Debbie Oster
December 23, 2025
A Candid Conversation With MustardSeed’s CEO, Project Management Expert Steve Curry
Organizations everywhere are feeling the pressure. Work is moving faster, expectations are higher, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping how teams operate long before many companies have had a chance to catch up.
What used to pass as “good enough” for many organizations no longer meets the moment.The symptoms show up the same way across nearly every industry we work with: too many priorities, too little clarity, projects slipping, and teams burning out from the constant scramble to keep everything moving.
Innovation leaders are juggling crowded pipelines, operations leaders are managing nonstop margin and compliance pressure, and project managers are buried in manual reporting and alignment issues. Meanwhile, executives are tired of being surprised. They want predictability, not heroics.
This is why PMO consulting services have become a strategic priority; not because organizations want more process, but because they want clarity, predictability, scalable systems and relief from execution chaos.
To explore what modern PMOs need and how AI is transforming the landscape, we sat down with Steve Curry, CEO of MustardSeed, for a candid conversation.
Our Q&A With Steve Curry:
Steve: We’re seeing more established PMOs, especially in large enterprises, reach out not just for excellent project managers but for help shaping their PMOs in a way that’s built to last. Historically, PMOs could evolve slowly, especially when it came to technology. That’s no longer the case.
AI has accelerated everything. Companies now come to us for AI for PMO consulting services that help them understand how AI can influence their project managers, their workflows and even how the PMO supports the business all the way up through the C-suite.
Leaders want PMOs that move fast, anticipate risks and operate with precision; and AI is driving that shift.
Steve: Predictably, some people across industries are asking, “Will project management be replaced by AI?” The answer is no, but with a few clear caveats.
AI is becoming one of the most important tools for project managers and PMO teams. We’re heading toward a future where high-skill PMs become dramatically more valuable, similar to how elite software developers had outsized impact in previous decades.
The PMs who thrive will combine high EQ with strategic thinking and a deep comfort with AI. They’ll use AI in project management to remove low-value administrative work so they can spend more time influencing stakeholders, leading teams and managing the nuances of delivery.
For teams already stretched thin (i.e., innovation teams juggling 20+ active projects or operations leaders managing compliance and customer timelines), AI becomes a way to remove the administrative burden that has burned people out for years.
By mid-2026, PMOs will fall into two categories: the haves, who adopt AI early and build real efficiency, and the have-nots, who become less competitive every month.
AI is moving incredibly fast. That’s why our team invests heavily in internal R&D to map the landscape of tools and techniques. Internal PMOs simply don’t have the bandwidth to do that while also running projects.
Increasingly, companies rely on us to sit “sidecar” with their teams and help them adopt the right AI capabilities.
Steve: AI readiness starts with one thing: your PPM (project portfolio management) tool. It’s the heartbeat of the PMO. It’s where every project lives and where the data for dashboards and escalations comes from. Yet many organizations underestimate how critical it is to pick the right PPM and standardize it across the entire enterprise.
We’ve looked at more than 170 PPM tools. While many look similar on the surface, their underlying capabilities (especially around AI for project management) vary dramatically.
The next major PMO transformation will come from PPM platforms that adopt AI features much faster than others. If you choose the right one, your PMO accelerates. If you don’t, the gap widens quickly between those who leverage AI project management strategies and those who don’t.
Many organizations we support manage work across a patchwork of systems, such as: PowerPoint, Excel, Smartsheet, PLM, ERP and homegrown trackers. That fragmentation creates delays, rework, misalignment and inconsistent reporting. Picking a unified PPM is often the single most important step toward eliminating noise and waste.
Once the PPM foundation is in place, the next step is integrating the right peripheral AI PMO tools. The PMOs that succeed will treat AI not as a side experiment, but as part of their operating strategy.
Steve: I see this evolving the same way tax advisors or specialized law firms did. Large companies will always have internal PMO teams, just as they have internal lawyers or accountants. But as the domain becomes more complex, especially with AI, they increasingly rely on specialists who intimately understand how AI and project management intersect.
Internal PMO teams are busy running projects. They don’t have the capacity to track every emerging AI capability, evaluate every new tool or test every workflow optimization. Specialized PMO consulting firms do.
Many of the PMOs we support are staffed by strong leaders who simply don’t have the bandwidth for modernization work while also delivering an overloaded portfolio. They don’t need replacing; they need reinforcement from an AI project management consulting expert.
We’re already seeing this shift. Clients still want high-end project managers, but increasingly, the first call is: “Help us evolve our PMO for AI. Help us modernize.”
