In this episode, we meet Yang Fan, a Project Manager at ALTEN China with 12 years of experience in project management. She is currently working with her team to develop a commercial laptop designed specifically for AI applications. From validating key components to standardizing production processes, her work involves coordinating people, technology, and suppliers while constantly adapting to changing project requirements.

Over the years, she has learned that while projects and technologies keep evolving, one thing remains unchanged:

The ability to develop the right understanding enables better decisions.

And today, AI has become one of her most effective tools for doing so.

AI Provides the Insights. People Make the Decisions.

Yang has no concerns about AI replacing her role. 

“AI cannot replace human decision-making or resource coordination. It can give you a range of options, but deciding which one to choose and how to allocate resources still requires human judgment.”

For her, AI is more like a highly efficient team member. It can organize large amounts of data, generate reports, track progress, and handle repetitive tasks—freeing up project managers to focus on what matters most: making decisions. 

This becomes especially valuable in AI-related projects, where testing can generate massive amounts of data. AI can quickly categorize and analyze that information, significantly shortening the time between data collection and actionable insights. 

But insights alone are not enough.

AI cannot fully determine which features users truly need, how a technical decision might affect costs, or what it will take to meet a delivery timeline.

That is where human experience comes in.

The real value lies in bringing human creativity and AI efficiency together.

Build Cognition Before Action

Technical challenges and supply chain uncertainties are common sources of delays in AI projects. When unexpected problems arise, project managers need to respond quickly while managing potential risks.

Yang Fan has developed a simple but highly practical approach:

“Speed matters more than precision, and understanding matters more than delivery.”

One product incident illustrates how she puts this principle into practice. 

A customer once reported that a laptop’s touchscreen had completely stopped working. Instead of waiting until every detail was available, Yang Fan immediately took three steps.

Defined the problem

She quickly assembled an investigation team, required an initial diagnosis within 24 hours, and classified the incident as a major quality issue.

Build understanding

While the team investigated, she researched the most common causes of similar failures and reviewed the relevant quality-control mechanisms at the factory. This allowed her to form an initial view of where the problem might lie and how potential solutions could be validated—before the investigation was complete.

Align information

That afternoon, she consolidated the information available and proactively updated her manager and core project team, making sure everyone had the same understanding of the situation.

Once the investigation was completed, her preparation enabled her to quickly evaluate the proposed corrective actions. She then worked with the factory to improve several delivery processes and proactively checked for other potential risks.

For Yang Fan, the methodology is straightforward: 

Turn the unknown into the known. Turn ambiguity into concrete problems.

When facing change, she does not wait for every requirement to become clear before taking action. Instead, she builds the knowledge she needs, tests a direction with limited resources, and breaks broad challenges into smaller, solvable problems. 

It is a way of working that allows her to move forward—even when the full picture is not yet available.

Reading Beyond Technology

For Yang Fan, professional growth does not come only from learning new tools or methodologies.

As technology continues to evolve and unexpected challenges emerge, she has chosen to spend much of her reading time exploring cognitive science and human behavior.

She sees work not simply as a way to make a living, but as an opportunity to sharpen her thinking and accumulate experience.

Reading has helped her develop a framework for understanding the motivations behind human behavior. This allows her to look beyond the surface of a problem and identify its underlying structure more quickly.

More importantly, it has changed the way she thinks—from linear cause and effect to systemic connections, and from reacting to problems to anticipating them.

That mindset translates directly into project management.

It helps her identify friction points within a team, prioritize complex tasks, and make adjustments before a project goes off track.

For Yang Fan, reading is therefore more than a way to gain knowledge. It is a way to build better mental models, understand problems at their core, and turn problem-solving into a repeatable approach rather than a series of last-minute fixes.