Articles

AI makes it easy to do work you shouldn't. While you're doing someone else’s job, who is doing yours?

Somewhere along the way, our industry started treating the roadmap as if it were the product plan. It isn't.

Every few years our profession discovers a new tool that promises to change everything. Agile was going to fix “build the product right.” Then Design Thinking or Jobs to Be Done would ensure we “built the right product.” Then there was no-code. And now there’s AI.

By five o'clock, most product managers feel like they've put in a full day of real work. But… how much of that work actually taught you anything new about your customers? For most people, the honest answer is none of it.

What a data center tour taught me about talking to customers Most organizations respond to customer confusion the same way: they add documentation. Another page. Another diagram. Another tooltip. More words, on the theory that if customers are confused, they must not have enough information yet. That's rarely the problem. The problem is usually that the information exists in the wrong language. I learned this on, of all places, a data center tour. The problem is translation, not volume ...

While training creates knowledgeable people, standard operating models create consistency. Product leaders ask me a simple question all the time. “What’s the return on investment of product management training?” Or, for that matter, “What’s the return on investment of product management?” For years, my answer focused on skills. Trained product managers find better opportunities. They prioritize more effectively. They build stronger business cases. They communicate more clearly with...

Building an AI-assisted application revealed a timeless lesson. Even seasoned product managers find that the best way to uncover important requirements is through conversation. Context changes everything.

The real AI shortage isn't computing. It's the knowledge ecosystem that feeds the models — and nobody's getting paid for it.

Many organizations declare that AI must be part of the product strategy, without examining what that commitment actually entails.

Right now, budgets are tilting hard toward AI. Tools, pilots, integrations, “AI strategy” decks—everyone wants to show they’re in the game. And in the process, something quieter and far more important is getting squeezed out: the capability of the people making product decisions.

I’ve used many task managers and to-do reminders, but I think I may finally have found the one for me: Trello.

Well, golly, it’s that time of year: Daylight Savings Time. I’m with the many who have proposed getting rid of it.

Customer conversations are not a research technique. They are a leadership behavior. When product managers avoid direct conversations with customers, they are outsourcing judgment. They are outsourcing their jobs!

Product managers love their jargon; executives love results. When those two worlds collide, product management rarely wins—because leadership doesn’t fund vocabulary, they fund outcomes.

Whether you’re applying for a product leader role—or already carrying the title—there are questions worth asking that go far beyond interviews. These aren’t career-planning questions; they’re risk-assessment questions. The answers reveal whether you’re truly leading a product organization… or quietly contributing to the chaos. It is helpful to think of yourself as a free agent. You choose to play for this team. You can also choose to stop playing.

In my first product manager role, I started out entirely tactical. I became more strategic only after I stopped optimizing for sales requests and started truly understanding the market—its problems, friction, and outcomes, not just the sales team’s urgent needs.

Most product teams don’t set out to create a tangled process. It just happens over time — a new template for each initiative, a new checklist for each crisis, a new document “just to make sure.” Before long, product managers are juggling duplicative tools, outdated documents, and rituals that no one remembers why they exist. The Quartz Planning Canvas was designed to help teams take a deep breath, step back, and bring clarity to their product process — from DEFINE to DELIVER . Quartz...

Every product manager hears it: “You own the product.” It sounds empowering, right? Until you realize you don’t own the roadmap, the budget, the headcount, or even the decisions. You “own” the outcome—but not the levers that produce it.

If you’ve ever hosted a customer session at a user conference, you know the dreaded “let’s make a feature wish list” breakout. It starts as a brainstorming exercise but quickly devolves into a complaint session, everyone piling it on with “the airing of grievances.”

Your leadership team wants to know what’s next: how will you grow revenue and increase product adoption? You must balance business objectives, product strategy, and risk tolerance.