Presentation: Starting Small with AI: Why Grassroots Beats the Enterprise Rollout
Abstract: Your organization announces an “AI Transformation Initiative.” Six months and millions of dollars later, adoption is at 12%, the tool sits unused, and everyone’s back to doing things the old way. Sound familiar?
While enterprises struggle with top-down AI mandates, individual project managers are quietly using AI to transform their work—without permission, without budget, and without fanfare. This session explores why grassroots AI adoption succeeds where corporate initiatives fail, and shows you how to start using AI tomorrow with free tools.
Drawing from practical experience using AI in federal government project management and private sector deployments, this presentation demonstrates real applications any PM can implement immediately. You’ll see actual prompts and workflows for requirements analysis, risk identification, stakeholder communications, and project reporting—not theoretical frameworks, but techniques that work today.
Key Takeaways:
- Why Enterprise AI Fails—and What Works Instead: Learn the predictable pattern of top-down AI failures and discover the lightweight adoption model: free tools, solve your pain point first, demonstrate value to colleagues, and build organic adoption without executive mandate.
- Five Prompts You’ll Use This Week: See demonstrations of AI techniques for common PM tasks including generating project charters, analyzing risks, refining requirements, writing executive summaries, and adapting communications for different stakeholders. Leave with specific prompts you can immediately apply to your projects.
- Practical Guidelines for AI Use: Learn from real experience when AI works well (first drafts, pattern recognition, reformatting) and when human judgment is essential (organizational politics, priority decisions, unstated constraints). Discover simple checks to validate AI output before using it on actual projects.
- Ideal for: PMs at any level who are curious about AI but overwhelmed by hype, working in organizations without formal AI strategies, or frustrated by failed enterprise AI rollouts.
PMI Talent Triangle: Ways of Working
Biography: Dan Stay, PMP is a project management professional with 25+ years of experience delivering complex projects across broadcast media, technology startups, government contracting, and enterprise organizations. After a decade of managing projects—including building and operating a franchise business—he earned his PMP certification in 2021, bringing formal methodology to hard-won field experience. His post-certification work includes NCAA Division I athletic technology deployments and Olympic-scale broadcast operations. Currently serving as Sr. IT Project Manager for a Department of Defense contractor, Dan specializes in bringing structure and modern PM practices to organizations with low PM maturity.
