Beyond the Roadmap - Follow Up Story

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for paid subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about getting cross-functional teams involved in your initiatives:

I ended a frustrating week in product management. It felt like each thing I did resulted in a huge debate.

• A partner changed the terms of service - two product managers claimed that I didn’t understand the change and they weren’t going to help resolve it

• A product manager assigned to help me - he questioned actions from a year ago and deep dived into old decisions

• Major feature releases not ready - product managers debating about support of OpenSource after shipping

These are familiar situations for product managers. But it felt like everything was stuck in debate.

I did some research. Did I just have a bad week, or did other product managers feel decisions were being made over and over again?

My research turned up:

• product managers stretched by AI-driven speed

• the product management playbook is changing

• AI isn’t simplifying work

• overcoming “AI brain fry”

Now I have signs that I’m not the only product manager doing AI speed without accomplishment.

After thinking about this problem, I decided the endless debates were caused by a lack of “gravity” to pull the initiative forward.

I realized that I need to build momentum by pulling people into the work.

I wasn’t sure if I could step out of the debates to take these steps…