A Smokejumper’s Survival Guide to AI Product Management
Because “Let’s Add ChatGPT” is NOT a Strategy
You're knee-deep in roadmap rotisserie when the HiPPO stampedes in, eyes ablaze from a LinkedIn demo:
“Add AI to the product—PRONTO.”
No use case.
No customer.
Just executive arson with a $500K burn rate.
Welcome to the fireline. Hope you packed a flame-resistant personal onboarding plan, because you just got parachuted into AI product management.
And your parachute?
Yeah—that’s made of sticky notes.
What Follows is Not a Manifesto
It’s a field manual—scorched at the edges, carried by survivors, and ignored by those who vanish under the weight of their own AI hype decks.
It’s Mean Dean’s Smokejumper Survival Guide.
Flip to Page One.
It’s already on fire.
1. Remain calm and focus on the problem space.
Panic builds features nobody asked for.
Breathe. Ask: "What problem are we solving and who are we solving it for?"
If you hear “AI is the strategy,” you may be standing in a heap of smoldering hallucination.
2. Feel their pains and learn their gains.
This isn’t your fantasy league.
It’s their job.
Talk to the humans. What sucks? What would be a win?
Don't vibe on cool tools. Don’t ship synthetic empathy.
3. Decode the data reality before you hallucinate solutions.
No data? Wrong data? Dirty data? Welcome to most orgs.
Know what you’ve got before the model makes confident predictions based on fiction.
4. Know which AI playing field you’ve picked.
Are you building a coach? A coworker? A compliance cop?
Pick your role. You can’t play chess and dodgeball with the same rulebook.
5. Unpack unknowns before they unpack your timeline.
Assumptions are hidden landmines. External factors? Booby traps.
Disarm them before they shred your scope in week two.
6. Build on tiny bets, not Titanic assumptions.
If your AI launch needs a lifeboat plan, maybe don’t build the iceberg.
Small experiments = fewer funerals.
Tiny bets = big wins.
7. Socialize an outcomes storyline people can actually follow.
Sponsors don't care about your architecture diagram.
Only the geeks will grok your model mechanics.
Show stakeholders what changes. Who wins. Why it matters.
Then maybe show some shiny stuff.
8. Scale smartly—start with cohorts, not chaos.
Don’t “roll out.” Sneak out.
Pilot with the right weirdos.
Increment with single intents.
Learn fast.
Then go loud—if it works.
9. Optimize product ops with prompt engineering & agents, not more meetings.
PM tools & techniques should be packed into prompts.
Agents don’t need coffee breaks or slide decks.
Use ‘em to crush the grunt work—
not to create new layers of process theater.
Last Page, Scribbled in Ash
10. If you’re not sweating a little,
it’s not product management—
it’s cosplay. Understand the difference.
Like What You Read? Don't Just Stand There Holding a Hose.
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