What is product management?
Product management is deciding what a product should do next and making sure it gets built.
It sits between customers, the business and the people building. The output is a decision: this next, for these reasons.
Product management isn't project management, which tracks work after it is decided. It also isn't design. The question it owns is what should exist.
Why it matters for product builders
Every product has someone doing this, whether or not “product manager” is their title. In a small company it is often the founder. The difference is whether decisions come from evidence or whoever spoke last.
What changes in AI-first products
The translation work shrank. Agents can draft research summaries, requirements and specs. Product management now spends less time producing the document and more time owning the judgment inside it.
That doesn't remove the role. It makes the decision more visible because execution no longer hides how long it took to make.