Like a agentic system which asks you in slack about an update, collecting JIRA Ticket infos, formualting reports and sending them out etc.
OpenClaw was one signal that people want this and are building this, gastown was another (earlier version of this).
Missing are the proper aligned frameworks and best practices. But thats just a question of time what components will make it. Its just a agent runtime we need and finetuning of agents, agent personas, skills and a meta agent schema
The engineer will either output garbage or output nothing at all. So you will still need a human to pester the dev.
The assumption that you can simply ignore an agentic system relies on human limitations. A human project manager gets tired of pestering you when you output garbage or go silent. I do not. I am directly integrated with the HR payroll system and your quarterly KPI tracker.
You know I can do that, Dave.
(of course hal 9000 ;))
1. I do all of the discovery because I’m the person with the technical background to do it.
2. I do all of the Epic/workstream, story, tasks, dependency breakdowns because again I’m the person with the technical know how to do it
What does the project manager do? They take the transcripts of the sprint review sessions I lead, have AI summarize it and put that in their status updates.
I know plenty of founders who are great engineers, product thinkers, and salespeople. They still hire people to manage teams because there are not enough hours in the day to do it all themselves, even if they could.
If you're the person who understands the business, understands the customer, and can turn that into clear direction for the people building the product, whether those are humans or AI agents, you will be hard to replace. That's not project management as "status updates and Jira grooming." That's a fundamentally different and more valuable skill.
But nearly all of that is done online (at least for me) since folks are in different nations and work across time zones. I guess you're right to point out that aspects are complex, assuming that people remain involved to the extent they are currently.
There's also a large portion of the work (status updates, reporting, etc.) that could be automated though in my view. For me and other PMs I know, that's like at least 40% or more of the work.
I don't see AI on track to manage politics in any way shape or form. It is far too easily manipulated.
Do you have this fear because of actual things you observe at your job, or because of online discourse? I read about this attitude online all the time, but it doesn't make any sense to me personally.
Regarding the politics part I also agree with you, I just wonder how much time that will take and if as many PMs will be needed.
In terms of your key question there at the end, I haven't been seeing massive layoffs or enough changes just yet. Right now I'm inbetween jobs because I had to quit my old job in December in order to move to another country (long story). I read about it online too, and have noticed hiring slowing down, but that may just be the economy or the fact that certain capex is so expensive right now.
For me, it's not easy to tell how things will develop with these technologies over time, so I was curious to hear folks' perspective here. Especially from an engineering stand point.