AI: The essential ingredient empowering future products

Hi readers, ever pondered the prospect of starting your day with a tasteless breakfast? Just as a bland morning meal leaves you longing for flavour, envision a world of product management devoid of the exciting spice that is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Buckle up for a journey where AI isn't just a spice; it's the essential ingredient infusing zest into the future of our products and product management!

This article summarises my initial research in past few weeks on how AI is transforming the product management space. Let's explore two pivotal ways product managers can leverage AI to shape the products of tomorrow -

To Build the Product:

Product Managers can utilise AI capabilities right from building the product! There are 3 broad areas where AI can significantly reduce their and the development team's overhead -

Data Analysis (quantitative and qualitative) :

• Product Usage: AI excels at analysing vast amounts of user data, uncovering patterns and behaviours that shape a more intuitive user experience.
• Customer Feedback Analysis: By leveraging sentiment analysis and natural language processing, AI can distill valuable insights from customer feedback, guiding product enhancements.
• Data Set Analysis: AI's capability in processing extensive datasets enables product managers to make informed decisions based on comprehensive information.

The above three areas in data analysis eventually help Product managers in creating future roadmaps, product-led growth strategies and product discovery. It also helps them personalise the product based on user feedbacks.

??Experimentation:

• Suggest feature backlog : AI can suggest the set of experimental features that can be performed based on the data analysis
• AI can optimize A/B testing processes for product features.
• Running Test Automation: AI-driven automation not only accelerates testing processes but also ensures robust, error-free product releases. Product managers can focus on refining strategies while AI handles the testing groundwork.

Communication:

• Documentation: AI can help PMs/teams to create product documentations, user stories, release notes, personas and roadmaps to communicate to other stakeholders. Look at https://storiesonboard.com/blog/generate-user-stories as an example

Even though AI handles the automation of communication tasks, the duty of ensuring effective communication still lies squarely on the shoulders of product managers.

As a Product Capability:

AI is not just a tool; it's a transformative capability that enhances the core functions of products, making them more adaptive and intelligent. There are numerous areas where AI can be integrated to enhance the product capabilities, to name a few (or what I could gather) -

1. User Personalisation: AI can analyse user behaviour and preferences to deliver personalised experiences. Personalized recommendations for content, products, or features based on individual user data.
2. Predictive Analytics: Utilising AI for predictive analysis helps in forecasting user trends and anticipating future needs. Predictive modeling for demand forecasting, user engagement, and other relevant metrics.
3. Customer Support and Chatbots: Implementing AI-powered chatbots for instant customer support. Automating responses to common queries and providing 24/7 assistance.
4. Image and Speech Recognition: Integrating AI for image and speech recognition enhances user interactions.Enabling features like voice commands, image search, and augmented reality.
5. Security and Fraud Detection: AI algorithms can identify and prevent potential security threats. Implementing fraud detection mechanisms for secure transactions.
6. Recommendation Engines: AI-driven recommendation engines enhance user engagement. Suggesting relevant products, content, or actions based on user history and preferences.
7. Dynamic Content Generation: AI can dynamically generate and adapt content based on user interactions. Creating personalized and contextually relevant content.

By integrating AI in these diverse areas, digital products can not only become more intelligent and efficient but also offer a more tailored and engaging experience for users. Have a look at Miro's impressive AI features -

That said, it's safe to say -

"Every Product Manager is inherently an AI Product Manager Now!"

Now that we've explored the numerous ways AI contributes to digital product enhancement, it's essential to acknowledge its limitations. Let's dive into a list of aspects where AI falls short and understand its boundaries.

Here are the things AI cant do (until this article is published :P)

• Be emotionally intelligent
• Have an empathy
• Understand human emotions
• Have complete contextual understanding
• "feel" or be in the moment
• Get the market "pulse"

This means, set aside all the data analysis, pattern recognition, and automation etc, product managers have a specialised job to give their products a "human touch" and understand how their target users actually "feel"!

To conclude, I would like to summarise that embracing AI is not just about adopting a set of tools; it's about cultivating a mindset that sees AI as a collaborative partner in shaping the future of products. The symbiotic relationship between human expertise and AI capabilities propels us towards unparalleled product innovation and customer satisfaction.

Here are few useful resources -

• Top 15 AI tools listed for Product managers by Product School

On a separate note, for my readers in project management space -

• PMI has launched its AI powered assistant for project managers, access it here
• Use AI-driven code analysis tools such as Microsoft Copilot,Amazon CodeWhisperer , OpenAI Codex to identify code quality issues earlier.
• Leverage some note-taking tools such as Otter.ai and Rev Online Voice Recorder if your organisation allows
• For sentiment analysis use MonkeyLearn

Thanks for being with me till here and do comment your views on the way you plan to ride the AI wave!