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AI in practice

The weekly AI question

One question a week, four options, one best answer, and the page that explains it. New every Monday.

This week

The weekly AI question ·

Free for the tender

A team member offers to run the sixty-page tender document through their personal free account this evening and bring the summary tomorrow. What is the problem?

Pick one, then show the answer

Answer revealed. The best answer is B. Two: the tender is usually confidential, and a free account is not for work.

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Best answer

BTwo: the tender is usually confidential, and a free account is not for work.

Free tiers are for learning, not for work: less room for your material, fewer or no projects, tighter limits, and no contract with your employer behind them. For work documents the order is: is it allowed out at all; if so, the employer's tool; if there is none, a paid plan under an agreement - and never a personal free account with the client's tender in it.

Why, option by option

  1. AIt is not under the company's contract, and the tender is the kind of document that most often cannot leave the building at all. Same product, different agreement, different rules.
  2. BBoth halves matter. The confidentiality question comes first and may end the conversation; if the document is allowed out at all, the place for it is the employer's tool or a paid plan under a contract, with room for a document that size.
  3. CA paid personal plan buys room and features; it does not buy the employer's agreement, and it does not answer whether the tender may be shared at all.
  4. DWhen it is done changes nothing about where the document went.

Read why: What never goes in

Earlier questions

The weekly AI question ·

The confident citation

The assistant's draft says "as the PMBOK Guide states in section 4.3.2" and quotes a sentence. It reads well. What do you do before it goes to the steering committee?

Pick one, then show the answer

Answer revealed. The best answer is C. Open the guide and find the section and the sentence. If they are not there, cut the citation.

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Best answer

COpen the guide and find the section and the sentence. If they are not there, cut the citation.

Where assistants fail most: invented numbers and dates, invented citations, confident tone on thin context. The PM's job does not change - verify before you sign. Two cheap habits catch most of it: "list the assumptions you made" and a fresh chat asked to find the mistakes.

Why, option by option

  1. ASpecific and confident is exactly how an invented citation reads. The assistant does not signal uncertainty by sounding uncertain.
  2. BIt will say yes. Asking the author to grade their own work is not verification.
  3. CThis is the five-line check: every quote opened, every number traced. A citation you have not opened is not a citation, it is a rumour with a number on it.
  4. DThe quote may be invented too. Removing the part that lets someone check it makes the problem harder to find, not smaller.

Read why: Trust, but check

The weekly AI question ·

Monday, again

Every Monday you explain the project to the assistant from scratch - who the sponsor is, what the report looks like, which language - before you can ask for anything. What fixes this?

Pick one, then show the answer

Answer revealed. The best answer is B. One workspace per project: the documents and instructions set up once.

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Best answer

BOne workspace per project: the documents and instructions set up once.

Four words for four things: a prompt is the ask, custom instructions are how you always want it to behave, a project is a folder that remembers, a skill is a recipe it can run. The one-project-per-project rule puts the project's documents and instructions where they belong, once.

Why, option by option

  1. AIt works, and it is what most people do. But it is the manual version of a feature all four assistants have, and the pasted document counts against the room the conversation has for this week's material.
  2. BThis is what a project workspace is for. Set it up once and every Monday's message is just "here are this week's notes".
  3. CCustom instructions apply to every chat, including the ones about other projects and the recipe you asked for on Sunday. They are for how you always want it to behave, not for one project's facts.
  4. DMemory holds preferences and small facts about you, not a charter. It is also the one place you should be most careful about what goes in.

Read why: Four ways to ask

The weekly AI question ·

The generic risk register

You ask an assistant to "write a risk register for a software project" and get twelve risks that would fit any project ever run. What is the first thing to change?

Pick one, then show the answer

Answer revealed. The best answer is C. What you give it - upload the charter and the WBS, then ask for risks specific to this project.

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Best answer

CWhat you give it - upload the charter and the WBS, then ask for risks specific to this project.

The single idea that separates useful answers from fluff: the assistant has read the internet and has not read your project. Context is everything it can see in this conversation - text, files, instructions - and a PM already owns the perfect context documents. The charter and the WBS turn "risks for a software project" into "risks for this one".

Why, option by option

  1. ALonger wording on top of no information still produces a generic answer. The assistant is not being vague; it has nothing specific to be specific about.
  2. BNone of the four knows your project. Each knows exactly what you put in front of it in this conversation, and that is the same nothing.
  3. CThis is context. With the charter and the WBS in front of it, "ten risks specific to this project, each with cause, effect, and an owner role" produces a register you can argue with in the meeting.
  4. DA generic list costs more to make specific than a specific list costs to check. The forty minutes of editing are the reason people give up on the tool.

Read why: Context

The weekly AI question ·

The register in the tab

A colleague has the stakeholder register open - names, phone numbers, who is difficult - and is about to paste it into an AI assistant in a browser tab, signed out, to "make it into a nice table". What do you say first?

Pick one, then show the answer

Answer revealed. The best answer is B. Replace the names with roles and strip the phone numbers first; then the table works exactly as well.

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Best answer

BReplace the names with roles and strip the phone numbers first; then the table works exactly as well.

The test is not "is the AI safe" but "would I email this to a stranger". A stakeholder register with names and numbers is personal data under the Law on Personal Data Protection, and pasting it into a consumer service abroad is processing and a transfer. Most of the jobs a PM hands to an assistant work exactly as well with roles as with names - so the habit to build is the thirty-second anonymiser, before the question of which tool even comes up.

Why, option by option

  1. ASigned out is the state with the fewest data controls, not the most. It is still a third-party service in another country receiving personal data.
  2. BRoles do the job. "The sponsor", "vendor A" and "the site engineer" sort, filter and format like names do, and nothing personal has left the building.
  3. CSigning in gives you controls, and you should - but the register still went out with the names on it. Deleting a chat afterwards is not the same as not sending it.
  4. DThe employer's tool is the right place for work material, and this is the better half of an answer. But "nice table" needs no names at all - anonymising costs thirty seconds and removes the question entirely.

Read why: What never goes in

Last checked by Petar Trajchevski. Product names and settings paths were walked through on that date; the concepts do not move. Report a change