{"id":13690,"date":"2017-06-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/post\/ai-part-1-case-study_recruiting\/"},"modified":"2021-12-15T00:14:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T05:14:10","slug":"ai-part-1-case-study_recruiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/ai-part-1-case-study_recruiting\/","title":{"rendered":"My First AI Project:\u00a0Join Me in a Real-Time Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

In part 1 of a series, I chronicle the struggles and successes of a real-time case study on Artificial Intelligence. Join my journey.<\/em><\/h2>\n

First part of a series<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The thing I am most excited about right now professionally is also the one thing that is scaring the sh?! out of me. I am embarking on my first Artificial Intelligence project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

More about that in a second. But first, let us segue to why I hate case studies. Post-mortem case studies are dry, sterile and devoid of emotion. And most importantly, they leave me with a massive inferiority complex. How did these people do these huge, gnarly projects and saunter away afterward completely unscathed? Their tidy bullet lists of \u201cPositive Outcomes\u201d and \u201cLessons Learned\u201d make me want to hurl. And cry.<\/p>\n

My projects always seem to involve blood, sweat, and tears. Why don\u2019t their projects have sleepless nights, scope creep battles, and painful screw-ups? Am I just a crappy project manager?<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, their projects had all of those hiccups. All projects do. Glossy, sanitized case studies rarely tell the true story.<\/p>\n

So, as a public service to all my fellow insecure project managers out there,<\/strong> I am going to do a real-time case study of my first AI project.<\/strong> I plan to share what we are working on, what is going well, what is sucking at the moment – everything \u2013 as it happens.<\/p>\n

My hope is by sharing my project\u2019s small victories and painful bruises, you will be encouraged to tackle a project that scares the sh?! out of you too. Insecure people unite!<\/p>\n

\"AI\"<\/p>\n

So, about the project\u2026<\/h2>\n

A little over a year ago, Centric\u00a0launched, for lack of better terminology, an innovation incubator.<\/strong> Any employee, no matter where they live on the food chain, could conceive and share product and process improvement ideas.<\/p>\n

Like-minded people would come together around those ideas and develop a Minimum Viable Product. Once the MVP was in hand, the team could Shark Tank the idea in front of leadership.<\/p>\n

If approved, the project would be funded, official project code and all.<\/p>\n

Here was my initial idea concept:<\/h2>\n

In a professional services organization, the vast majority of expenses are tied to non-billable staff hours (\u201cbench time\u201d). By reducing bench time, companies can increase profitability.<\/em><\/p>\n

Therefore, it is preferable to staff new projects with benched resources versus hiring new employees. Additionally, there is an associated hiring cost for a new employee (in the consulting industry, this cost averages $4300\/hire).<\/em><\/p>\n

The traditional staffing scenario relies heavily on what we will call \u201cBoolean\u201d decision making. A Resource Manager will match the particulars of an upcoming project (such as start date, bill rate, and location) against a database of available resources. A typical search query can be performed by a computer or more simply in the Resource Manager\u2019s head.<\/em><\/p>\n

Either way, a typical search would be something like this:<\/em><\/p>\n

List employees that are available for a new project June 1, have a cost rate of less than $50 per hour and are classified as an Organizational Change Management Senior Consultant.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are several challenges with this model: \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n