Addressing a gathering of product leaders, the speaker discussed the evolving role of Product Managers (PMs) in the age of AI. Initially, there was widespread nervousness about jobs disappearing, with various roles (including PMs) fearing obsolescence. However, this fear has subsided, replaced by the reality of roles overlapping and expanding, ushering in a new era of the "AI builder."
The concept of the "AI builder" is gaining traction, especially in startups, where individuals embody this role by wearing multiple hats, akin to how founders operate. While this is straightforward in small companies, the speaker explored how this translates to organizations with over 10,000 people, specifically drawing examples from Atlassian.
The fundamental job of a PM—finding product-market fit, building loved products, and ensuring business viability—remains unchanged. What has transformed is *how* PMs achieve these goals, primarily due to rapidly advancing AI tools and enhanced organizational context. Atlassian, for instance, has developed a "teamwork graph" to provide a comprehensive "enterprise brain," allowing PMs to offload traditional administrative tasks like note-taking or follow-ups. This frees them to focus on "acceleration," leveraging intelligence and context to expedite project delivery.
A central metaphor introduced was whether a PM is "rowing" (hands-on contribution) or "steering" (setting direction, unblocking). The speaker noted that the optimal approach "depends" on the product type and its current phase.
Three concrete Atlassian examples illustrated this dynamic:
1. **Confluence (New Feature in Existing Codebase):** For features like "Remix with Rovo" and "Confluence Slides," the PM, Aya, took a radical approach. Having never coded before, she checked in 26 PRs in a month, with engineering support providing a special "harness." Her motivation was to accelerate UX fixes and allow engineers to focus on higher-level tasks. PMs also took ownership of evaluations for Confluence Slides, doubling throughput, and used Atlassian's LLM platform, Arise, for prompt debugging. Design bug fixing was automated using Figma MCP and coding agents, addressing 14 bugs an hour. Test creation time for engineers was reduced from half a day to 10 minutes. This approach, where the PM was "rowing" and roles were intentionally blurred, enabled Remix to launch in six weeks and Confluence Slides in eight weeks, a significant acceleration from the previous six-month timeline.
2. **RovoClaw (Zero to One Product):** This ground-up project began with a PM, Josh, and a designer, Kevin, "vibe coding" a working alpha. Initially, Josh was deeply involved in coding. However, as engineers joined, he realized his highest leverage activity shifted. He stepped back from coding to focus on "steering"—setting direction, prioritizing, and unblocking the team. His initial coding experience proved invaluable in understanding challenges and effectively steering the project. He also leveraged AI, using RovoClaw itself, to automate weekly updates, eliminating manual reporting. Here, the PM started "rowing" but transitioned to "steering" as the project phase demanded.
3. **JIRA (Enhancements in Large Existing Codebase):** JIRA, a 20-year-old product with a complex codebase, required a different approach. Direct PM coding was deemed too risky. The goal was to make JIRA "AI-first," building AI features within JIRA to assist customers with software development. Throughput for 22 user-facing features in 10 weeks was three times the norm. This was achieved through:
* **Streamlined Prototyping:** Using Loom to create work items, which then kicked off coding agents to write code in a managed cloud environment, ensuring compliance and adherence to Atlassian's design language.
* **Automated Feedback Triage:** JIRA agents in Slack triaged feedback and bugs, sending them to coding agents for fixes.
* **Customer Insights:** A "robo-agent" reviewed over 900 pieces of feedback from user studies via JIRA Service Management, providing high-quality triage for engineering. In this example, the PM was clearly "steering," focusing on unblocking engineers and enhancing efficiency through AI tools and processes.
In summary, PMs are now prototyping, testing, writing evaluations, delving deeper into customer feedback, and consuming information at a higher rate, all facilitated by AI tools that understand organizational context. Conversely, they are no longer performing manual updates, compiling research by hand, or creating slides from scratch, and synchronous meetings have potentially reduced.
Atlassian's playbook for fostering AI fluency includes the "AI Fluency Index," a development tool with six capabilities (e.g., tool use, evals, technical literacy) rated 1-5, guiding PMs towards skill development. They also run successful "AI Builders Weeks" quarterly, intensive training sessions focusing on practical skills like prototyping or building agents, which have engaged over a thousand people and led to 120+ new workflows. While measuring the outcomes of these changes remains a challenge, Atlassian tracks metrics like PRs deployed and features delivered.
The speaker concluded that PM roles are expanding, enabling them to work more effectively and deliver more to customers, making it an incredibly exciting time to be a PM.