What great product managers do differently in the age of AI
What great product managers do differently in the age of AI  
Podcast: Insights Unlocked
Published On: Mon Oct 12 2026
Description: Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4hyuZBr Episode summary:  In this episode of Insights Unlocked, UserTesting’s Mike Mace talks with Julia Barham, product executive, longtime product leader and author of The Product Management Playbook, about what it takes to build products customers actually value—and how the role of product management is changing as AI accelerates the product development lifecycle. Julia argues that great product managers are ultimately managers of value: connecting customer needs and business goals while developing enough fluency across design, data and technology to make better decisions. She shares why strong PMs don’t need to be experts in everything, but do need curiosity, judgment and the ability to synthesize insights and work effectively across functions.  The conversation explores why continuous discovery and experimentation are becoming even more important as AI makes it easier to build and ship quickly. Julia explains why teams should embrace “strong opinions, loosely held,” increase their learning velocity and resist the temptation to turn faster development into an excuse to ship everything in the backlog. Instead, teams need to validate ideas, learn quickly and stay focused on the customer experience. Julia and Mike also discuss how AI could reshape the product manager’s role. As AI takes on more delivery and coordination work, Julia sees greater value shifting toward strategic thinking, discovery and human judgment. She also shares lessons from the cross-functional leaders she interviewed for her book—including why partners want PMs to bring them into the process early, provide business context and start with the problem rather than arriving with a predetermined solution.  You’ll learn Why product management is increasingly about managing value, not simply managing features or backlogs How PMs can build product sense across business, customers, design, data and technology without becoming experts in every discipline Why continuous discovery and synthesis should happen throughout the product lifecycle How “strong opinions, loosely held” can help teams experiment, learn and adapt faster Why faster AI-powered development makes customer validation and product judgment more important, not less Where product managers can focus their time as AI automates more delivery and coordination work What design, data and engineering partners want from product managers Why curiosity, influence and cross-functional collaboration remain essential product management skills How product leaders can identify skill gaps and coach their teams to become stronger product thinkers  Resources and links Listener offer: Use code UT20 when purchasing The Product Management Playbook directly from Rosenfeld Media for 20% off. Julia Barham on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-barham/) The Product Management Playbook from Rosenfeld Media (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/product-management-playbook/) Author interview with Rosenfeld Media (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/master-every-dimension-of-product-management-with-julia-barhams-new-book-the-product-management-playbook-create-ship-and-optimize-winning-products/ ) Progressive Insurance (https://www.progressive.com/) Mike Mace on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemace/) Learn more about Insights Unlocked: usertesting.com/podcast