Webinars
The path forward
48 views
AI will make teams more productive, but it will not automatically make their products better
Why AI will increase productivity for all teams, but not necessarily create better products.
Three shifts organizations must make to succeed: Empower product teams, focus on outcomes, and question what to build.
How teams can start immediately by strengthening discovery work and using AI to challenge their assumptions.
View transcript
So I think that's a great question, right? And it's one that's difficult to understand. And it might depend on what type of product organization you're in, right? So you remember these two different groups, delivery-centric and product-centric? We believe that these groups will both see productivity gains due to new coding models. But that isn't the takeaway from this webinar. The main takeaway is the importance of doing something more and better, and that is discovery work. Building human judgment while leveraging AI. And the question is then, is it really that simple, though? And it never is, right? And as you remember from the survey, the delivery-centric teams spend too little time today exploring problems and testing solutions, because stakeholders feed them what to build. So, what we need is for managers, sales, and stakeholders to change this approach. Instead of bringing solutions to the team, they need to bring problems. And if you still hand over solutions, and expect the team to build them, then doing more discovery is just a theory. And it has no meaning for anyone, right? So many organizations, they need to rethink how they operate to leverage AI. A bold statement would be half. A good way to illustrate this change in framing problems can be instead of stakeholders asking for a dashboard, which is just the output, ask the team to solve why we're losing 10% at a certain step in the onboarding process. There you will have the outcome, right? And give the team the freedom to do the discovery work. Even if you think you know what to build. So, if you're sitting here identifying your organization as the delivery-centric one, here's three important shifts that we would advocate that you consider. First, move decisions to the product team. If stakeholders own the decision-making, then decisions will be slower and will not take the advantage of the speed of the new models or the shared context that is built up in the team. Secondly, focus even more on measuring outcomes. If we focus on output, the result will most definitely go up, but we risk cluttering the product and making it worse for users. Because we're just adding features and features and features and features without knowing whether they make any difference at all. Thirdly, spend more time contemplating the question that Oscar also mentioned. Should we build this? When building gets faster, the urge and the temptation is to skip that question and just ship it. works well for prototypes, works well for ideation, exploration. But as we've said, and we say it again, and as Oscar said, these are not new numbers. Most features don't move the needle. Not the needle desired by the organization. The teams that will win will be the ones that slow down at the decision point. And even as everything around them speeds up, they will still take the time and slow down. But we do not only have delivery-centric teams here in this webinar, and of course, all of you are product-centric teams. So what can any organizations do already starting tomorrow, or let's call it the weekend, and let's say Monday? You can start planning for your next discovery cycle before you commit to your next product bid. Even if you do still not own the product decisions, start working this muscle, gathering the arguments for why and why not you're building something. And then use AI to stress test your research plans. And to make sure that you are making the most out of your discovery work. And then let the team form their views first. And then challenge it. Use this massive wealth of knowledge and best practices and have that challenge it. But remember, the sequence matters, right? It really matters. Because in the end, it is human judgment that will make good products stand out and win. We can feel it. Humans can feel that thing. That indescribable thing. When building becomes easier, it is the humans, their understanding, their taste, that makes differentiating factors.