LaunchDarkly(opens in a new window)’s platform enables engineering teams to ship software and AI applications with the highest levels of control and velocity. We spoke with Claire Vo, Chief Product and Technology Officer, about the changing role of product managers, her anti-to-do list, and building AI-native teams.
You’ve shared your perspective that “product management is dead.” Can you elaborate?
It’s funny, people often think I’m being incendiary, but I’m actually quite serious. I legitimately think that the traditional concept of product management is going to change dramatically. For a long time, product managers have been viewed as the “CEO of the product,” or as strategic coordinators responsible for bridging gaps between functions like engineering and design. But, under this role, what happens is that a lot of product managers don’t really own the business or the execution and sit in this nowhere land of influence without ownership.
With AI, many tasks traditionally handled by product managers—such as translating customer insights into buildable features—will be automated. And some of these traditional tasks will shrink, meaning PMs will have more time to add value in different ways.
In my view, there are now two potential paths for product managers:
- Becoming more commercially oriented. This could involve taking on a GM role, with compensation tied to the performance of the business line.
- Collapsing traditional boundaries. Roles like product management, design, and engineering converge, creating a new type of leader responsible for end-to-end product development.
Defaulting to the middle ground of coordination without ownership is unlikely to be a path for product managers in the long term.
Do you see the evolving role of the CPO changing in a similar way? Either being pushed to either take on a GM structure, or move into the technical side and be really involved in the details?
Absolutely. In my case, I get to do both.
While it’s not for every organization. I think this model is becoming more attractive. Joint responsibility across product and engineering allows me to think holistically about R&D investments and return on that investment. There’s also no real reason to decouple the concept of product with how you build the product, especially where technical infrastructure directly impacts user experience. Bringing these teams together as an overall technology organization creates a more collaborative team and helps us move faster.
“And so my opinion is then instead of saying product managers are totally going away, what I would say is I’m a PM in that kind of world, what do I do instead with my time?”
You have shared a concept called the anti-to-do list. Can you unpack what that is and why it’s important?
One of the personal benefits of embracing AI is that I’ve been able to automate a bunch of stuff that I used to do all the time.
Every time I do something I find annoying, I ask myself, how can I not have to do this again?
For example, as a product leader, you spend a lot of time with customers and end up with a list of customer anecdotes. You get asked all the time by the field, do we have customers doing anything interesting in banking?
So I decided we need a customer story GPT where we load every story we have. Now, people can go there for customer stories instead of coming to me. It took me seven minutes to set up, and I don’t get asked those questions anymore.
It’s just one example of how you can take routine tasks off your plate, still deliver high-value content or help to the organization, and free up time for the things only you can do.
“A personal benefit of embracing AI is I’ve got to knock a bunch of stuff that I used to do all the time… off my list.”
How can CPOs shift their thinking on AI?
One thing I find funny about this moment in AI is that executives are starting to understand how it’s going to change how their teams work and how they staff roles—but they rarely think it’ll change their own role. I always tell them to reflect on their workflow, experiment with how these tools can create value in their day-to-day experience.
For their teams, a few key principles that are important:
- Speed begets speed. The faster you can draft, execute, and get real customer input, the sooner you improve your product.
- CPOs are often bottlenecks for quality, expertise, and upskilling: AI can help break that by providing on-demand, asynchronous access to expertise, enabling teams to move faster without waiting for leadership.
- Having even 25% of your team operate across the product, engineering, and design triad can dramatically expand scope and impact.
How does this AI integration influence your product development process at LaunchDarkly?
LaunchDarkly’s core value proposition—decoupling configuration from code—aligns well with building AI-powered products. For example, we’ve been successful in enabling day-zero model upgrades for teams using machine learning models. This allows engineers to quickly test new versions in production.
Internally, we focus on reducing toil and friction. AI helps simplify multi-step processes, automates configuration, and integrates natural language interfaces into our products. These improvements not only save time but also enhance user satisfaction.
“The faster you can get to a draft of something and start to actually execute, the richer your customer input is going to be, the sooner you’re gonna get something to market.”
Source: https://openai.com/
