The provocative title "The Non-Technical PM Is Dead" from Adam Judelson and "The New Code" by Sean Grove, OpenAI are two of the most pragmatic and well-articulated wake-up calls for the evolution of the Product Management craft (including Product Managers, Product Designers, Product Content Specialists and ProductOps) in an AI-first world.
This isn't about ditching our core skills to become coders; it's about amplifying what we already do best: bridging customer needs with technical realities for smarter, faster outcomes.
This isn't disruption. It is enhancement:
- Deepened Discovery & Translation: We have always uncovered customer needs. Now, in an AI-First world, with heavily modernized AI agents and data models at play, it demands technical empathy in addition to emotional empathy to precisely translate those needs into specifications (or contexts) that engineers and AI systems can execute on without friction. Judelson highlights how this "context engineering" ensures we're remaining sharp on codifying value, not just describing it.
- Enriched Trade-off Discussions: Trade-offs with stakeholders will still remain a core element of our role. Given the increased complexity driven by a highly expanded AI and Intelligently Automated landscape, our architectural literacy will be critical to weigh in on decisions and implications on how solutions will scale, securely, and with data privacy at its core, leading to decisions that balance innovation with feasibility, and most importantly, evolving customer expectations in a by far more regulated global world.
- Precision in Value Communication: Communicating impact has always been our superpower. Today, it evolves into masterful "prompt engineering" or in its incoming forms "context engineering" for virtual agents, articulating what needs to be built or achieved for optimal business and customer wins.
We're not reinventing the wheel; we're upgrading it for AI terrain.
By sharpening these tools, we trigger actions that deliver real value, foster collaboration, and keep PMs indispensable to remain in touch with our customers, and enable businesses to successfully navigate modern challenges and opportunities.
Judelson's insights remind us: adapt or fade, appreciating that adaptation builds on our strengths, not erases them.
What PM skill are you evolving most right now to stay ahead?
#ProductManagement #ProductEvolution #AIFirst #TechnicalEmpathy #CustomerValue #Strategy #BusinessOutcomes #ContextEngineering
