April 16 Arizona Product Managers Meetup Recap - how Product Management is changing as Ai tools become more capable
featuring guest speaker Anne Steiner, with organizers Frank Balogh and Larry Cummings
I’ve been enjoying being a cohost of the Arizona Product Managers meetup group (you should join!). We had our second session yesterday and I wanted to share it with you.
The topic for this session was how Product Management has adapted to improved technological capabilities, and how Product Management is changing as Ai tools become more capable.
Meetup Recap: Shifting Product Practice in the Age of AI
Event date: April 16, 2025
Format: Virtual panel-style conversation
Speakers: Anne Steiner (Strategic Advisor, Nerd/Noir), Frank Balogh, Larry Cummings
Here’s the Slide Deck I used to guide the conversation.
💡 Highlights & Key Themes
1. The Changing Role of Product
Anne described her 25+ year path from software developer to product executive to consultant, emphasizing burnout, resilience, and her desire to help others succeed in tough product environments.
Larry and Anne both underscored that product management is a strategic role, not just delivery support.
2. AI’s Impact on Product Work
Prototyping and feedback loops are now faster, thanks to AI tools and agentic workflows.
Customer collaboration is more immediate, allowing real-time co-design and faster validation of market needs and usability patterns.
Anne stressed: AI should help us be better, not just faster or cheaper. Speed alone can lead to building the wrong thing faster.
3. Strategic Feedback Over Feature Requests
Anne and Donna Reckitt both emphasized that clients often can’t articulate what they want—but they can describe pain.
The group agreed that problem discovery, not feature lists, is at the heart of effective product thinking.
4. Past Decades & Present Lessons
The 2010s were identified as a "golden age" for product, due to SaaS, mobile, and real-time feature delivery.
Business software UX caught up with consumer-grade expectations during this period, creating customer habits that persist today.
5. New Practices Emerging
“Pick-a-path” prototyping: Show customers multiple solutions and let AI generate variations.
Agent sandboxes: Let users explore with AI co-pilots to surface trust boundaries and edge case insights.
Prompt remixing: Treat AI prompt design as a skill akin to early search engine literacy.
6. Organizational Product Health
Anne’s diagnostic checklist for companies:
Does product management exist, or is it a passthrough?
Does it have influence?
Are business and product strategy aligned?
Is execution tied to strategy?
Are market outcomes reviewed and acted on?
Most orgs struggle in at least one of these areas.
🎤 Parting Thoughts
Anne: AI can help PMs spend more time doing true strategy work—market insights, outcome tracking, roadmap thinking—and less time on story grooming and meetings.
Larry: Product is about articulating value and testing assumptions. AI helps if we stay focused on learning, not just shipping.
Everyone: It’s okay (and necessary) to throw code away. Don’t be afraid to simplify. A smaller, more effective product is often a more valuable one.
📅 What’s Next?
Frank and Larry plan to host another event in May before the Phoenix heat ramps up.
Looking for suggestions on locations, topics, and speakers. Reach out if you want to get involved or suggest a session.