AI & Project Management: 2025 Review and 2026 Trends – Boon or Bubble?

Is the traditional Project Manager becoming obsolete? I look back on AI and PM in 2025 and look forward to 2026, with the help of the Project Flux team of Yoshi Soornack and James Garner.

In this deep-dive interview, Yoshi Soornack and James Garner of Project Flux analyze the radical shift from AI experimentation in 2025 to full-scale deployment in 2026.

1. Video: Biggest AI Trends for Project Managers in 2026!
2. Project Flux
3. Mike’s Three Top AI & Project Management Themes from 2025
4. Mike’s Three Top AI & Project Management Trends for 2026
5. Recommended Videos and Articles to Help with Understanding the AI Topic

Video: Biggest AI Trends for Project Managers in 2026!

We explore the “Illusion of Intelligence,” the rise of Agentic AI, and why the future of the PMO depends on Systems Thinking over bureaucracy. If you want to understand Ashby’s Law in the context of AI or how Context Engineering and vibe coding are the new must-have skills for project leaders, this episode is your 2026 roadmap.

Learn how to use Confidence Scoring to manage AI hallucinations and why “Shadow AI” is the biggest risk to your project’s integrity this year.

Yoshi Soornack and James Garner explain how to free up your time for strategy by automating bureaucracy. From understanding Pseudo-social bonds with AI to mastering Complexity Thinking, this conversation will help you transition from a “task-tracker” to a high-value strategic lead in an AI-driven world.

This video is safe for viewing in the workplace.

This is learning, so, sit back and enjoy

Project Flux

Learn more about how James and Yoshi are re-engineering project management at ProjectFlux.ai

Connect with James and Yoshi on LinkedIn

🕺 James Garner

🧞 Yoshi Soornack

Reading List from the Video

• The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, published by MIT’s NANDA initiative
• Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in Surveying Practice from RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors)
• Maximizing Project Success from PMI (Project Management Institute)
• How To Think About AI: A Guide For The Perplexed by Richard E. Susskind:

Mike’s Three Top AI & Project Management Themes from 2025

In preparing for the conversation, I identified three themes I wanted to be able to discuss. I didn’t get a chance to cover all of this, so I thought it was worth recording my notes here. Some of them, James, Yoshi, or I did touch upon.

Adoption and Governance

In 2025, we saw a big focus in organizations on:

• Pilots and experimentation
• Early AI adoption
• Creating value

We also saw governments starting to set down rules. In the US, there were two key memoranda that set out policies for AI: use and procurement. In the UK, we saw the Government publish its Artificial Intelligence Playbook for the UK Government.

We also saw substantial impacts on the professional and advisory services sector, with pressures placed on staff to adopt AI ways of working and consequent layoffs. Those layoffs were driven by two factors: removing reluctant adopters and reducing headcount through (perceived) efficiency savings. This is clearly a sign of more to come.

However, also in the professional services sector, we also saw costly mistakes – as James discussed with the Deloitte Australia case.

The PM Profession

The professional bodies that serve the projects profession are working to keep up. None appears to be ahead and truly leading the conversation.

AI in the Bodies of Knowledge

PMI’s inclusion of AI in the new 8th edition of its Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK8) seems provisional at best and, in truth, rather tentative. We saw a short (8-page) overview in Appendix 3. This was with a December publication – so very late in the year.

APM did a little better with its APM Body of Knowledge, 8th edition. This came out in the summer and contains a thoughtful survey of the topic over the 11 pages of Chapter 6. It isn’t properly integrated into the content, but does set out a first draft syllabus for a future APM Competence statement.

However, both PMI and APM contributed in other ways.

AI Thought Leadership from PMI and APM

PMI updated its PMI-CPMAI certification again (CPMAI: Certified Professional in Managing AI). The focus of this qualification is on delivering AI projects, rather than using AI in project delivery. PMI covers this with a series of free (to members) AI learning modules.

APM is certainly not leading anymore – indeed, it seems to be struggling to keep up. However, it did publish a detailed research report by an academic team at Southampton University: Digital Transformation and the AI Imperative in Public and Private Sector Projects. It’s well worth a read, but (by the nature ofAI research) feels like a lagging report on what’s happened, more than a strong indicator of the future.

