Future of Product Management in an AI world

Future of Product Management in an AI world
Future of Product Management in an AI world

The field of product management is rapidly changing, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way products are developed, marketed, and sold.

With AI becoming more mainstream and capable to automate a lot of mundane tasks, Product Management role is up for a disruption and many product managers will face the heat in the coming days.

There are 2 mega trends at play in the world today:

  1. Economic downturn
  2. Rise of generative AI

Combine the two trends, layoffs and cost cuttings are bound to happen.

AI in product management starts with Automation

What product management skills can be automated? Pretty much all the functional roles.

What are the skills that can’t be automated? The core skills of a product manager, i.e. your relationship with the customer, the fact that you are ‘out there’ and are that interface between customers and your team.

Recession-proof skills in any company

When it comes to any company, two skills that are completely recession proof are:

  1. Either you can create (i.e engineering)
  2. Or you can sell (sales)

Everything else is a support function and is a candidate for culling (including senior management role, which has been a big layoff candidate across the board).

Functional skills of a Product manager

Functional skills of a Product manager

  • Write PRDs
  • Interface with engg /marketing/sales teams
  • Create brochure etc.
  • Falling in love with Jira tickets etc.
  • And of course, writing viral Twitter threads 😎

Redefining Product Management Role

What about Product Management? I believe, there are 2 ways to look at it:

  1. Product management as a function, as a skill
  2. Product management as a role, a title

The two are a different beast. For e.g. Zerodha doesn’t have a PM role but has a PM function (performed by leadership team, listen to this podcast with Kailash, Zerodha CTO).

The reality of most product management roles

A lot of product managers are in for that ‘managerial’ title, where they are neither coding nor selling or marketing – and are mostly doing program management role.

What kind of a product manager are you?

Are you a functional product manager or the one who is deeply performing core skills?

Of course, there is going to be an overlap between the two – but if you don’t own customer interactions and you are not performing the core skills, it’s going to be a tough time ahead.

What percentage of PMs are doing core skills vs. functional skills? My guess (after interviewing a few PMs over the last 12 months) is that majority of product managers are doing functional skills and if you look at it.

What are the skills of a product manager?

Skill wise, I’d divide the Product Management role in 2 broad buckets.

  1. Core skills.
  2. Functional skills

Note that these aren’t mutually exclusive roles, but a healthy overlap is needed to really ensure that the product manager is the one person to ask/discuss anything related to the customer needs.

Core skills of a Product manager

Core skills of a Product manager

  • Customer development
  • Deeper pulse of the market
  • Analyzing Customer needs vs. wants (jobs to be done and beyond)
  • Quickly develop that instinct to understand/guestimate what customers would need
  • Learn to say NO to stakeholders (including the CEO) because ‘you’ know what’s right for the customers.
  • Represent customer in front of the team
  • Represent company in front of the customer

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