Shipping 10x more features solves nothing (with Tim Herbig)

Tim Herbig has spent 15 years in product management: accidental Scrum product owner in 2010, product lead at XING (Germany's LinkedIn), and since 2019 a full-time product management coach for ambitious companies around the world. He is the author of Real Progress, the book about connecting product strategy, OKRs and discovery into one system. And this is the first episode of Produktland in English.

The efficiency conversation is the boring half of AI. The interesting half is what is left to differentiate: technology was never a real differentiator, and now that 80 to 90 percent of AI features run on the same handful of models, it differentiates less than ever. Shipping ten times more features solves nothing for companies whose customers never adopted the features they already had. And AI has opened a whole new world of alibi progress: vibe-coded prototypes, Claude-drafted OKRs and generated strategies that feel like work but change nothing.

The whole episode in one sentence: AI gets you to the hard part faster, but the hard part is still yours.

Among other things, we get into:

Why technology was never a sustainable differentiator, and why AI makes that obvious

Shipping 10x more features when customers never adopted the old ones

Ravi Mehta's line: AI allows you to get to the hard part faster

Alibi progress in the AI age: prototypes and OKR drafts that feel like work

The Damocles sword: efficiency from the top, fear of being cut on the ground

Token usage, output per employee or bottom line: which metric proves the AI bet?

Why a domain expert with AI outruns a product manager with access to code

Slack versus Teams: you can't out-product distribution

Inside Tim's setup: an Obsidian vault, Codex and a Qigong coach transcribed with Wispr Flow

Tidsstempler

00:00 — Welcome: the first episode in English

00:56 — From surprise Scrum product owner to product coach

02:54 — What is actually changing in product management

04:58 — Efficiency or differentiation: the two impacts of AI

07:44 — Getting to the hard part faster: strategy, OKRs and discovery

13:25 — Would Real Progress change today? Alibi progress everywhere

16:25 — AI transformation: incentives, fear and the skill gap

19:34 — Output or outcome: what do you actually want from AI?

26:37 — The product trio, team sizes and the product operating model

33:57 — Humans as editors: who is accountable for AI output?

38:59 — When anyone can build, distribution decides

40:29 — Tim's own AI stack: Obsidian, Codex, Wispr Flow

46:10 — One thing every product leader should start doing Monday

Links

Tim Herbig on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herbigt/

Tim's site and the book Real Progress: https://herbig.co/

Flere episoder: https://produktland.dk/produktland/

Nyhedsbrevet AI for Produktledere: https://produktland.dk/nyhedsbrev