Managing AI Projects: Drive Innovation and Successfully Navigate the Full AI Project Lifecycle

Successfully delivering AI projects requires more than technical expertise—it demands a new kind of project management. Managing AI Projects is your practical guide to leading artificial intelligence initiatives from idea to production. Written by seasoned experts Malini Jain Runtasewee and Adrián González Sánchez, this book blends traditional project management principles with the realities of AI development, helping you structure projects, manage uncertainty, and drive real outcomes.

Whether you're a project manager, engineer, or product lead, you'll learn how to plan AI initiatives, manage risk, support iterative experimentation, and align technical and business teams. With practical tools, real-world examples, and a focus on both traditional and generative AI, this book helps ensure your AI projects deliver impact beyond just initial pilots and prototypes.

• Structure AI projects from ideation through deployment
• Manage uncertainty, experimentation, and changing requirements
• Bridge technical and nontechnical teams effectively
• Reduce risk and increase success using proven practices
• Deliver AI initiatives that align with business goals and timelines
• Develop an applied AI project management handbook for your day-to-day initiatives

Malini Jain is a Senior Cloud & Data Project Manager at Toptal, and a university lecturer with EOI and EIP International Business School for data & AI project management courses. She is also co-author of an AI fundamentals book with ANAYA Multimedia. She has managed projects and international level with organizations in Canada and USA.

Adrián González Sánchez is an AI Architect at Microsoft, and an O'Reilly author of three books (KCNA Study Guide, Azure OpenAI Service for Cloud Native Applications, Generative AI on Microsoft Azure) and two reports (Cloud Migration for AI Readiness, Linux and Open Source on Azure). He is a trainer for the Ecole des Dirigeants at HEC Montreal and IE Business School, and he has authored online courses for LinkedIn Learning, O'Reilly Media, The Linux Foundation, and DeepLearning.ai. He also collaborates with 2U / GetSmarter for MIT Sloan's AI and Blockchain executive courses, and Harvard VPAL's Fintech course.