Fast and Curious product management with AI

Alice: Hey, quick question. What do you actually do on your team?

Bob: I ship code, set vision, and sell the product.

Alice: You ship code.

Bob: Yes.

Alice: You’re a PM.

Bob: Yes.

Alice: Okay. And the PRD?

Bob: We don’t really do those anymore.

Alice: So how do engineers know what to build?

Bob: There are two engineers. One of them is me.

Alice: (long pause) And stakeholder alignment?

Bob: We move too fast for stakeholders to have opinions.

Alice: That sounds illegal.

Bob: It’s actually going great.

Alice: Okay but walk me through the downsides. There have to be downsides.

Bob: Sure. We miss edge cases sometimes.

Alice: How often?

Bob: Often enough that “sometimes” felt optimistic when I said it.

Alice: And?

Bob: Occasionally two teams build the same thing without knowing. And sometimes we design around infrastructure that, it turns out, very much exists and very much matters.

Alice: So rework.

Bob: So rework.

Alice: And you still think this is better?

Bob: I shipped four features last month. How many did you ship?

Alice: (opens mouth)

Alice: (closes mouth)

Alice: We’re still aligning on the Q3 vision.

Bob: Mmm.

Alice: It’s a very complex vision.

Bob: I’m sure.

Alice: Fine. But doesn’t it bother you? The missed edge cases, the messy systems, no one really knowing what anyone else is doing?

Bob: Honestly? I have real users, real data, and my fingerprints on something that actually exists. So, no.

Alice: That’s either inspiring or terrifying.

Bob: In my experience, those are the same thing.

Alice: I’m going to go rewrite my PRD.

Bob: It won’t help.

Alice: I know.