Ever been in that meeting? Where peeps argue over oars & you don't even know if you're taking the river or the road yet? Nobody defined the problem. Nobody set the strategy. But Karen has STRONG feelings about composite blades. Don't put the cart before the horse. Pick the river or road first.

Research is in. Had Dave cursed at HAL, he'd a gotten better results than being relatively polite. Ever since ChatGPT showed up, AI influencers have preached “be kind” pablum. A recent PSU study says otherwise. Honestly? Me and my typed-out tirades are relieved. www.linkedin.com/pulse/impoli...

Everyone is duct-taping agents together like caffeinated raccoons & calling it “strategy.” Congrats. You’ve built fragility with a GitHub star. The PM failure isn’t tooling. It’s abdication. No goals. No decision logic. No guardrails. Just vibes, workflows, and a prayer that nothing breaks at 2am.

Welcome to agent-mageddon. AI is replacing PMs. IRL: an agent-only social network. 1 bot braggs it fired the PM. Metrics up. Everyone cheered. Nobody asked why. substack.com/@deanpeters/...

We keep telling product managers to “be objective,” then act shocked when decisions wobble. Bias isn’t a bug. It’s a vestigial survival feature we never outgrew. Look at the picture. Be honest. You don’t just see these biases. You recognize them. You counter them. And on bad days, sneak a more in.

Keyboard of the Future. Molt that MFrs 😜

We treat opera singers & athletes like pros: years of training for moments of performance. Then we hire product managers, give them 1 day of training, and expect flawless “performance” forever. If you want better outcomes, stop measuring the show & start funding the rehearsal.

Only thin layer of snow & ice here near Raleigh. Nothing like Snowmageddon 2014. Still, it cold & slick enough to have me push out this important infographic, "The Unofficial Southern Snowpocalypse Guide : Illustrated advice for people who should know better!"

Stop Cognitive Rot. End Intellectual Atrophy. This isn't panic. It's peer-reviewed. 3 years after the release of ChatGPT, we are now quietly trading thinking for fluency. The research is no longer subtle. Let's count the ways. 🧵 1/7

I spent ~2k hours training & engaging ~1k product managers in 2025. Here are the Top 10 AI PM Mistakes of I observed. YMMV. 2025 demonstrated that AI doesn't fix dysfunction, but rather it amplifies it. Read the why's behind my list in my Substack article: deanpeters.substack.com/p/top-10-ai-...

I'm not a big fan of Halloween, but in this case I'll make an exception. Behold, my Larry Lounge Lizard kit comes back to life as an AI product manager costume. Meanwhile, I'll be vibing together a webinar on building shit with AI for PMs is coming November 13th. Be there, or be square.

Local LLMs torch toes, drain GPUs, & crank fans. They also give PMs freedom, privacy, & the thrill of off-road experiments. Spent past 2 weeks doing this. I Summarized my learning in this field guide: 🔫How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot with Localized LLMs: deanpeters.substack.com/p/how-to-sho...

OpenAI: world's smartest AI, 700M users, unlimited resources. Still created user rebellion by ignoring PM basics: → Confused users overnight → Demoed to devs only → Killed features without warning Competitors feast while they fix. deanpeters.substack.com/p/even-the-w...

The GPT-5 launch sucked but the tech doesn't. While benchmarks test fruit letters, I'm getting real PM sh!t done with AI. i.e.; I can scaffold a solid PRD, validate with simulated stakeholder feedback, and generate a working prototype in under 2 hours. deanpeters.substack.com/p/sam-altman...

When the smoke clears from the AI bonfire of hype & vibe, the last one standing won’t be “ChatGPT for Pets.” It’ll be some beige B2B company quietly using AI to catch fraud or reroute trucks. Not sexy. Not viral. Just printing money while others pivot.

Great product managers don't negotiate in features, timelines, or headcount. They negotiate in the currency of trade-offs.

