Test-n-Tell - tiny apps, Big ideas

  I have been using Codex more and more recently. Not in a “look, AI wrote me a todo app” kind of way. More like: I need to ship my actual product, fix real bugs, improve real tests, and not spend my evenings arguing with a robot about why it deleted half of my codebase.

The job of a product manager is already changing. We use AI more and more in our daily work, and there is no sign of this slowing down. Writing, research, analysis, prototyping, summarising calls, checking requirements, preparing strategy docs, testing product ideas - all of it can already be supported by AI.

  There’s a persistent myth in product development: that what you ship is the roadmap. In reality, what you ship is the organisation that built the roadmap.

  Spreadsheets are among the most powerful tools in modern organisations. They clarify plans. They align teams. They make trade-offs visible. They help leaders reason about complexity. But they also create one of the most dangerous illusions in product development: the illusion of certainty. 

  I've been doing a lot of vibe coding lately, and one tech stack emerged for me as the most practical. Spoiler alert 1: it's Firebase + Codex + Google Cloud. Spoiler 2: tomorrow it could change.

  Everyone who has ever tried to create a product has their embarrassing failure story. Here's one of mine.

  I have built products in many different industries: HRtech, marketing, last-mile.. But one industry, where I really wanted to work, always eluded me - that's Education tech. The stars were never rightly aligned for me to work in EduTech until I decided to build my own EduTech app.

  Whether we like it or not, we all need to be competition-aware as PMs. Most of us have competitors, and understanding what they do might help us to win in the market.

  Is it only me, or have we stopped talking about frameworks? Long gone debates about Agile vs Waterfall, we stopped fighting over TDD vs BDD or KANO vs effort/value... it's KANO by the way, KANO is way superior.

  A common misconception when people say Product-led org is to assume product managers are running things. That shouldn't be the case. Product-led is about the mindset of everyone.

  In this series, I've tested and reviewed multiple tools in the AI agents category. Some of them are useful, others less so, but one thing is certain: this category has a huge potential to change our whole industry and have major effects on people's roles.

  I continue to test different AI agents that could create digital products with no coding knowledge required. Next in the list is the tool called Replit .

  Imagine spotting a problem in your daily life. Maybe it's a particular task you need to do that is frustrating, maybe it's something your friends or family need. Most importantly, you think you know how to solve that problem, but you're not a "technical person" and can't build apps, what can you do?

  Lately, I've been trying and reviewing modern AI agent tools that can write code, create designs and build full working products. While doing that, I realised PMs need to steal another practice from the engineering playbook - peer reviews.

  Bolt.new is next up in the category of AI agents that can create fully working products without writing any code. Let's see how it compares to Lovable which I reviewed in the previous post.

  Predictable innovation is one of the most harmful myths in product development. It leads to tons of frustration and subpar outcomes.

  Hey PMs, it's almost 2025 and we're still here. Yeah, AI didn't make us redundant. Ruthless bosses didn't make us redundant. Well, not all of us at least. We survived yet another year and are now looking into the next with a tiny bit of optimism.

  Anyone who has tried using B2B or corporate software can probably attest - on average it's worse than B2C, consumer apps. Let's look into some reasons why it is so.

  In every organisation, if people working there care in the slightest, there will be multiple opinions on what to do. As PMs, we need to collect all this info, synthesise and prioritise it. Then we need to communicate back efficiently and keep everyone aligned.

  Impact mapping is a versatile tool that should be in every PM's pocket. You can apply impact mapping to better communicate, collaborate and eventually reach better results for your product and organisation.