Project Management for AI-based Language Solutions: A Case Study on a Small Business Adapting to the Agile Framework

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The transformation of several components of the language service industry continues with more and more cooperation between LSPs and AI companies.

While such collaborations usually lead to successful outputs thanks to language technology projects powered by natural language processing, they also bring two (or multiple) businesses that might have different project management approaches.

This presentation covers a case study of a chatbot and IVR system development, the need for which emerged due to increased demand in help centers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aiming for public use, those systems were being developed for several languages and dialects, where our role as a language service provider was needed. Working together with an AI company that was following the agile methodology for their entire production process, it was crucial for the project management approach on our end to be adapted to a more agile nature for the utmost flexibility and feedback circulation, which are some of the main principles of this methodology.

This led us to observe various key takeaways regarding the elements of such language technology projects as well as their management: the fruitful repositioning of LSP businesses (including small businesses like ours) and of linguists in terms of human-in-the-loop based collaborations, a new perspective on how the success of deliverables from LSP organizations can be evaluated, and the positive impact which an agile PM process can have on the overall workflow.

The key takeaways can be beneficial to consider given the ongoing and expected transformation of the nature of collaborations in the LSP industry.

Host organization: Multilingual Connections