PM administrator vs strategist

Krzysztof Nyrek
November 28, 2025
6 min read

How Tools, Automation, and AI Unleash the True Potential of IT Project Managers

If you’re an IT Project Manager, you probably know the feeling: instead of managing strategy, you’re putting out fires; instead of removing obstacles, you’re stuck in administration. Frustration is widespread: PMs feel like “meeting admins,” and the lack of access to information blocks their work.

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Many PMs are looking for a solution in a “new tool.” The truth is, however, that the tool itself does not solve anything. The solution is a system that consists of three pillars:

The right ones.

Merciless automation processes.
Intelligent support by AI.

How to Choose a Tool Wisely?

The question “how to choose a tool wisely?” has one good answer: “it depends”, which proves that the question is imprecise.

Before you ask a question, “Jira or ClickUp?“, ask a question, “What problem am I trying to solve?” Changing the focus from choosing a tool to the problem to solve is crucial and will determine the final choice. Examples of Problems:

Business and IT Crossroads. Technical teams work in Jira, and marketing teams work in Asana – the result: manual copying of tasks, information chaos, and discrepancies in expectations.
Complexity vs. Simplicity. Do you need a “combine” (like Jira) that requires a dedicated administrator, or perhaps a tool that is simple and “friendly” for non-technical users (like Asana)?
Scattering of Tools. Is your team bouncing between Confluence (wiki), Slack (chat), GDrive (docs), and Jira (tasks)? As a result, no one knows where the source of truth is.

Choosing a tool is a compromise and a decision about what the project needs and what it can do without. It depends on the project’s complexity and the amount of documentation we will maintain. The choice is never obvious unless a corporation imposes a single tool.

Clash of the Titans: Jira vs. Asana vs. ClickUp

Tool	For whom?	Advantages	Defects
Wait (Atlassian)	Standard for development teams (Agile: Scrum/Kanban).	Unparalleled reporting capabilities, deep integration with the developer ecosystem (e.g., Bitbucket).	Complex and “painful” interface, high entry threshold. Many key features (Mind Maps, Documents) require paid add-ons (Confluence). Requires an expert administrator to be fully utilized.
Asana	Champion of business teams (Marketing, HR, creative).	Clean, intuitive, and friendly interface. Great for visualizing workflows and business tasks. No administrator required.	Fundamental limitation: only one person is assigned to the task, which disqualifies it for complex IT projects. It lacks native all-in-one features (chat, document editor).
ClickUp	All-in-One Challenger – Hybrid Teams (Technical and Business).	Solves the frustrations of competitors, allowing many people to do one task. Natively built-in features (Documents, Chat, Mind Maps) are often better than competitors’ paid add-ons: generous free plan and lower implementation cost.	“The Paradox of Choice.” Because he can (15+ views), the initial setup can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you want.

Key Difference: Jira and Asana force you to work in a model. ClickUp asks, “How do you want to work?” and gives you the tools to build your own system.

Jira is powerful and the most expensive, but it requires an admin.
You can configure Asana yourself, but it won’t work for a large, complex project.
ClickUp offers a lot, but the risk of “choice paralysis” can be high at first.

Pillar of the Future: Automation and AI

After choosing a tool, the next step is to automate repetitive tasks that steal your time.

Automation (IF/THEN Rules)

Most modern tools offer rule-based automation, eliminating the need to manually click through statuses and notifications.

Practical Examples of Automation:

Flow Management: “WHEN the task status changes to ‘Ready for Testing’ -> CHANGE the assignment to ‘Lead QA’ AND SEND a notification to the Slack channel #qa-testy.”
Organizing the Backlog: “WHEN a form submission goes to ‘Inbox’ -> AUTOMATICALLY add the label ‘New’ AND set the priority to ‘Medium’.”
Cross-Tool Automation: “WHEN a new task with the label ‘Dev’ is created in the Asana ‘Marketing’ project -> AUTOMATICALLY create a related issue in the Jira ‘Backend’ project.”

Golden Zasada Automation: If it performs an activity a second time, it can be automated. If I do it for the third, fourth, or fifth time, it’s worth it to implement automation and consider it.

Value of Automation: Those who learn to automate will become more effective and efficient. Thanks to automation, WithYou gains time to solve problems and plan future moves in the project.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Your Assistant

AI is excellent at solving problems that simple automation cannot cope with. However, to use AI repeatedly, it is necessary to understand the process and plan for automation. Without automation, you won’t be able to fully utilize this tool’s potential. However, even if you don’t want to automate, it’s worth learning how to leverage the possibilities AI offers.
Practical AI Application Examples (now available):

AI solution: Tools (e.g., HeyGen) generate a video of you speaking in 10 other languages (with your voice and lip-sync), making communication easier.

Generating and Summarizing (GenAI):

Problem: You need to catch up on 40 comments under the task.

AI solution: You click “Summarize this thread” (e.g., in ClickUp Brain). AI gives a 3-point summary.

Application: Generating status reports, writing meeting summaries, and creating preliminary subtask lists.

Risk Prediction and Analysis:

Problem: You don’t know if the project will be completed on time.

AI solution: The tools analyze historical data, work pace, and team workload to predict potential delays and identify risks.

Resource Allocation Optimization:

Problem: Who should take on this task?

AI solution: The system analyzes the skills, current workload, and historical performance to suggest the best person.

Intercultural Communication Support:

Problem: You manage an international team.
AI solution: Tools (e.g., HeyGen) generate a video of you speaking in 10 other languages (with your voice and lip-sync), making communication easier.

Conclusions:

Thanks to AI, you save from several to a dozen or so hours of work per week.
Just like with automation, you need to invest time in learning. Simple queries like “summarize the last week of project X for me” may not yield a satisfactory result.
You need to learn to “talk” to AI. All major AI providers have prepared learning paths to help with this.