I love and share your passion on helping product teams succeed. There is one statement that caught my attention: Management doesn't care about trapped teams; they only care about money.
In most cases, Management does care about outcomes. And they must care about money. Like you advise teams to think investments. And we've all built features we really wanted to be successful, and failed.
What I'm trying to say here is: It's hard to build products (and features) that are being used and do earn money. Management is not your enemy here. It is trying to navigate the risks and increase the odds of winning. Just like PMs do. Let's be passionate about building the best product together.
Management isn't the enemy, but often becomes the unintentional blocker.
I believe product teams can help management see things differently by taking action and talking about results. Within that, change can happen gradually.
Awesome post, but it leaves a semi-sweet taste in my mouth—kind of like my YiaYia Maria, who shared her brilliant recipe for Baklava but always left out the secret ingredient that gave it soul.
That’s what AI in product management feels like in this story.
The missing spice.
The real enabler behind the bold moves you outlined.
Some spices that feel missing when it comes to AI-driven PM:
- Rapid user simulation
- Real-time hypothesis testing
- Data-driven backlog triage
- Conversational discovery at scale
- Context-aware delivery support
- Generative strategy scaffolding
Yeah, I’ve got a post on it—but that’s not the point.
The point is: **if we want out of the feature factory, we need to level up our AI game.**
Because you don’t beat the factory by working harder.
You beat it by working braver, smarter ... and way more outcome-obsessed.
Happy to trade thoughts here, or over on my Substack.
You're right about not working harder, which I agree. The smart use of AI can leverage, but with the wrong mindset, it will be to the same results we have know.
The shift we need to have is from delivering for the sake of it to creating value no matter what, which entails rapid experimentation.
I can relate , it's been four months, and I still don’t have a ready prototype. A significant amount of time has been lost in over-analysis, meetings, and discussions around features that seemed appealing to some team members but didn’t necessarily align with our core objectives
I love and share your passion on helping product teams succeed. There is one statement that caught my attention: Management doesn't care about trapped teams; they only care about money.
In most cases, Management does care about outcomes. And they must care about money. Like you advise teams to think investments. And we've all built features we really wanted to be successful, and failed.
What I'm trying to say here is: It's hard to build products (and features) that are being used and do earn money. Management is not your enemy here. It is trying to navigate the risks and increase the odds of winning. Just like PMs do. Let's be passionate about building the best product together.
Management isn't the enemy, but often becomes the unintentional blocker.
I believe product teams can help management see things differently by taking action and talking about results. Within that, change can happen gradually.
Awesome post, but it leaves a semi-sweet taste in my mouth—kind of like my YiaYia Maria, who shared her brilliant recipe for Baklava but always left out the secret ingredient that gave it soul.
That’s what AI in product management feels like in this story.
The missing spice.
The real enabler behind the bold moves you outlined.
Some spices that feel missing when it comes to AI-driven PM:
- Rapid user simulation
- Real-time hypothesis testing
- Data-driven backlog triage
- Conversational discovery at scale
- Context-aware delivery support
- Generative strategy scaffolding
Yeah, I’ve got a post on it—but that’s not the point.
The point is: **if we want out of the feature factory, we need to level up our AI game.**
Because you don’t beat the factory by working harder.
You beat it by working braver, smarter ... and way more outcome-obsessed.
Happy to trade thoughts here, or over on my Substack.
Interesting take on it, Dean.
You're right about not working harder, which I agree. The smart use of AI can leverage, but with the wrong mindset, it will be to the same results we have know.
The shift we need to have is from delivering for the sake of it to creating value no matter what, which entails rapid experimentation.
I can relate , it's been four months, and I still don’t have a ready prototype. A significant amount of time has been lost in over-analysis, meetings, and discussions around features that seemed appealing to some team members but didn’t necessarily align with our core objectives
Good stuff on most points. I would even make a song on Suno "Defeat a feat cluster fac" ))