A Thought Partner That Never Sleeps Or Complaints
How will generative AI tools impact the modern Technical Program Manager? By giving them access to a thought partner that is powered by the collective wisdom of the internet.
I have not written anything regarding the Generative AI and ChatGPT trend as it concerns Technical Program Management.
I needed some time to comprehend the implications of this technology, beyond just automation and summarizing notes or expediting mundane tasks, which is exciting progress on its own.
For me, ChatGPT and other AI tools can act as effective teachers and assistants to Technical Program Managers. However, it's important to ensure that the AI isn't producing hallucinations, bad behavior, or inaccurate information.
More than that, it requires an understanding of the questions you are asking. There is a reason for the rise and immense interest in the Prompt Engineering sub-genre. All of this still requires some level of understanding and awareness of technical concepts at the fundamental level.
So - how do I think a TPM can leverage ChatGPT style tools effectively:
Use AI to teach yourself technical concepts - Suddenly, you don’t need to go find an engineer to help grasp technical concepts or to at least find your footing. Think about the next time you come across a difficult topic you don’t quite grasp, instead of toiling on the web, you can ask ChatGPT questions like “Help me understand gRPC. Keep it concise and at the grade 10 understanding level.” Think what you could do with this; it can help you prepare for interviews, brush up on concepts you may have forgotten or even learn something new you are curious about, and make you be prepared to have a voice in technical meetings.
Use AI to help make better tactical decisions - What makes great decisions is when you have thought through the implications from all angles. Sometimes, we are limited by our knowledge or experience of the angles we must consider. ChatGPT helps with that. Here is a basic example: “I am planning a release strategy for cloud backend team. I am thinking about only having a dev and prod environment. Is that a good idea?” You can also dig deeper or get a head start on the next steps; ex: “Regenerate the answer above but make it fit on a single slide.”
Use AI to help you think better - Technical Program Manager can be a lonely station at times. You operate on a group of projects with numerous stakeholders and often times it is difficult to think through your thoughts without another TPM partner. Maybe you have a working relationship where your engineering partner affords you the space to think out loud and make mistakes. AI can help you think through ideas or even find you a starting point to build off. Here is a basic example: “I need to convince my engineering leader that we need to release software builds more often. What points should I consider when drafting my opinion? Give me no more than 5 bullet points and draft the response so it fits on a single powerpoint slide.”
Use AI to accelerate your activation energy on common tasks - The real magic for AI will still be the automation of the mundane task. Write me a PRD for ... xyz OR Give me a skeleton project plan for an App UI revamp project. Another example of a real world situation: “Put a checklist together for moving a cloud environment to production. Working backwards from a launch date, give me estimates for when each checklist should be done in "n minus from launch date days” “. But here in lies the need for you to know the subject area well before hand. The checklist might not be comprehensive or might be missing certain points that you have come across in past projects. AI will help you get started but experience will help you make it more complete, more perfect.
Use AI to gut check plans through collective wisdom of the internet - Every single answer in the examples above is based on the collective wisdom of the internet. The greatest repository of knowledge ever assembled by humankind with every topic known to humans. That is the ultimate power of generative AI, the rewriting of the knowledge in better effective way for you to understand granted you know what you’re looking for and the patience for you to ask it as many questions in as many styles as you can.
Examples I shared above are just a very small taste of the potential for AI. As models improve in speed, reduce hallucinations, and become more focused, our productivity through AI will improve.
Now, the ultimate question on everyone’s mind…
Will AI replace the Technical Program Manager?
Yes and No. The explanation I believe is obvious here.
I feel the laser focused specialist project manager will find trouble in the coming future where a lot of the manual work they do will become automated. See what you can do with Coda’s implementation of AI - https://coda.io/product/ai. This has been a trend long in the making but suddenly accelerated ten fold thanks to Generative AI advances in tools like ChatGPT.
So, they will need to pivot more to Generalist Program Managers or Generalist TPM who can utilize the power of AI to make themselves far more effective across many different planes of the organization. It is obvious for everyone that AI-supported TPMs will be far more effective than the ones who are not using AI1. Even then, it requires an understanding of how you can use ChatGPT tool beyond feeding the curiosity machine or tinkering user mode.
TPMs and Program Managers provide an irreplaceable human connection in resolving conflicting personalities, egos, priorities, and managing critical programs. AI cannot match the level of skill and sensitivity needed for such tasks, so it will not be replacing them any time soon. It may make them better at this role because they can leverage the collective wisdom of the internet to find threads to pull on when they feel stuck.
We will also have to see how organizations embrace AI usage internally. For now - treat AI like a TPM thought partner that never sleeps and is constantly learning faster than you; you just have to know the right question to ask.
Until next time 👋 !
-Aadil
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Courtesy of Ben’s Bites - Ethan Mollick of One Useful Thing conducted a social experiment involving a team of social scientists observing consultants at Boston Consulting Group to assess whether AI increases productivity.
Its kind of interesting that you are referring to GenAI tool such as chatGPT a "thought partner" (I am obviously feeling jealous). I have mixed feelings about that. ChatGPT/Bard and related abstractions for sure have made it a LOT more easier to query, validate, synthesize and present information.