The Art of Product Management in the Age of AI
A deep dive into the new role of the product manager in the AI era
Exactly 10 years ago I published my original lecture at The Wharton School entitled The Art of Product Management. This video has garnered over half a million views on YouTube and still grows to this day.
On the 10th anniversary of the video, it felt like the right time to completely remake it for the age of AI.
Watch on: YouTube
In 2016, I defined the role of the product manager as driving the vision, strategy, design, and execution of their product. I think that definitions holds as true today as it did back then.
But interestingly, in the intervening 10 years, the role started to move away from the true craft of product management into a role dominated by coordination. As we created specialized roles to scale the product organization, the PM ended up paying the high tax of keeping all these team members coordinated and aligned.
But now, thanks to AI, which can significantly speed up and take over our coordination efforts, we can return to the original craft of product management. And frankly return to what made product management fun in the first place.
In the video, I share my vision for how we can move away from all of the coordination and execution tasks that have come to dominate the product role and replace them with the far more strategic and customer oriented tasks that product management should have always been about.
I also revisit each of the four dimensions of product management and share exactly how AI is making us faster, smarter, and giving us super powers we never had before.
For vision, I cover how AI is making it easier than ever to visualize your product vision through a vision prototype.
For strategy, I cover how you can now leverage AI to deeply research your market and critique your product strategy.
For design, I share how to use AI for synthesizing customer surveys & interviews, conducting AI moderated interviews, analyzing metrics, and producing AI prototypes.
For execution, I detail how to leverage AI to increase your productivity around communication, whether it’s managing meetings, generating status updates, beautifying slides, or writing execution communication.
But in addition to sharing where AI shines, I call out throughout the four dimensions where human taste remains absolutely critical in the role of product management.
I absolutely believe we are entering the golden age of product thanks to AI and I hope this video inspires you to feel the same and provides an overview of how to get there.
Watch now: YouTube.
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help:
AI Productivity: Learn how leading product managers use AI to become faster, smarter, and gain super powers beyond their traditional role.
Mastering Product Management: Accelerate your product career by learning rigorous frameworks for each PM deliverable, from crafting a strategy to prioritizing a roadmap.
Product Innovation Strategy: Building a new product? Learn how to leverage the Deliberate Startup methodology, a modern approach to finding product/market fit.