I’m exhausted with the new flavor/expectations of project management. Let me set some context: I totally get the PMs who have checked out and do just enough to get by. It’s fair. It’s expected. This job grinds you down. But before AI, you didn’t really feel their impact that much.

Now it’s an AI status report circus. They still don’t care, BUT now their way of coasting is dumping AI-generated plans, summaries and risk registers on everyone. Ten-page project plans that look complete and mean absolutely nothing. Meeting notes nobody actually reviewed. Status updates that sound confident and are just wrong. And then that garbage lands on your project and you have to spend MUCH MORE TIME FIGURING OUT WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOING ON.

Unless you stop caring too and just start generating your own slop to answer their slop.

And of course leadership sees all this output, plans for everything, dashboards everywhere, reports arriving instantly, and their eyes light up. So in their eyes, you’re the slow one. “Just have AI draft the plan!”, “Why do you need a kickoff with stakeholders?”, “Can’t you just generate the risk assessment?”.

The actual job, talking to people, finding out what’s really blocking them, noticing the dependency nobody mentioned, getting someone to admit they’re behind, none of that shows up in a document. So it looks like you’re doing nothing. I’ve seen firsthand how handing everyone tools that produce plans and reports instantly has just made it faster to produce paperwork about projects instead of actually running them.

Accelerated mediocrity, but with a Gantt chart.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when a project gets busy, communication can turn into nothing but task updates, meetings, and chasing deadlines lol.

Everyone might be doing their part, but the team can still feel a little disconnected, especially when people work remotely.

I’ve been looking at different ways teams can connect outside the usual work routine, including virtual games and activities like the ones VortexEvents offers. But I’m curious whether that kind of thing actually helps or just adds another item to everyone’s calendar.

For those managing projects, what’s worked for your team? Do you make time for casual team bonding, or do you find that clear communication and a good workflow are enough? 👀

I'm 9 months into my first official PM role in product development. My team is great, but I was surprised by how little process or documentation existed compared to my previous company.

Most project planning previously lived in Smartsheet, with very few supporting documents and many of them outdated. There are no formal scope documents, RAID logs, stage gates, or SOPs, and projects are often handled differently each time. Products can sit in the concept phase for months while pricing, marketing, and other inputs continue to change, making it difficult to build meaningful schedules and milestones.

One of my biggest contributions has been building out a new project management platform in Asana, which the team has adopted and enjoys using. However, I've struggled to introduce structure beyond that. I wrote project scope documents for two projects, but both were largely dismissed and the projects continued as usual.

More recently, my manager started using a project charter and controls it on their end. The team provides inputs, but there doesn't seem to be a defined review process, approval path, ownership model, or decision-making framework. I've run into similar issues with pricing approvals, where undocumented processes have delayed projects multiple times.

I understand that part of my job is removing roadblocks and improving communication. But I'm struggling to determine where my responsibility begins and ends when key processes are undefined and controlled by leadership. I don't want to create more documents that nobody reviews or uses.

For experienced PMs: How do you manage projects when key processes, approvals, and decision points aren't clearly defined? At what point is it a PM's responsibility to build the process versus adapting to the organization's culture? Would you push for more structure, or learn to operate within the ambiguity?

I'm a Monolith maintainer. I'm sharing its development preview for people who self-host tools for personal, non-commercial project planning.

The workflow to explore is a project brief in Docs, related actions in Projects, and dated work in the calendar. Connected databases and a daily dashboard provide other views of the same workspace. I'd welcome feedback on whether that keeps the context you need when moving from a plan to today's actions.

Source, Linux server downloads and setup instructions: https://github.com/MaxJafar/monolith

Product screenshots and documentation: https://monolith-site-maxjafars-projects.vercel.app

Current limits: development preview; browser and desktop clients connect to a separately hosted server. Windows/macOS installers are unsigned/not notarized. Source is available under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with package-specific notices and non-commercial restrictions. Most implementation was generated by AI under human direction; this introduction was prepared with AI assistance.

We keep seeing the same pattern on large programmes. Five sign-offs for a decision one person could make in an afternoon. A steering committee that meets two weeks after the window closed. A monthly report that nobody acts on, so the real calls get made in the corridor and the paperwork catches up later.

Nobody designed it to be slow. Each layer was added after something went wrong once. Add enough of them and the gate costs more than the risk it was guarding.

Curious how people here handle it:

- Have you cut approval layers without losing control? What did you replace them with?

- How do you get a steering committee to decide inside the window instead of after it?

- Does your controls team inform decisions, or just report on them afterwards?

Full disclosure, we run DeliverIQ, a live session series for project people. On Saturday 13 March Farhan Almadhari, who runs project controls and a PMO in Riyadh, is doing 60 minutes on exactly this, with the last 15 for questions. Details are at deliveriq.live/register if it's useful, but I'm more interested in what's worked for you.

More sessions here: https://deliveriq.live/sessions

Contact for any info: [info@deliveriq.live](mailto:info@deliveriq.live)