What does 2024 hold for product managers?

We’ve gathered the views of some of our conference speakers and other friends of Mind the Product, and as you might expect they predict the focus on AI will continue and refine in a number of ways, but think that other aspects of a product manager’s role will also rise in importance.

Here goes:

More artificial intelligence

Everyone will be data driven

It’s been just over a year since ChatGPT exploded into the mainstream, and it should enable product managers to become much more data-driven, as Val Balace, Product Lead & Venture Builder at Founders Factory, observes. She says: “This is the end of doing things yourself’. Processes that might have taken you weeks—from extracting insights from user insights, to creating product roadmaps, to analysing vast swathes of data—you can now do in minutes.”

Product thinking skills

Mind the Product Managing Director Emily Tate adds that every company that builds or uses technology is considering what AI means for them. “The AI discussion is not going away in 2024. We’ll continue to see leadership teams asking what a product’s AI strategy is, new AI tools come on the market, and more and more “AI Product Manager” job titles emerge. The people who will come out on top will be the ones who don’t just use AI as a buzzword, but who use their product thinking skills to thoughtfully apply AI to problems where it makes sense,” she says.

Less duplication of effort

AI and Health Tech Product Leader Randeep Sidhu thinks that – thankfully – the focus on AI Prompt engineering [the process where you guide generative AI solutions to generate desired outputs] will decline as the tools become more mature. He says: “There will be less duplication of effort, and less random small niche fixes for generative AI issues. The ability to use looser text, and other stimuli like images or videos to explain what you want will move teams to start focusing on the real value THEIR products can add.” He says that product teams are best when trying to solve their unique problems instead of multiple different companies trying to essentially solve the same admin problem. This will hopefully get product teams thinking about daisy chaining different AI components/tools together to create real innovation for their users.

Adopt a more thoughtful approach

Adam Warburton, Chief Product Officer at Vypr, comments that product management will continue to evolve as the use of AI progresses. He says that currently there’s a temptation to apply AI indiscriminately due to its novelty, and this risks overshadowing its true potential. He says: “To combat this, a thoughtful approach, akin to the principles of the Kano model, will be essential. We’ll need to learn to differentiate between ‘vanity AI’, which merely adds a superficial layer of innovation, and ‘value-adding AI’, which genuinely enhances the user experience and contributes to the product’s success. This will involve understanding and categorising AI applications as basic expectations (‘hygiene factors’), performance enhancers, or delighters (‘satisfiers’). In doing so, we can ensure that AI integration is strategic, meaningful, and aligned with the core objectives of the product.”

It’s an observation echoed by James Gadsby Peet, Director of Digital at William Joseph, who agrees the fundamentals will become more important than ever. He says: “Whether looking at content strategy, product management or product design, the teams that can use these new tools to supercharge their workflow and enable more collaboration will pull ahead. The better you know product management the better you can get ChatGPT to help you – whilst focusing on the value you add that others don’t. Much of that will be about bringing different people together to collaborate on the wide range of disciplines we get to work with. It’ll be exciting to see what methods start to rise to the surface.”

Profitability and other areas of focus

More profitability, less development waste

Leadership coach and author Dave Martin says he’s seen greater focus on profitability across growing tech companies this year. He says this has contributed to increased commercial consideration in product management throughout the year, which he hopes will continue into 2024. He says: “Strengthening the relationship of building products with business strategy while sustaining attention to satisfying the user is a trend we should embrace. This should help avoid the enormous product development waste prevalent today, where we see many product features that are rarely or never used.”

A shift to impact

Consultant and author Matt LeMay believes that 2024 will be the year that product management shifts from output to outcomes to IMPACT. He says: “Product management is now expected to deliver real results for the business, which means product managers are going to have to do the – at times – infuriating work of understanding, clarifying, and articulating what results the business actually needs to survive and succeed. The first step for many product managers and teams is to understand what ‘impact’ looks like in the first place.”  This is an exercise Matt has been running with product teams at larger organisations and leadership teams at startups to do just that which you may find helpful: https://medium.com/p/ec610fea1ecf

Continuing existential debate and evolution

Justify your existence

Emily Tate isn’t alone in thinking that 2024 will bring more debates over whether the role of a product manager should exist at all. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky started the debate in 2023 in an interview where he claimed that Airbnb had got rid of its product managers, and it’s brought out many gleeful hot takes claiming the death of product management ever since. Says Emily: “Product people will be asked to justify their craft more and more, and we’ll see some movements to distribute the tasks of product into other roles. As product people, we need to be able to articulate how we deliver value to teams and organisations rather than falling into simply managing the backlog.”

The CPTO is here to stay

Jacob George, Head of Product at Founders’ Factory, says that the CPTO – Chief Product & Technology Officer – role is here to stay. Why? Because, “as technology and innovation leaps forward at a pace we’ve never seen before, the need to minimise the feedback loop delays between product and technology will be ever more critical to success and the CPTO merges these two together”. He continues: “How does this impact each of these functions? Product leaders will need to be more skilled in prototyping and low-code/no-code validation while the tech side will be asked to draw on the fundamentals of product thinking.”

Blending product management and design

Adam Warburton thinks that the traditional roles within product teams will be expected to blend more seamlessly, particularly product management and design. He says: “This convergence stems from a shared objective ‘to identify and address customer needs effectively’. For example, when developing a bespoke AI model (like a custom GPT via OpenAI), what roles become indispensable? Do we need a Product Manager with a strategic vision, a Product Owner focused on execution, an Analyst with a knack for data, or a Content Designer with a flair for communication? I think most likely we’ll need multifaceted individuals capable of juggling all these responsibilities, which will drive versatility and adaptability in product management, which I think is already underway.”

Finally, it’s a fully-formed career

Serena Rizzo, Product Coach at Founders Factory, comments that it finally looks like Product is becoming more fully formed and the career path more established. She predicts we will start to see a boom in free product resources online, lowering the barrier to entry for people to embark on a product career. She says: “This can only be good news, as more product managers from diverse backgrounds means more accessible products and ultimately better, more universal technology.”

Take care of yourself, no matter what

Becky Yelland, Product Director, Arenko Group, comments that there has been a lot of debate about the longevity of the Product role, the effectiveness and value of what we do and how we do it has been discussed and analysed from every angle. She says: “Let’s lift our heads above the parapet for a moment and reflect on some of the roles around us, those that still exist, those under threat and those perhaps long forgotten.”

Becky highlights how many roles have changed or disappeared:

• QA / Tester – this role has shifted left in recent years to favour full stack devs doing their own testing
• Information architects – this role no longer exists – though some could argue after a brief hiatus it reemerged as UX
• MI (Management Information) or BI (Business Information) specialists became Product Analytics as finance and tech merged
• Data Science has become more and more commoditised as the role has been watered down
• Sys Admins became Engineering and Dev Ops
• Agile (Scrum mastery) was good, then bad and then it’s kind of good again
• We used to have common sense and basic prioritisation. Now we have OKRs and people whose entire role is to organise them.

She says: “In the midst of all of this, Product has focused on a core set of things; caring about the customer, being good at communicating to people, having a deep understanding of their product and an innate passion for making it better. We’ve been surrounded by significant noise, shifts in the dynamics of the industry and yet we have survived. Some would say we are thriving.

“So in 2024 – NO MATTER WHAT – don’t get distracted by this noise. DO NOT let it impact your health and wellbeing. Focus on what matters in your role, build out your cross-functional teams, and get great people from whichever discipline survives in your organisation together to solve the specific problem you are tasked with solving. From that, with a sprinkle of autonomy and product savvy, great things will undoubtedly happen.”