Do My Hard-Won Product Skills Still Matter?

AI lowers the cost of building software, but it does not remove the need for product judgment. The article argues that product management is shifting from deciding what is worth building to deciding what is worth shipping, with more emphasis on customer understanding, curation, and speed measured by latency.

Reading notes

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• AI makes working software cheaper, which pushes product work toward judgment, craft, and understanding the customer.
• The old product process behaved like an assembly line; with AI, teams can move like a jazz band and change the order of work.
• The article argues for building more, testing more, throwing away more, and shipping less but better.
• Curation becomes a step in product development, because some of the best products come from what teams choose not to ship.
• Speed is defined as minimizing latency, not maximizing velocity.
• AI speeds up machine work such as coding, data analysis, PRDs, tickets, and status reports, but not conversations with customers or alignment with stakeholders.
• The 12 product competencies are rebuilt for the AI era, and the core list still includes definition, delivery, quality, data, customer voice, UX design, business outcomes, vision, strategy, stakeholder inclusion, team leadership, and managing up.
• The article says individuals should be spiky and teams should be well-rounded, with each person understanding their shape.
• Strengths should be built on, while gaps can be covered by teammates or improved deliberately.
• Teams and leaders should set clear accountability, decide where prototypes end and production software begins, and keep the decision centered on the customer.