Artificial intelligence for project planning

The aim of this paper was to show how intelligent planning techniques could be used to create an environment in which existing project planning and scheduling tools could be used to handle projects dispersed across a wide area. This needs arises from the nature of projects being developed today which involve organisations working together which are located throughout countries and continents. The strengths and weaknesses of current project planning software is described showing their limitations in addressing current project planning needs. The paper motivates the need to breakaway from the view that one tool can do everything a project manager needs to one in which planning tools are viewed as situated agents. While a planning agent deals with plan generation aspects, other agents are concerned with aspects such as task elicitation, plan analysis, reactive execution, plan repair, etc. Each of these systems has its own perspective on the planning problem and each of the systems must be capable of communicating in a way which allows other systems to assimilate new information into their perspective of the problem. An intelligent approach to project management which allows existing tools and databases to communicate more efficiently and effectively is described. The paper concludes with a description of four different types of technology which are being developed to address the needs of project planning. These will allow current tools and technologies to communicate and to share information and knowledge about the process of project planning and the data about a specific project.