Article
Automation Changed What Product Management Actually Is
Dec 8, 2024 · 4 min read
When I first began working in product, most of the job was overhead
When I first began working in product, most of the job was overhead. Meetings. Alignment. Specifications. Tickets. Grooming. Manual coordination. Documentation that nobody read. A large part of the work existed not to create value, but to manage the complexity of how teams operated.
Then I went deeper into automation.
And ironically, that’s what product management has now become.
Automation didn’t just remove admin.
It changed the shape of the job itself.
It forced a new definition of what great product work looks like.
The truth is simple.
Most companies have been getting product wrong for a long time.
They focused on frameworks, ceremonies, and process instead of value.
They mistook coordination for execution.
They believed slowness was a sign of thoroughness.
They measured output instead of outcomes.
AI and automation flipped the table.
The teams that understand this shift are moving ten times faster than everyone else. They solve problems quicker. They scale quicker. They learn quicker. And they build products that feel alive instead of sluggish.
This article breaks down why automation changed product, what most companies still get wrong, and how the role has shifted toward discovery and value.
Product used to be defined by overhead
The traditional PM had an invisible workload:
- writing specs
- creating tickets
- managing handoffs
- coordinating between teams
- maintaining backlogs
- running meetings
- chasing updates
- reviewing work manually
- aligning stakeholders
These tasks weren’t pointless. They were necessary because execution was slow and expensive.
The PM job became the glue that held everything together.
But that glue also became a cage.
When most of your energy goes to managing process, there is very little left for actual product thinking. You don’t explore. You maintain. You don’t shape. You preserve. You don’t innovate. You facilitate.
The job became admin wrapped in strategy language.
Automation and AI removed the admin layer
The first revelation is this:
AI didn’t just speed things up. It removed entire categories of work.
Agents now handle:
- ticket generation
- documentation
- sprint planning
- regression testing
- design-to-code comparison
- DOM inspections
- analytics summaries
- behaviour clustering
- spec validation
- QA checks
- content migration
- cleanup and refactoring
- meetings that didn’t need to exist
The PM no longer needs to manually coordinate everything.
The execution system takes care of itself.
This frees a massive amount of mental bandwidth, which product teams desperately needed but rarely had.
Suddenly the real job of product becomes visible
Once admin disappears, the core responsibilities remain.
They are not mechanical.
They are not process driven.
They are not an endless list of stakeholder tasks.
The real job becomes:
- understanding customers deeply
- spotting valuable problems
- testing assumptions quickly
- designing systems that accelerate learning
- using agents to collapse the cost of iteration
- making decisions early with clarity
- shaping strategy through behaviour
- identifying what matters and ignoring the rest
Automation didn’t make PMs irrelevant.
It removed everything that distracted them from the actual craft.
Most companies still focus on the wrong things
The irony is that automation revealed how misguided many teams were.
Companies over-invested in:
- massive backlogs
- heavy documentation
- rigid roadmaps
- ceremony
- meetings
- alignment cycles
- committee based decision making
These structures made sense when every step required human hands.
But now they slow teams down more than they help.
AI has exposed a painful truth.
Most product processes existed to compensate for slow execution.
Once execution accelerates, the process becomes the bottleneck.
The companies stuck in old habits will fall behind.
The companies that embrace the new model will break away.
Automation lets teams focus on value instead of maintenance
When the boring work disappears, teams can finally spend their energy on the things that matter.
Exploring user behaviour.
Understanding motivations.
Looking for unmet needs.
Reworking broken flows.
Refining interaction design.
Creating systems that evolve quickly.
Testing ideas in hours, not months.
Learning constantly.
Making decisions without fear.
Automation creates bandwidth.
Bandwidth creates clarity.
Clarity creates better products.
This is what product work should have been all along.
Product moves faster but also becomes more thoughtful
The misconception is that automation turns product into a chaotic speed race.
It doesn’t.
It turns product into a discipline shaped by:
- tight feedback loops
- deep customer understanding
- small bets
- fast validation
- continuous discovery
- intent driven execution
- high accountability
- clean system design
Speed is not the opposite of quality.
Speed is how you discover quality.
Discovery becomes the centre of the job
This is the biggest shift.
When admin disappears and execution becomes cheap, the only thing that matters is knowing what to build and why. Discovery becomes the engine of product teams because discovery ensures the team is not moving quickly in the wrong direction.
A modern PM can:
- observe user behaviour daily
- gather insights automatically
- run experiments constantly
- test ideas instantly
- refine assumptions weekly
- update priorities based on real signals
AI does the heavy lifting.
The PM interprets the signal.
Discovery becomes continuous instead of episodic.
This produces better thinking.
Better thinking produces better products.
Automation makes product more human, not less
Here’s the irony.
Automation removes repetitive, mechanical tasks.
Which means the job becomes more creative, more strategic, and more about judgment.
Taste matters.
Instinct matters.
Understanding people matters.
Knowing what “good” feels like matters.
Being able to articulate intent matters.
AI handles the manual labour.
Humans handle the meaning.
Product becomes what it always should have been:
the craft of understanding people and shaping systems that serve them.
The PM who embraces automation becomes unstoppable
The PM who rejects AI will drown in process.
The PM who relies entirely on AI will drown in noise.
The PM who uses AI to remove admin and amplify judgment will win.
Automation didn’t simplify product.
It revealed the parts that matter.
The future belongs to teams who stop worshipping process and start building value.
The future belongs to PMs who understand that automation is not a shortcut. It is clarity.