​When product discovery is neglected, the costs quickly add up. In one case from personal experience, the cost was 10 person-years of effort spent on a failed launch that didn’t resolve the underlying customer problem. Despite the growth of dedicated product organizations, many product managers still find themselves constrained by waterfall delivery structures designed with little autonomy that hinders their long-term product success. Product Managers frequently lack the ability to direct their roadmaps based on product effectiveness and customer value. The root issue often lies in organizational culture, where delivery milestones overshadow customer value and experimentation.

If AI begins to assume all roles in the product development process — acting as product manager, designer, and engineer — we’re not just witnessing an evolution in product development; we’re staring at an extinction event for traditional workflows. With AI serving as both strategist and executor, organizational communication would become highly structured, frictionless, and nearly instantaneous. But what does this really mean?

The problem with unchecked and unintentional complexity is that it gradually narrows the 'solution space' — the range of future improvements, adjustments, or innovations that can be realistically pursued. Picture the solution space as a playground where designers and developers have room to explore new ideas and tackle emerging challenges. As complexity accumulates without careful management, walls begin to form in this playground, limiting the freedom to experiment and improve. Changes become riskier, and small tweaks can lead to a cascade of unintended consequences. The more convoluted the system, the fewer opportunities there are to introduce meaningful, impactful updates without further complicating the product or alienating users.