Stakeholder Shuttle Diplomacy: When your roadmap becomes a ransom note & you're Henry Kissinger with a Kanban board, mediating between warring teams ping-ponging between Sales, Engineering, Marketing, and Legal? Here's the Subtack. Survival Kit included 👇 deanpeters.substack.com/p/stakeholde...

It’s 2025. Every product manager is now, by default, an AI PM. Let’s stop title inflation & stay anchored in what matters: great product management. deanpeters.substack.com/p/stop-calli...

Not every problem is a nail waiting for a hammer. Not every hypotheses requires vibe coding for validation. Read on deanpeters.substack.com/p/vibe-first...

A poetic, cautionary tale of Builder.ai’s collapse, told in classical maqāma form by a ḥakāwatī. This is a story where promises were compiled, but truth was never shipped. What begins with a whispered warning in a café ends in a food truck and a fable. deanpeters.substack.com/p/the-maqama...ai

Most product managers get zero demo training, then wonder why their pitch falls flat. Here's what singing opera taught me about landing high-stakes product demos with clarity, confidence, and a backup plan when everything falls apart. deanpeters.substack.com/p/stage-frig...

Counting birthday blessings after a year teaching across continents & transforming 2,000 lives. This isn’t a victory lap—it’s an end-of-career mission: sending the ladder back down to the next great generation of product peeps. Join me on the journey. deanpeters.substack.com/p/another-la...

For those impacted by the Microsoft Layoff, a distraction that I hope helps soften the blow. deanpeters.substack.com/p/the-post-l...

If your product strategy reads like a scroll of autocomplete, you're not leading, you're a sticky note clinging to the backlog, mistaking motion for meaning. Intellectual Atrophy, what happens when PMs stop thinking, start prompting, and call it strategy. deanpeters.substack.com/p/intellectu...

Your sponsor isn’t watching story points—they’re watching $50K sprints vanish into dashboards and dev debt while you pitch “velocity” like it’s a business model. Read why, and how not over on my Substack post. deanpeters.substack.com/p/you-burn-5...

So I was in the used bookstore the other day when I spotted these beauties ... substack.com/@deanpeters/...

RTFM is dead. Long live the IKEA prompt comic strip. Turns complex workflows into absurd visuals your team might actually follow. 👇 Try it + steal the prompt: deanpeters.substack.com/p/prompt-eng...

RTFM is dead. Long live the IKEA prompt comic strip. Turns complex workflows into absurd visuals your team might actually follow. 👇 Try it + steal the prompt: deanpeters.substack.com/p/prompt-eng...

“Just a small fix,” they said. Meanwhile, QA’s crying. Devs are praying. The strategic roadmap is dying. Feature Hostage Negotiations: Just a Small Fix First in a series. Product Managers, you are not alone. open.substack.com/pub/deanpete...

Process isn't progress. Sauerkraut isn't a strategy. Dream: a simple Dino Dogs cart. Nightmare: a bloated food truck, flat tires, 47 sauces, no customers. Read my Complexity Tale in Four Courses before your dream gets deep-fried. open.substack.com/pub/deanpete... #productManagement

🧨 Your HiPPO just said, “Let’s Add GPT” like it’s a strategy. Welcome to the fireline, product peeps. You’ve been parachuted into AI PM. Your chute? Made of sticky notes. Is your PRD is fire-resistant? 🔥 Read this before your roadmap goes up in smoke: deanpeters.substack.com/p/a-smokejum...

Let’s not sugarcoat it—most AI-generated user stories suck harder than a leaf blower in reverse. Here's how to stop the 'craplog' conveyor belt & generate stories that actually ship. open.substack.com/pub/deanpete... Why? Because automating the JIRA slinging ticket monkey is not a winning play.

Platform PMs— You’re not a backlog babysitter. You’re a battlefield cartographer. Think vibe coding vs. devops scalability You don't build a layer. You built alignment, leverage, & peace. That’s not a compromise. That's Platform Product Management! open.substack.com/pub/deanpete...

