# How AI Will Impact Product Management ![rw-book-cover](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_fill,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F56bda212-312a-45e4-a9e5-8875fe5a6fb0_1832x984.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Lenny Rachitsky]] - Full Title: How AI Will Impact Product Management - Category: #articles - Summary: AI will have a significant impact on product management skills, with high-level strategic thinking being most affected. Soft skills like communication and creativity will become even more important as AI takes over more routine tasks. The role of product managers will evolve to leverage AI tools for tasks like setting goals and creating product specifications. - URL: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-ai-will-impact-product-management ## Highlights - Furthermore, soft skills like product sense, communication, creativity, and being the glue that enables a team to operate at their very best will become even more important (and a differentiator among companies). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1vjfm8n9sz51gaez8gy9fx)) - I once [defined](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/44031543/the-job-of-a-product-manager) the job of a product manager as to “**deliver business impact by marshaling the resources of your team to identify and solve the most impactful customer problems.**” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1vn1767rnjytvztjrra54j)) - I once [defined](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/44031543/the-job-of-a-product-manager) the job of a product manager as to “**deliver business impact by marshaling the resources of your team to identify and solve the most impactful customer problems.**” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1vvv8hq0nx7yvmw1q7z9dj)) - I’m saying you should double down on strengthening your soft skills (e.g. communication, collaboration, product sense, influence) and learn how to work with AI on creating more leverage in your hard skills (strategy, vision, data, setting goals). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1vrwt92031yxhs7ndn2yg2)) - As a framework to have this discussion, I think of the PM role as consisting of [three jobs, each of which contains a number of tasks and skills](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/what-is-product-management): [ ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff20f2147-5cc4-453e-ac6a-8c274d5931ff_2400x1350.png) ](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff20f2147-5cc4-453e-ac6a-8c274d5931ff_2400x1350.png) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hv1vsfy42sq5z86f7fkcv219)) - Developing a product strategy and vision: Significantly impacted • **The job:** Analyzing your market, data, customers’ needs, and insights about the future to craft a winning product strategy and vision. • **AI’s impact:** This is where AI will eventually be strongest—taking a ton of data and developing a super-intelligent plan. The PM’s role here will shift to becoming very good at knowing what data to feed it and asking the right questions. And to be clear, I’m not saying you should quit building your strategic-thinking muscle—I’m just saying that AI will give you huge leverage here eventually. • **Tools to explore:** [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/), [Claude](https://claude.ai/), [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com/app), [Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/), and [here are examples](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/111708404/strengthen-your-argument) of how people are already using ChatGPT to strengthen their thinking ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1h302maqw6pkvf4ecr59c)) - Setting goals: Significantly impacted • **The job:** Picking KPIs, setting goals, drafting OKR docs, and creating dashboards to track these metrics. • **AI’s impact:** AI tooling will become increasingly smart at suggesting goals you should be optimizing for, based on your strategy, business requirements, and constraints. PMs will become editors of super-intelligent suggestions. • **Tools to explore:** [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/), [Claude](https://claude.ai/), [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com/app), [Perplexity](https://www.perplexity.ai/) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1h7m0v49w2tdgcq7eav8f)) - Creating specs: Considerably facilitated • **The job:** Crafting PRDs/1-pagers for engineers and designers to implement new products/features. • **AI’s impact:** [This is already happening](https://x.com/clairevo/status/1775716873830797377?s=20) with tools like [ChatPRD](https://www.chatprd.ai/). Describe what you want in human language, get an 80% complete draft, refine it, and then ship. • **Tools to explore:** [ChatPRD](https://www.chatprd.ai/), [WriteMyPRD](https://writemyprd.com/), [Uizard](https://uizard.io/), and [tldraw](https://makereal.tldraw.com/) (to create mocks and prototypes) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1hecfhzqqyg5rxmkprpyw)) - **Discovery:** Considerably facilitated • **The job:** Talking to customers, analyzing data, and getting input from sales and CX conversations to uncover insights about customer pain points and opportunities and inform what to build. • **AI’s impact:** Tools will make it significantly easier to find the signal in the noise. However, customers will still want to talk to real people to share their honest challenges, ideas, and experiences. Skills like empathy, communication, and creativity will become increasingly important for connecting with customers. • **Tools to explore:** [Dovetail](https://dovetail.com/), [Sprig](https://sprig.com/), [Kraftful](https://www.kraftful.com/), [Notably](https://www.notably.ai/), [Viable](https://www.askviable.com/), [Maze](https://maze.co/ai/), and [a bunch of examples from readers](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/111708404/collect-and-summarize-user-feedback-and-usage-data) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1hys7t3jxe7v69n6h1cjp)) - Quality assurance: Significantly impacted • **The job:** Battle-test products before they launch, to catch bugs, UX issues, and confusing copy. • **AI’s impact:** Tooling will likely become incredibly good at catching unexpected behaviors. Feed it your PRD/1-pagers, and AI will tell you where it got stuck. This is already happening with tools like the ones below. • **Tools to explore:** [Rainforest](https://www.rainforestqa.com/?gad_source=1), [Katalon](https://katalon.com/), [Codium](https://www.codium.ai/), [Sapient](https://www.sapient.ai/), [Diffblue](https://www.diffblue.com/) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1jyvgy0pndpaxmwp7t6ef)) - Unblocking blockers: Facilitated • **The job:** Identify blockers, delays, and unexpected challenges your team runs into, and solve them. • **AI’s impact:** Tools will make it easier to identify issues, but engineers and designers will want to discuss and solve problems with people (i.e. not feel like they are being treated like robots). This work involves a lot of soft skills and, often, a soft touch. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn2k73a42wh2mm5z2d4c0d6)) - Running meetings: Considerably facilitated • **The job**: Running effective standups, product reviews, kickoffs, 1:1s, etc. • **AI’s impact:** AI will assist in many ways (e.g. clarifying agendas, helping the meeting run efficiently, taking smart notes, sending along action items), but people will want to meet with people, and for better or worse we’ll all still be spending a lot of time in (more efficient) meetings. • **Tools to explore:** [Gamma](https://gamma.app/https://tome.app/), [Tome](https://tome.app/), [Fireflies](https://fireflies.ai/), [Otter](https://otter.ai/), [Rewatch](https://rewatch.com/), [Airgram](https://www.airgram.io/), [Avoma](https://www.avoma.com/) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1m5ypdzh2636x0f1gqwx3)) - **Communicating important information up and down the ladder:** Facilitated • **The job:** Share information, changes, surprises, and important news with team members, execs, managers, stakeholders, and customers. Avoid surprises and waste. • **AI’s impact:** This is core glue work. AI will help in many ways, but I expect this is where people will continue to bring a lot of value. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1majn29fqadnjbm5j04rb)) - Aligning stakeholders: Facilitated • **The job:** Getting buy-in from sales, marketing, CX, etc. for your product roadmap, timelines, and vision, and then again before your final product goes live. • **AI’s impact:** Humans will need to drive this work for quite a while. This generally involves a lot of soft-skills work, like making everyone feel heard, adjusting priorities based on feedback, dealing with disagreements, and communicating changes in priorities—while also pushing for what you believe is right. Though I do suspect that tools like [Hume](https://x.com/hume_ai/status/1773017055974789176) will help us with influencing people. • **Tools to explore:** [Gamma](https://gamma.app/https://tome.app/), [Tome](https://tome.app/), [Hume](https://x.com/hume_ai/status/1773017055974789176) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hvn1mp6zd0r0z3nwx11z932y))