According to a study by Airfocus, 92 percent of product managers believe AI will have a huge impact on their work in the future. In fact, that future is already here. Over the course of my career in product management, I’ve seen both faddish trends that flutter away like dust, as well as actual technological shifts that reshape our work permanently. This is the latter, and with the shift will be both opportunities and challenges as we face new expectations and demands.
But as a certified product management geek, I want to tell you that there’s no need to panic. Adapting to change is in our DNA, whether bringing a new integration into the tech stack or pivoting the roadmap again, today. This is simply another one of those moments, though bigger than usual.
How Does AI Intersect With Product Management
AI offers unprecedented efficiency, but it is a derivative tool. It can only tell you what has already been done rather than drive innovation itself. And it cannot understand the human problems at the heart of product management.
How Should We Work With AI?
Research from MIT has shown that adoption of AI tools at a science research lab led to remarkable productivity gains, with patent filings rising by 39 percent and a 17 percent increase in new product prototypes. This kind of productivity boost is exactly what product managers could gain from AI.
But AI’s promise of unprecedented efficiency raises a crucial question: How do we maintain these human connections in product development while taking advantage of AI’s capabilities? Because in the end, people use our products.
As I speak to more PMs, I realize we’re often asked to help make sense of AI and teach our colleagues what it is and what it means to our businesses. Ironically, however, not every PM is technical enough to fully understand AI, let alone teach their colleagues about it. Many of us are learning alongside the rest of the company, but we certainly know we need to learn faster and help lead the charge.
Today’s product teams are evolving beyond our traditional strategic and analytical roles. Although we’ve always been data-driven and cross-functional servant leaders, AI is pushing us to become technology ethicists, AI capability evaluators, and guardians and champions of human-centered design in an increasingly automated world. Though AI tools can generate features and predict patterns, the critical decisions about how to implement these capabilities to serve real human needs still rest firmly in our human hands.
The AI-Powered Product Manager
First, let’s examine how you should incorporate AI into your workflows as a product manager. Imagine an exoskeleton. Whenever you need to lift heavy objects, the exoskeleton makes it so light that you can now carry not only more, but move faster while carrying those objects. You’re in control of your movements, but the exoskeleton makes it so that you can do the work faster and better. More importantly, you move the exoskeleton; it does not move you.
That’s how you should use AI as a product manager.
Product management has been a complex role in many companies, at times combining multiple elements together including engineering, design and research. All of these involve a lot of tedious tasks that soak up your time. Now, AI tools offer the potential to streamline decision-making, prototype faster and enhance user research processes.
Here’s a simple example. Imagine you have to come up with a product requirements document. Before, this would take an hour to draft, even with a template. Now, you just input a few details, have the AI reference your other PRDs from before, and voila! You have your document ready in a fraction of time.
Keeping the Human Element in Product
The availability of new tools doesn’t mean that you take yourself out of the process, however, because the problems we solve are still human at their core. Imagine planning for and building a feature where you don’t understand the pain the issue causes a user. The empathy we have for users and our connection with them helps us deliver better solutions, and we see the outcome in the form of user satisfaction.
For instance, take design thinking, which informs the intuitive structuring of features. AI tools and automation can augment design efforts by accelerating customer feedback analysis, A/B testing, and even faster delivery. But you simply cannot rely on the AI to help you understand the real needs and pains of your users. At best, AI can suggest features based on user data, but it can’t fully comprehend the emotional impact of design and product choices or the cultural nuances that influence user behavior because the AI is not the one experiencing your product. That’s something your very human user does.
An AI is a derivative tool. It can only tell you what’s already been done and is available out on the web. But they cannot apply human ingenuity or creativity. Nor can AI take risks and make leaps of faith that result in next-level innovation in your product. That’s something only you, the human product manager, can do.
Not only that, as servant leaders across our organizations, we also need to enable our own teams alongside building for our external customers. And research has constantly shown that empathy is a core part of making a great team.
Balance Tech With Heart
At Userflow/Beamer, we’re looking to understand all the data at our fingertips and enhance our product more efficiently so we can move with more confidence. But my team is not looking to replace human judgment and decision-making with AI in order to do this. Instead, our goal is to use AI for what it does best — processing data and identifying patterns — while relying on human insight for what we do best: understanding complex human needs and emotions that drive customer sentiment and business goals.
As we enter a new year, our role continues to evolve. Success will lie in mastering the balance, embracing cutting-edge AI while staying rooted in human-centered product principles. And if we want to be effective product managers, we must never forget that no matter how much we draw on AI’s power, our empathy and creativity are our true edge.