Companies want a partner who understands what is emerging, what actually works and how to raise the capability of their internal PMO.
Steve: High EQ, leadership, curiosity and lifelong learning.
As AI takes on more repetitive work, PMO leaders need to be exceptional at reading the room, facilitating alignment, anticipating risks early and applying AI for project management to increase their own capacity.
The PMs who thrive will not be the ones chasing templates…they’ll be the ones who can think and lead at the intersection of strategy, people and technology.
Steve: When we embed PMs inside an organization, our work typically spans three layers (foundational, operational and strategic), but how those layers unfold depends entirely on the client’s needs and where they are in their maturity.
Because every organization is different (different tools, pressures, constraints and cultural dynamics) these layers don’t always appear in the same order. That’s the advantage of an embedded model: we see what’s truly happening inside the business and tailor our approach to create impact that is both practical today and sustainable long-term.
In today’s environment, where AI accelerates work, cross-functional complexity grows and executives expect real-time clarity, a modern PMO must operate across three interconnected layers.
These layers build on each other, and together they create an execution model that is predictable, scalable and aligned with the business.
Before a PMO can deliver efficiently, it needs a foundation that enables consistency and visibility. This layer includes the tools, workflows, operating rhythms and governance that allow teams to execute in a predictable way (not just once, but repeatedly).
A strong foundational layer typically includes:
For industries facing compliance pressure, regulatory scrutiny or customer-driven deadlines, foundational maturity is often the difference between smooth delivery and constant firefighting.
Steve’s point that “AI readiness starts with your PPM” speaks directly to this. Without structured data and unified workflows, AI has nothing reliable to learn from and nothing valuable to act on.
A PMO cannot scale until its foundation is solid.
Once the foundation is in place, the PMO must enable strong daily execution. This is the layer most teams feel first: timelines, risks, decisions, dependencies and alignment.
But in modern organizations, the operational layer must evolve far beyond task management.
High-performing, AI-ready PMOs focus on:
This is the layer where most execution failures originate, not because teams lack effort, but because they lack structure, visibility or leadership leverage.
Missed launches, regulatory gaps, unstable resource allocation and customer escalations rarely start as big problems. They start as small operational issues that go unmanaged.
A strong operational PMO provides the predictability, discipline and tempo that fast-moving organizations depend on. It keeps the day-to-day from turning into chaos.
When the foundational and operational layers are strong, the PMO can step into its most valuable role: a strategic partner to the business.
At this level, the PMO moves beyond reporting on work; it shapes the work.
Strategic PMOs help executives:
This is especially important for leaders under pressure to answer questions like:
A strategic AI PMO turns data into insight, and insight into decisions the organization can trust.
It becomes a metronome for the enterprise…setting the beat, maintaining cadence and enabling leaders to steer the business with confidence.
Most organizations try to fix execution by focusing on operational issues alone. But without foundational maturity, operational discipline won’t stick. And without operational clarity, the PMO can’t generate the insights needed for strategic value.
The PMOs that thrive, especially in an AI-enabled world, are those that build strength across all three layers.
This is also why MustardSeed’s project management consulting model works: our project managers live inside the client environment long enough to strengthen the foundation, elevate execution and mature the PMO into a strategic asset.
One of MustardSeed’s clients, a rapidly growing diagnostics company, partnered with us to modernize their PMO while improving day-to-day project delivery. They needed faster onboarding, clearer governance and a stronger operational foundation.
By embedding PMs and maturing the PMO simultaneously, they achieved:
Read the full case study here.
We see similar patterns across consumer goods, food & beverage, manufacturing and life sciences; when PMOs strengthen operational, foundational and strategic layers together, the entire business gains speed, clarity and margin.
Before we wrapped up our conversation, we asked Steve one final question…
Steve: First, standardize your project management software and make sure every critical project uses it. Without that foundation, AI PMO integration is almost impossible.
From there, leaders should ask:
Modernizing a PMO requires stable tooling, consistent processes and a strategy for evaluating and adopting AI. In 2026, AI will sit at the center of every major shift in project delivery.
PMO consulting services are no longer about governance or templates. They’re about building PMOs that are: faster, smarter, more predictive, more aligned with the business and AI-enabled and future-ready.
If your organization is facing launch delays, portfolio overload, cross-functional misalignment, customer pressure or a PMO that doesn’t have the bandwidth to modernize itself for the age of AI, MustardSeed can help.
Contact MustardSeed to learn more about our PMO consulting services.
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