When Product Development Outpaces Imagination

4 min read4 days ago

By Handy — Head of Product, DANA Indonesia

Picture this: You’re a product manager juggling a dozen feature requests. You’re two engineers short. Your designer is fully booked. And stakeholders want delivery — yesterday.

Sound familiar?

This isn’t a rare situation. Resource constraints are the default state of product development. Whether you’re at a billion-dollar corporation or a nimble startup, you’re forced to make hard trade-offs — deciding not just what to build, but what not to build.

We lean on MVPs. We ship lean, validate fast, iterate smart. But lately, something’s shifted.

Even MVPs are no longer driven purely by user needs.
They’re shaped by what’s available — not what’s possible.

What we release isn’t always what we imagined — it’s what we could afford.

From Constraints to Acceleration

Product teams have historically optimized for efficiency — doing more with less.

But what happens when the constraints begin to dissolve?

Enter AI — not as a buzzword, but as a force actively reshaping the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). We’re no longer just automating. We’re accelerating.

Consider this:

Canva’s Magic Design lets anyone create polished templates in seconds.
GitHub Copilot enables engineers to write and debug at 2x–10x speed.
Veed.io empowers marketers to edit videos without editors.
Maze and Dovetail AI synthesize user research almost instantly.

According to McKinsey, teams leveraging AI tools are accelerating time-to-market by up to 40%.

Tasks that once took weeks of cross-functional effort can now be executed in a single afternoon — by one empowered PM.

Proof in the Wild: Building at Warp Speed

🔥 ChatGPT by OpenAI

The fastest-growing consumer app in history didn’t emerge from a bloated org.
It was built by:

Fewer than 10 product managers
Just a few dozen engineers

It reached 1 million users in 5 days, and 100 million in 2 months.
This wasn’t a fluke — it was a signal.

🎨 Midjourney: World-Class AI, Team of 11

Midjourney didn’t launch with a full-scale product UI.
It launched on Discord with just 11 people.

And yet, they delivered:

Viral community growth
World-class image generation
Tens of millions of engaged users

Their success proves that velocity and clarity often beat organizational scale and polish.

When MVPs Break Down

In a world moving this fast, the MVP framework starts to fracture.

Why iterate through wireframes and prototypes when shipping a near-complete product is equally fast?

From the user’s perspective, accelerated cycles also mean rising expectations and less tolerance for half-baked experiences.

The bottleneck has shifted. It’s no longer can we build this?

Now, the essential question is:
What’s worth building, when we can build anything?

The Rise of the Full-Stack PM

To thrive in this accelerating environment, PMs must adopt a full-stack mindset, gaining fluency across previously siloed domains.

You don’t need to specialize in everything — but you must become dangerous in all of it.

The modern PM toolkit includes:

AI-powered design tools (Figma AI, Canva)
UX copywriting at scale
Lean user research with Maze, Dovetail
AI-driven market analysis (ChatGPT, Perplexity)
Monetization-driven business modeling
Product analytics & experimentation (Amplitude, Mixpanel, SQL)

PMs who interpret data, run experiments, and ship independently are no longer outliers.
They’re becoming the new standard.

Two Paths, Two Challenges

🌱 For New PMs

You’re expected to ramp up quickly, move across functions, and contribute beyond specs.
Your superpower?
Learn how to learn. Quickly and relentlessly.

Leverage platforms like Reforge, Coursera, or Product School to level up rapidly.

🔁 For Senior PMs

Staying relevant means expanding your execution fluency.
You’re no longer just a facilitator — you’re a multiplier.

Your edge lies in:

Making sense of complexity
Seeing around corners
Connecting execution to long-term impact

Communities like Lenny’s Newsletter and Mind the Product are great places to stay sharp.

But Wait — What About the Risks?

Acceleration brings opportunities, but also inherent risks:

Overproduction: More products doesn’t always mean better outcomes.
Ethics & privacy: Speed can lead to oversight in handling user data.
Burnout: Faster cycles can pressure teams into unhealthy rhythms.

Wisdom is knowing not only how to ship fast, but when and why to ship.

Wisdom Will Not Be Replaced — It Will Be Amplified

Yes, AI accelerates what’s possible.
But human judgment remains irreplaceable.

We still need:

Product thinkers who craft meaning
Tech leads who ensure architectural soundness
Strategists who connect dots across time, market, and value

In a world obsessed with speed, clarity is a superpower — and clarity comes from wisdom.

Final Thoughts

The age of slow iteration is ending.

We’re entering an era where:

Speed kills indecision
Craft beats consensus
Imagination becomes the bottleneck
And wisdom makes speed sustainable

So ask yourself:

If you had no constraints tomorrow, what would you build?

Because the future of product isn’t waiting for your roadmap session.
It’s already shipping.