Threats and Warnings

In late 2024, Geoffrey Hinton (2024 Nobel Laureate in Physics) made a fantastic 252-word speech. In it, he warned:

‘There is also a longer-term existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves. We have no idea whether we can stay in control. But we now have evidence that if they are created by companies motivated by short-term profits, our safety will not be the top priority.’

In 2025, we saw two chilling new terms:

AI Slop

In my low-cost AI Glossary, ‘Decode the Jargon of Artificial Intelligence’, I define AI Slop as:

Low-quality, derivative, and sometimes inaccurate content (text, images, music, or video) that AI produces rapidly and at scale. It is flooding the internet and dominating search algorithms, to generate ad revenue or influence opinions. Alternatively, ‘AI spam’.

AI Psychosis

In my low-cost AI Glossary, ‘Decode the Jargon of Artificial Intelligence’, I define AI Psychosis as:

Describes when people rely on AI tools like agents and LLMs to the degree that they become convinced that it has powers or a consciousness that are not real, or believe uncritically its statements about what is possible for them to achieve. The term was coined by Microsoft’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman. It is not a clinical term.

Mike’s Three Top AI & Project Management Trends for 2026

In preparing for the conversation, I identified three trends for 2026 that I wanted to be able to discuss. I didn’t get a chance to cover all of this, so I thought it was worth recording my notes here. Some of them, James, Yoshi, or I did touch upon.

Adoption and Governance

We will clearly see increasing autonomy from AI systems. We’ll see agentic AI tools that can do more. And, we’ll see users who allow their agentic AI to do more. This may prove to be wise or foolish – and my guess is that there will be plenty of case studies to be drawn for both, by the end of the year.

The Governance Imperative

The consequence of this is that, in 2026, we must get a handle on AI governance. We need to be able to:

• Verify the outputs from our AI tools
• Build accountability for the AI + HI (Human Intelligence) systems that we create
• Manage the effects on people’s well-being and critical thinking capabilities

The PM Profession

I hope to see four things in 2026. I am not confident that I will see all of them, but I am hopeful that we’ll at least see a start to some! I want to see the Project Management professional bodies:

1. Make a meaningful start to engaging with the governance imperative
2. Conduct a rigorous review of the real potential futures for AI and data analytics in project management practice
3. Create resulting guidance, knowledge, and learning resources for how to use AI and data productively and safely in the professional practice of delivering projects

My fourth hope is that project professionals will give us more carefully written, human-led thought pieces on professional forums like the PMI and APM blogs and, especially, on LinkedIn. We have seen too much AI-generated slop and recycled, shoddy thinking.

The Scale of Transformation

As I discuss in the video, we will see, over 2026 and beyond, a balance of:

1. Steady, continuous improvement of Project Management practice, facilitated by new AI and data analytics tools
2. Rapid transformation of approaches to delivering change, that re-engineers processes completely

My Questions

Which of the transformational visions will prove out?

What transformations will the profession embrace?

And which will our employers (who pay for projects) be prepared to adopt?

How will these changes change the profession?

My prediction – which I made in the video – is that the big changes will be to PMOs. PMOs are a solution to a set of project delivery problems. But I suspect that AI and data analytics-based tools will provide a better set of solutions soon.

Recommended Videos and Articles to Help with Understanding the AI Topic

Carefully curated video recommendations for you:

• What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? | Video
• How AI Knowledge will Help Your Project Management Career
• Artificial Intelligence in Project Management: AI and PM Primer
• Data Analytics, AI, and the Future of Project Management – with Martin Paver
• How can AI Transform Project Management? | Video
• Stop Wasting Time: James Garner Demos Agentic AI for PMs
• AI Governance Essentials: A Comprehensive Guide for Enterprises and AI Projects
• Artificial Intelligence Tools: Top 5 Practical Project Management Applications
• How to Pivot Your Career to AI – Artificial Intelligence Career
• Decision-Making AI for Project Portfolios – with Stuart Easton | Video
• Can AI Really Predict Project Outcomes?

Please Share Your Assessments of 2025 and 2026

I’d love to learn about what you thought were the significant AI and Project Management events of 2025, and what you foresee for 2026. I’ll respond to every comment.