Alex Jauch
Thoughts on building products, technology, and storytelling
Great Idea? Who Cares?
People think good ideas are rare. They're not. Ideas are cheap and plentiful. Execution and delivery is rare and hard.
Why I Built a Sandbox with AI
Announcing: The Fictivize Project
Train your org or die
One thing I constantly hear from product managers (PMs) is that they are buried in requests from all over their organization. Whether it’s feature requests from sales, bug escalations from...
Yes, Virginia, this is what a bubble feels like
I’ve been reading with some interest the debate about the AI bubble, mostly written by folks who didn’t participate in previous technology bubbles. I have the (good?) fortune to have participated...
ChatGPT Agent Mode Micro Review
As I continue my research into AI tools for product management, one tool that really stands out for its simplicity is ChatGPT’s agent mode. There are a couple of different tools that work in a...
What do Product Managers and Toddlers Have in Common?
Besides being hard on the furniture, we both ask “Why?” every six seconds. As a product manager (PM), the thing we really need to own is the “why” question. While we really care about the “what”...
Agile and the age of AI
Someone asked me yesterday if we can still use agile methods in the age of AI.
If it doesn’t suck, is it still vibe coding?
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Here we go again
I recently attended an AI conference in San Francisco. During the conference, several speakers cited this MIT report: [State of AI in Business...
Claude Code Micro Review
I’ve recently come across product managers (PMs) who are using Claude Code for PM tasks like document review. This interested me because I assumed that Claud Code was optimized for, well, code.
Do You Have a Solution in Search of a Problem?
Do You Have a Solution In Search of a Problem?
The Time Trap
Your time estimates are wrong. Don’t try to fix them.
Yes, you do need Product Management
The massive rise in GenAI-based coding tools has created a huge amount of discussion and debate in engineering circles. Of course, this also affects product managers (PMs) in new and interesting...
Users lie. Don’t fall for it.
When conducting customer interviews, one of the classic errors I see product managers (PM’s) make is to ask customers what they want. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in a feature...
In Defense of the Stack Rank
I’ve been spending some time lately mentoring junior product managers (PMs) and helping them take the next step into more senior positions. One thing that many of them are really stuck on is the...
Three Lies and the Truth: Silicon Valley’s Biggest Lies
Living and working in Silicon Valley for most of my adult life has allowed me to view the industry from very close range for almost thirty years. While in general I am thrilled to be in this...
AI is the New Outsourcing
One of the truly fascinating things about the tech industry is that despite the industry’s obsession with innovation, you continually see the same pattern happening over and over again. I refer...
Sink or swim: Making the call
I’ve been getting requests lately for guidance on how to become a product management leader. While there are tons of folks out there who talk about how to be a product manager (PM), there are...
Agents Don’t Think— That’s OK
Recently, we have seen quite a bit of discussion online about computers becoming intelligent. In fact, some people have claimed that the holy grail of AI—the ability of a computer to truly think...
Flying Without a Net: Requirements to Code (via Codex)
In my previous blog post about [Jira automation and Claude](https://pftf.blogspot.com/2025/06/is-claude-smarter-than-your-intern.html), I created a sample application and was able to investigate...
Why Autonomy Doesn’t Matter (Yet)
As I’ve discussed before, I am not terribly concerned about how autonomous my AI agents are. Most of what you read online focuses on the autonomy aspect of Agentic AI and I really think that’s...
Is Claude Smarter than your Intern?
As part of my investigation into how GenAI will change the way PMs work, I’ve done some experiments with LLMs and their ability to integrate with Jira. Because Jira has a query-based interface...
Avoid AI Regret
We are starting to see the results of early AI experiments in enterprise and not surprisingly, they’re not amazing. A [recent study by Orgvue...
Lovable Micro Review
Following up from my prior blog post about [AI toolchain](https://pftf.blogspot.com/2025/05/blog-post-why-ai-toolchain-matters-and.html), I’ve continued the experiment of giving AI a “one shot”...
v0 Micro Review
Following up from my prior blog post about [AI toolchain](https://pftf.blogspot.com/2025/05/blog-post-why-ai-toolchain-matters-and.html), I’ve continued the experiment of giving AI a “one-shot”...
What is an AI Agent?
As I discussed in a previous blog post, one of the major focus areas of my team at Outshift by Cisco is [AGNTCY](https://agntcy.org/) which is an open-source collective focused on Agentic AI and...
Why You Need an AI business Plan
As part of my work on [AGNCY](https://agntcy.org/), I’ve been working with literally dozens of organizations working on Agentic AI. At this point, it’s not really a question of if agentic will...