The PM role is dead. Long live the PM.
A new AI era for Product Managers willing to evolve
There’s been a lot of discussion lately online about which jobs AI will replace or transform. I was listening to Mikri Kouventa about the future of engineering, and it made me wonder how will the Product Manager role evolve!
Because the same question is not just about Engineers. It touches designers, PMs, and the entire way we build product teams. Even if some people have verdicted the disappearance of the PMs before the one of the Engineers…
So, let’s break it down to what AI changes in the PM role in my opinion, based on my interactions and personal experiences so far.
New team superpowers, new dynamics
What is changing is the way teams are working, and the skillset their members have. So let’s see the close collaborators of a PM, forming the Product Trio:
Engineers now have a much smaller learning curve when it comes to understanding business needs. They can prototype faster, closer to users, even live. They are able to optimize solutions based on business context much earlier in the process. But they will still struggle with handling uncertainty about what needs to be built and why. Additionally, someone needs to build the infrastructure for using the right models and finding the balance between building functions with clear outputs and using the creativity of AI to create a more personalized feeling for users, more like architects. So, the context switch cost remains, it’s the quality of the output that can be better, with smaller teams, if done right.
Designers are now able to automate and simulate user research, even generate personas that represent mass market behaviors better than traditional interviews. If the goal is scale, there is no better input today than what LLMs can generate, as they are trained on mass data. If the goal is differentiation, they have to think outside the box, and use LLMs to see what mainstream ideas look like. Their value remains on designing for the human interaction, which cannot be left on LLMs:
working on the brand and the aesthetics
focusing on the clarity of the user journey
designing usable prototypes with no-code tools, for quicker validation
building good experiments
using LLMs for completeness and design QA, especially on edge cases they haven’t thought about
What about the PMs now?
What’s left for the PMs depends on the phase and current state of the team. A good PM should still be the person who makes the team super productive and fast. The one who finds the invisible glue that holds things together. Some areas where PMs can still create huge value:
Project Management. Few people enjoy it, but no one can operate without milestones and proper resource management. Someone has to take responsibility and do it better than before.
Bringing Clarity. Teams can only have clarity if leadership has clarity first. Cross-team alignment has always been hard and it will only get harder as AI speeds everything up.
Vision and Forward Thinking. When execution becomes a commodity, thinking becomes the differentiator. PMs need to constantly work on their strategic thinking, spotting opportunities, connecting dots, and shaping what is next.
Internal Automations. When a role is missing or underperforming, someone has to recognize it early and use AI to fill the gap. Whether it is Customer Success, Marketing, or Ops, someone needs to implement a fix and explain its impact to leadership.
Filling the Gaps. If designers or engineers are unable to meet the new expectations of speed and quality, PMs have to step in, coach them, or partially bridge the gap themselves. The quality of their contribution, especially to better communicate ideas, can be increased radically with the usage of AI tools.
What makes a Good PM in this new reality
Yes, we will need less and on later stage the PMs. And the PMs have to step up with more agency and more creativity in this new era. Some qualities will matter even more:
Aesthetics and Taste: knowing when something is not just functional but also appealing
Strategic Mind and Clarity: being able to make good decisions and help others do the same
360-Degree Business Sense: understanding how product, marketing, operations, and growth fit together
Coaching and Leadership: inspiring people to do better, not just managing tasks
Communication skills. No explaination needed. At least we can write better emails now.
It’s a bright new era, for an evolving role
PMs still need agency, good judgment, and a urge for impact. But now they also have new tools to break any existing silos; The barriers that used to slow down teams like slow research, expensive prototyping, or lack of visual design can now be overcome by a good PM who knows how to use AI.
The next generation of PMs needs to think and act more like intrapreneurs inside their companies. This is something I will write about more, especially now that I have crossed over to the founder side and have some lessons to share.