pm? Um, yes, I have done this one for the PMO. Um, I can show you some of the time or I run AA AI masterclass where I do the demo as well. So if you download the prong guide, I can share some details with you Personally, I haven't hit the pay with Gemini.

That's good. Um, anyone that. Gemini for the video. Yes, you can use Gemini for the videos. Most of the, they can do multimodal. Now. I like Gemini better. With Google. Yes. Gemini is better. We inate with Google. We, and we're using the Gemini and Google because of the same reason. It's with the Google, uh, product suite.

[00:26:00] Um, we have, so that's something that we're building.

[00:26:01] Kelsey Alpaio: We have another question that stood out to me, um, about templates. Uh, so have you had success using AI to populate a provided template? What does that look like?

[00:26:11] Mashhood Ahmed: Yes. So what you could do is you can go and create a custom g pt. Or even within, within here, you can say, I'm gonna attach a template.

So for example, if I click on this, I can attach like a or image that you can attach a template saying, here's my template. Transform this meeting minutes into this template, or transform this, uh, content about the project into a project charter in my template. Um, word of caution here is. I have not seen, um, these generative ai, amazing job.

They do a really good job. About 80% correct, but sometimes they mess up with a template because, you know, uh, templates have different, um, different parameters within them, right? So, um, that's something that we have to play [00:27:00] in fine tune. And another other question, Cal, that stands out. Yeah,

[00:27:05] Kelsey Alpaio: yeah. I, I actually had one, um, I don't know if I saw it in the chat, but it's something that I've struggled with personally with, um, AI prompting, which is what are some, you know, follow up best practices or prompts that PMs can use if they're not getting the output that they want from their initial prompts?

[00:27:22] Mashhood Ahmed: Very good question. So you can simply say, Hey, help me write a better prompt. So here's what I'm trying to do. So think of this as like a, somebody smart, somebody who knows a lot and you're sitting with them and they are coaching and mentoring you. So you can say, Hey, I'm trying to do this. Here's my problem, here's my background.

How should I approach this? Right? So just use that as a dialogue. I like the chain of thought process. Uh, it's a prompting technique where instead of putting a one big pro, you put like a smaller prompt and then kind of build your thought process and build your concept around what you're trying to.[00:28:00]

[00:28:01] Kelsey Alpaio: Great. Yeah, and I, I saw Julia in the chat, so you can also ask chat GPT, um, how did you get to this? It's another way to kind of figure out, you know, where, where it started and where you can go from there. Um, yes, and just one last question here that is called reasoning.

[00:28:16] Mashhood Ahmed: Oh, go ahead. Yeah, no, that is the reasoning component, right?

I believe within chat GPTI can do the deep search and reasoning, and that will go like a little bit more into the, the details. Last questions before we can close it off.

[00:28:29] Kelsey Alpaio: Yeah. Last question here. Uh, what are the top three quickest steps someone can take to start using AI day to day as a pm?

[00:28:38] Mashhood Ahmed: Oh, quickest steps.

Learn how to write a good prompt, look at the sample prompts, uh, practice. There's nothing that can be practiced. You know, you can start ing today and you could become a master in a week or two weeks, and then you might be telling me some good tips that I, I don't even know today. Right? So. I'm here to learn as well.

[00:28:59] Kelsey Alpaio: [00:29:00] Amazing. Well, thank you so much ud. We're just about out of time here and thank you to everyone who joined us for our session today. If you love this event, we'd love to see you at our next event, which is Project versus Product Frenemies or Power Duo. What PMs can Learn from PMs to Succeed in 2025. And you can RSVP using the link we just posted in the chat.

And if you want access to the prompts we covered today and even more prompts that will make your job. Easier. Maud has that AI prompt guide that you can download using the link in the chat. And before anyone takes off today, I want you to know that we love feedback. So please take a second to let us know what you thought of today's event and let us know if there are any topics you'd like to see us cover in a future session.

That link is also in the chat. And thank you all for joining us, and DPM members will see you in the workshop in just a couple of minutes. Here, you can check Slack for the link to that room. Thank you all again for joining us.