Complexity is the silent killer of productivity. The most valuable question a product leader can ask is why things are so difficult. This challenges ingrained assumptions and simplifies processes across engineering, product, and strategy, which unlocks speed and value.
While engineers manage technical debt, leaders often ignore its business equivalent: process debt. Bloated, outdated workflows can stall even the best products. Simplification and consolidation are often faster levers for growth than shipping new functionality.
AI is collapsing the software development lifecycle. With tools for PRD generation (SRD), design, and coding, the distinct functions of product manager, designer, and engineer are rapidly merging into a single, more efficient "product builder" profile.
The future of service management is not about resolving tickets faster. It's about creating a connected system where AI constantly learns, sees patterns humans miss, and anticipates glitches before they become incidents. The goal is shifting from reactive fixing to proactive prevention.
The CIO's mandate is shifting from maintaining systems to leading change. By using AI to automate discovery, map dependencies, and predict outages, CIOs evolve from managing infrastructure to governing and accelerating the company's most valuable asset: velocity.
AI governance shouldn't be viewed as a set of rules that slows down innovation. When done right, it acts as an accelerator by replacing ambiguous tribal knowledge with auditable, context-aware workflows. This eliminates hesitation and busy work, ultimately speeding up teams.
Product leaders should reframe roadmaps from a list of features to a series of barriers they are removing for customers. This shifts focus to high-leverage outcomes like reducing complexity, enabling zero-handholding onboarding, and accelerating time-to-value.