Kyle Hicks, a computer science student at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), didn’t blink when he heard his fellow researchers vent about the difficulty of coordinating a project’s complex and interrelated efforts. Rather, through his own initiative, Hicks built an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered program management tool he dubbed Odyssey to help manage overwhelming workloads.
In just a few days, Hicks leveraged AI to code a viable prototype project management tool that included automated reporting, task management and recommendations, credential login, timeline scoping, and more. All of this was made possible by AI.
“Col. Hicks recognized a real need and capability gap and took the initiative to build something that directly addressed it,” said U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Dillon Pierce, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the NPS Space Systems Academic Group (SSAG).
“What’s most impressive to me is not just the tool itself, but what its development represents,” Pearce continued. “Odyssey shows great promise as an example of how technically-minded police officers can identify problems, quickly develop solutions, and deliver capabilities at the right speed.”
“This is important because it shows how individuals with the right technical foundation can make a tangible difference. They are not limited to describing a problem or waiting for a formal acquisition path to produce a solution. They can help identify needs, understand operational context, prototype solutions, and iterate quickly with users.”
“In that sense, Odyssey is a powerful example of the kind of innovation we need more of,” Pearce added. “Marines and naval officers have a combination of technical skills, operational understanding, and initiatives to close the capability gap from the ground up.”
In many ways, Hicks’ program management tools are emblematic of the way AI is envisioned being applied routinely throughout the U.S. Department of the Army. Hicks said Odyssey was not an abstract academic exercise in coding AI, but was born out of the practical challenges familiar across the military: managing complex, fast-moving projects with limited time and personnel.
Hicks is part of a team led by Pierce that supports research related to developing low-cost tactical missiles. The project spanned multiple efforts, including flight software, modeling, and sensor development, but required coordination among multiple contributors, each working on separate code and tasks.
Traditional tools couldn’t do it.
“We were using Teams, Jira, and other project management tools,” Hicks explained. “But to understand what’s going on, you have to manually create tasks, read updates, and try to absorb everything.”
And that administrative burden has become a target for automation. Rather than writing software line by line, Hicks utilized a large language model to generate nearly all of the code for Odyssey.
Worked within the Visual Studio Code development environment and guided the AI with detailed prompts, screenshots, and precise instructions.
“The programming I learned in school wasn’t even in the same language as this app,” Hicks said. “What I learned was how to structure the problem and tell the AI exactly what I wanted.”
After an initial prototype, Hicks evolved Odyssey in just a few weeks into a functional cloud-hosted platform that other users at NPS can access.
The speed of development, which traditionally took months, highlights one of the most immediate impacts of AI, dramatically lowering the barrier to building useful digital tools.
At its core, Odyssey acts as an intelligent project manager. The platform integrates task tracking, timelines, and collaboration tools with a built-in AI agent that can analyze the full scope of a project. Users connect to code repositories from platforms like GitHub and GitLab, allowing the system to read and interpret ongoing technical work.
From there, Odyssey automates many of the most time-consuming aspects of project management. With a single command, AI can assess whether a project is on schedule, identify tasks that are behind schedule, recommend adjustments to timeline or scope, and even summarize progress across multiple contributors.
“It basically does all the heavy lifting of project management for you, so you can focus on the actual work,” says Hicks.
The system also includes collaborative chat functionality, allowing team members to query the AI directly within the project workspace. Generate status reports, list active goals, and summarize discussions across your team with a simple command.
One of Odyssey’s most powerful features is its ability to integrate information across traditionally siled workflows. Complex military projects often involve individuals working independently on separate components, such as software code, hardware systems, and analytical models. It can be difficult to understand how these parts fit together.
Odyssey addresses this problem by bringing data from multiple sources into one environment and allowing AI to interpret the relationships between them.
“You can ask what progress has been made on a particular repository over the past two weeks,” Hicks says. “You can see who committed code, how often, and what they were working on.”
This type of automated and continuously updated visibility gives commanders and project leaders a clearer picture of progress without hours of manual review.
Odyssey exemplifies the shift to what defense leaders often refer to as human-machine teaming, which enhances the effectiveness of personnel rather than replacing them. For Hicks, AI handled the technical heavy lifting of coding while he provided direction, intent, and quality control.
The same dynamic plays out within the platform itself. Rather than replacing project managers, Odyssey acts as an assistant by processing data, identifying patterns, and providing recommendations that humans can accept or improve.
As Hicks continues to pursue his NPS master’s degree in computer science, the potential for further improvements to the Odyssey is typical of the AI-enabled deck plate innovations that DOW needs further improvements.
“When we talk about military applications of AI, we usually talk about great projects like Project Maven and Replicator, but potentially even more interesting is the impact AI is having on day-to-day operations,” said retired NPS Maj. Neil McDonald. [AI Task Force](https://nps.edu/web/ai) Operations staff.
“Mundane tasks that used to take hours a day, such as writing awards, creating conference slides, and organizing documents, can now be completed in minutes, freeing up time for other activities such as training and preparation,” McDonald said.
“Modern generative AI models help quickly code and develop software tools, so even military personnel without formal computer science or programming backgrounds can create bespoke capabilities for their units,” he continued. “They bring their problems, friction points, and experiences to the table, and AI helps incorporate them into solutions.”
Although Odyssey is a single project developed by one officer, it represents a larger change already underway across the U.S. military. AI is no longer limited to high-level strategy or advanced weapons systems. It is increasingly integrated into service members’ daily work, helping them write code, manage projects, analyze data, and make decisions faster.
For Hicks, the bottom line is simple.
“If you have a clear idea of what you want, you can work with AI to build it,” he said.
NPS, located in Monterey, California, provides combat-focused graduate education, including classified and interdisciplinary research, to improve the Navy’s operational effectiveness, technological leadership, and warfighting superiority. Founded in 1909, NPS offers master’s, doctoral, and distance learning certificate programs to U.S. Department of the Army military and civilian students, as well as international partners, to develop warfighters and leaders who can think critically, solve complex operational problems, and provide mission-ready solutions through advanced education and research.
