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4 minute read
Although AI is a newly emerging trend, its applications are already found to be beneficial in multiple industries. In product manufacturing, AI is particularly useful in improving product development processes, predicting customer preferences, and automating laborious tasks.
Product managers are increasingly looking to AI and machine learning to help them achieve the following:
- Develop a high-growth trajectory
- Increase efficiency in the production process
- Gain a competitive advantage over competitors
AI and machine learning (ML) technologies can also be used to automate time-consuming tasks, allowing the product manager to focus on the more important work of developing successful products with the right product market fit.
What Is the Role of an AI Product Manager?
While AI product managers share the same responsibilities and skills as traditional product managers, they also integrate AI initiatives into all aspects of the development process and work with data scientists to create machine learning algorithms to enhance these internal processes.
The Key Characteristics of an AI Product Manager
A product manager must have a working knowledge of AI and an understanding of the limitations and capabilities of machine learning technology.
Data Literacy Skills
A product manager must have the data literacy skills to work with data scientists and use artificial intelligence to answer important questions about the product that needs to be solved. The product manager must distill useful information from the data to help identify features that will add the most value to the user experience, increasing the possibility of product success.
Effective Problem Mapping
AI tools can be helpful to product managers when mapping out problems by offering various solutions to these problems. One thing an AI product manager must remember when relying on information generated by AI programs is that the issues they are trying to solve are for the consumer. They must maintain a customer-centric focus. This helps to ensure that they are meeting the customer's needs and not getting distracted by unnecessary noise in the process.
Good Communication Skills
A product manager must be an excellent communicator to be successful in the field. Skills such as empathy help to promote two-way communication between their development teams, improving the production process and increasing product quality.
To be effective in AI product management, they must also use their knowledge and skills to provide AI solutions to their product teams and communicate them in a way that is easy to understand and implement. The ability to gather acceptance and support from internal teams is essential to bringing new AI practices on board.
5 Ways to Use AI in Product Management
Artificial intelligence can perform various functions that can help product managers and their teams to do their job more effectively.
1. Use AI Tools for Data Analysis and Predictive Modelling
Sifting through internal company data and generating usable data can be a time-consuming process. Artificial intelligence programs are useful as they can quickly sift through a large volume of internal data and generate information that:
- Is relevant and accurate
- It is easy to understand
- Identifies patterns that may be useful to product design and engineering teams
- Helps to understand market trends and consumer behavior
This process allows a product manager to make data-driven decisions about their product line and the features they should focus on rather than relying on their beliefs and assumptions alone. This is useful when presenting a case to the company CEOs when trying to secure a budget and get a product approved.
Use Predictive Modelling To Plan for the Future
By analyzing past and present data and extrapolating the results, predictive modeling algorithms can also predict future demands and customer behavior. This allows a product manager to plan more accurately for the future and to design the optimal product to fit the market based on the customer's future needs. This type of predicting modeling can help to fuel innovation, helping the company to stay ahead and remain relevant in the market.
2. Write User Stories for Product Features
Understanding customer needs is crucial in product development. User personas help to identify the target audience and understand the reasons behind their decision to purchase a product. By prioritizing the features that solve the user problem, a product manager can create a better product to ensure the right product-market fit.
User stories can be challenging and time-consuming to create, so artificial intelligence tools are useful to help speed up the creative process. Another benefit of these AI-powered tools over human-generated stories is that they provide an objective assessment of your ideal customer so you can align more effectively with your customer's needs.
3. Enhance Productivity and Creativity
AI tools can be used by product development teams to boost productivity by assisting with several tasks:
- Brainstorm new ideas to share cross-collaboratively with other product teams
- Save time by drafting documents quickly
- Summarize documents to focus on the key points for internal teams
- Plan and upcoming projects
4. Outline Features and Benefits for Customers
Designers and engineers can take advantage of the generative design of AI to create information to help promote particular features of their products. This saves time for engineers who can spend more time optimizing the product than creating multiple documents from scratch.
This AI-generated text can be passed on to the marketing department to get a better understanding of the product they need to market and help them identify the best methods to do so.
5. Get Answers to Critical Questions Faster
Even though visualization and roadmaps are essential to see the big picture, at times, you need to refer to roadmaps for answers on specific questions. AI can help reduce the time for those questions by simply providing you answers. For example instead of going up and down a roadmap looking for issues on dependencies, with AI, a product manager can simply ask to high-light any dependency violations and see that reflected on the roadmap immediately.
Use AI tools for Product Management to Improve Decision Making
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how product managers approach the product development process, and many companies are now exploring and embracing this technology to gain a competitive edge.
Gocious is a Product Roadmap Management software that increases transparency and alignment in your product development organization. If you would like to see how Gocious can help you to step up your game, book your free demo with us today.