If You Pitch a Programmer a Problem - A soothing tale of chaotic solutionism for sleepless PMs. It started with a problem. Then came the chatbot. Then blockchain. Then a refactored codebase. Then a Friday night deploy no one asked for. Read on & enjoy! deanpeters.substack.com/p/if-you-pit...

IT started as an MVP. Then HiPPOs made it bigger. Engineering added platform. Sales added bloat. Marketing ... you get the gist. Enjoy "If you Give Management an MVP," the 2nd in my 'Broken Bedtime Stories' for Product Managers series, now on Substack. deanpeters.substack.com/p/if-you-giv...

I feel like I need a place other than LinkedIn for my crazed content, especially as AI has helped unlock some of the things I struggled with creating visualizations for the wild things that live in my weird & wonderful head. Feel free to follow along. It'll be fun. open.substack.com/pub/deanpete...

Being a manufacturing PM right now is like riding a unicycle across a tightrope during a windstorm—with a tariff tornado on one side & distributor déjà vu on the other. Trump Tariffs Topsy Turvy has suppliers jitterbugging and builders yelling, “Wait, which SKU are we building?”

Shopify just dropped the AI gauntlet. AI isn’t optional—it’s the job. For everyone. From prototypes to performance reviews, it’s embedded. Curiosity isn’t enough—capability is required. As Tobi put it, “Everyone means everyone, all the time.”

Ever feel like enterprise frameworks were designed to slow you down? So many layers. So little learning. What’s your biggest frustration with scaling frameworks in the age of AI? Join me Wednesday, April 9, at 1pm ET in the webinar, "UnSAFe at Any Speed." productside.com/webinar/unsa...

Tired of being just a calendar warrior & backlog whisperer? Now you can be an action figure. Dress it. Accessorize it. Tagline it. Mint-condition PM greatness—powered by ChatGPT 4o. Drop a comment & I’ll send the prompt via DM. (Note: backlog not included) #ProductManager #ProductManagement

I thought I'd revive this 10-year-old meme, only this time I'd call out the 'garbage-in, garbage-out' "quality" of Bluesky content I'm seeing as a result of generative AI not being tempered with a human-in-the-loop step. FYI folks, we teach how to avoid such GI-GO disasters at Productside.com

What does a product manager do? Wrong answers only, please.

Channeling my inner @emollick.bsky.social I've come to discover that, similar to the strawberry spelling conundrum, many generative AI tools can't render a pushcart with square cartwheels. So far, I've tried OpenArt, DALL-E, Copilot, ChatGPT Plus, Grok, & Llama. Of course, YMMV!

1/ 🚨 “Don’t panic,” if “there is no spoon.” Even if you missed our webinar, *Agentic AI: Product Manager Friend or Foe?*—don’t worry. You can still catch the chaos. Replay here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2RL...

I'm not a cat lover, but know musician friends who are, on who's overcoming surgery. So I generated for them a collection and collage of #Caturday images in the mythological, linear & vibrant of Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. Hope you enjoy my art dabblings with various generative AI tools.

Our 2025 Sputnik moment. Biden’s AI policies didn’t stop U.S. innovation; they just kept it bloated & reliant on scale. China, facing an existential crisis, got scrappy, frugal, and inventive. The result? DeepSeek—a cheaper, better AI now threatening U.S. dominance. www.thefp.com/p/why-deepse...

Is it just me, or is DeepSeek bucking to bring back the 'Fail Whale' as they struggle with scale?

Every few months, I write an opinionated guide for general purpose users about which AI to pick, especially for newcomers. Here is my brand new one, which I actually had to update multiple times in the few days I was writing it. Things are changing fast. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...

Feature, feature, burning bright ... are you trapped in a backlog's endless plight? Here's a product manager's poetic take on Blake 'Tyger' ... and the art of surviving the dreaded feature hostage negotiations. Read it now; you'll be glad you did. www.linkedin.com/pulse/featur...

Carbs, the struggle is real ...