4.4 — Agentic Project Management
Traditional project management assumes humans do the work. Agentic project management assumes AI does much of the execution while humans provide judgment and direction. The tools are similar; the assumptions are completely different.
Traditional vs. Agentic PM
Section titled “Traditional vs. Agentic PM”| Traditional PM | Agentic PM |
|---|---|
| Estimate hours for each task | Tasks complete in minutes, but verification takes time |
| Assign work to team members | Assign work to agents, review output |
| Daily standups for status | Agent logs and dashboards for status |
| Sprint planning by capacity | Sprint planning by complexity and risk |
| Risk = “will this person finish on time?” | Risk = “will the AI get this right?” and “is this safe to automate?” |
Practical Agentic Workflow
Section titled “Practical Agentic Workflow”- Spec first — write a clear specification before any agent touches code. The spec is your contract with the AI. Ambiguous specs produce ambiguous results.
- Decompose aggressively — smaller tasks = higher accuracy. Large tasks drift. Break work into units an agent can complete and you can verify in one review.
- Verify each step — don’t chain 10 agent tasks without checking intermediate results. A bad output at step 3 corrupts everything downstream.
- Version everything — Git every change. Agent output is not inherently trustworthy — you need a record and the ability to roll back.
- Human judgment at decision points — automate execution, not decisions about what to execute. You decide the direction; agents execute the direction.
Vocabulary
Section titled “Vocabulary”| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Spec (Specification) | A document describing exactly what needs to be built, how it should work, and what “done” looks like |
| Sprint | A fixed time period (usually 1–2 weeks) during which a set of tasks is completed |
| Backlog | A prioritized list of work that hasn’t been started yet |
| Blocker | Something preventing progress on a task |
| Standup | A brief status update meeting (or report) |
| Acceptance criteria | Specific conditions that must be true for a task to be considered complete |
| Iteration | Looking back at what was built, what worked, what didn’t — then adjusting |
Next: 4.5 — Speaking Engineer | Phase overview: Phase 4