Hey everyone,
I’ve been in a lot of conversations lately about the incredible pressure on product teams to ship AI features. The C-suite wants to see progress, engineers are excited to build with the latest models, and the market seems to reward speed above all else. It feels like we’re in a gold rush, and if you’re not shipping, you’re falling behind.
But this raises a critical question for us as product leaders: is this relentless push for AI innovation forcing us to shortcut the single most important part of our job — discovery?
We’re all trained to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Yet, the current climate often encourages finding a problem for a cool AI solution, like just wrapping a UI around a new model. This ‘solution-first’ approach feels like a dangerous departure from the fundamentals of validating user needs and ensuring we’re building something of genuine value, not just a tech demo. We risk building incredibly sophisticated features that ultimately fail to achieve product-market fit because we skipped the foundational work.
I’m curious to hear how you all are navigating this. How are you balancing the intense pressure for rapid AI deployment with the non-negotiable need for deep, rigorous product discovery?