I now have access to Microsoft Copilot. Task: draft a meeting agenda. What I get: agenda items from an email three weeks ago. Topics that have long been discussed and resolved. A budget item that's been off the table since the last steering committee.
You might say that's a Copilot problem. It's not. It's a project management context problem.
Stale data is the problem
Look at what AI sees in code and the difference becomes immediately clear. Every change versioned. Every decision traceable. A complete, current context from the first commit. That's why AI can write entire applications, plan complex refactorings, find bugs in seconds.
And what does AI see in project management? Email chains from two weeks ago. Meeting notes that haven't been updated in months. Budget agreements from lunch that were never documented. Scope changes from hallway conversations. Knowledge that only exists in Sarah's head.
More data is not the solution
The industry's current answer? More data. More integrations. Connect Jira, search Confluence, index Slack, scan emails.
But more data doesn't solve the problem. It makes it worse. More sources that are no longer current mean more agenda items that are no longer relevant.
The right approach is the opposite: fewer sources. Ideally a single one. But that one always current, always fresh. A living project context that reflects today's reality.
Distillation, not aggregation
But how do you keep this context fresh when we're exposed to a flood of information every day that has nothing to do with the project? Humans do this all day long: filter and forget. AI can't do that.
But it can help here too — just differently than most people think.
MCP connections, Jira integrations, Slack connections are valuable. But they're not a suitable source for the end result. They're the right source for a distillation process: AI reads project updates like emails, meeting summaries, tickets, and checks each piece of content for project relevance. If relevant, the content becomes a candidate for the project context. The project manager as human in the loop then approves it.
Not just collecting. Distilling the right information.
Then AI generates an agenda with topics that are relevant today. Not with what was once written in some email.
This principle is at the core of Context Driven Project Management. Explore the framework to learn more, or start collaborating on GitHub.