Medium: Three ways product managers should evolve as AI handles more execution

Colleen Reynolds, a product manager at Instagram, published this piece in March 2026 in the Agile Insider publication on Medium. It draws on the observation that as coding becomes automated, product management skills will become more accessible to more people — and argues that this raises the bar for what professional PMs need to bring.

What the article says

Reynolds frames the shift plainly: as AI handles more execution, judgment, strategy, and human alignment become the scarce skills. The article offers three concrete directions for PMs to develop in response.

The first is to deepen strategic thinking rather than protect execution-level work. AI tools make execution more accessible to more people, which reduces the value of execution-focused PMs and increases the value of those who can set direction well.

The second recommendation is to embrace hands-on building rather than managing others who build. PMs who get closer to the material — writing prompts, testing product behavior, building lightweight prototypes — are better positioned to make good decisions about what to ship.

The third is to prioritize the human elements of the role that remain genuinely hard to automate: facilitating difficult conversations, reading organizational dynamics, and aligning teams around shared goals.

Why it matters

The article is notable for being written by a working PM at a large product organization, not a consultant or researcher. Reynolds’s perspective is grounded in daily practice, which gives the recommendations a different weight than similar arguments made at a higher level of abstraction.

At around 900 words, it is not a long read, but it is direct and specific. It is most useful for mid-career PMs trying to decide where to invest their development time as AI tooling changes what the job requires.