Key Takeaways
- Product management is expanding rather than disappearing, with PMs taking on technical tasks without losing core commercial responsibilities.
- Atlassian uses a ship metaphor to guide PMs: choose between rowing (coding, prototyping, fixing bugs) and steering (setting strategy, clearing blockers, prioritizing).
- Codebase complexity and team size determine whether a PM should write code or focus entirely on direction.
- Atlassian measures and builds team capabilities through an internal AI Fluency Index and dedicated quarterly AI Builder Weeks across tools like Jira and Confluence.
The Expansion of Craft Roles
A year or two ago, tech commentators predicted artificial intelligence would erase standard craft boundaries. The assumption was simple: engineers would write specifications, designers would build finished apps, and product managers would disappear entirely.
Tamar Yehoshua, Chief Product Officer at Atlassian, saw the opposite happen across teams building Jira, Confluence, and Rovoclaw. Roles are overlapping, but they are also getting wider. As Yehoshua put it: “If you remember back a year or two ago, if we can all remember that far back, everyone was pointing at everyone else's craft and saying, 'Your job is going to go away.' As we said, the roles are overlapping, but they are also expanding. So that's what we're seeing is the people everyone can do so much more than they that they could do before and it's exciting.”
The job itself has not shifted its core definition. Yehoshua reminds builders: “The job of a PM is really the same as it always was. What is your job? It's to find product market fit. It's to build products that people love. It's also to make sure you're building a business that people will actually pay for your products.” What changes is the speed at which a single person can test ideas.
When to Row and When to Steer
To help product leaders choose where to spend their hours, Yehoshua frames day-to-day execution around rowing versus steering.
Rowing means picking up an oar. In software, that means opening an IDE, building a working prototype, running tests, or fixing small bugs to relieve engineering bottlenecks. When a product is in its early stages or the codebase is small, a PM who rows can compress weeks of back-and-forth into an afternoon.
Steering means maintaining direction. You talk to customers, kill low-priority requests, clarify edge cases, and clear dependencies across departments. If a team has ten engineers waiting on clear requirements, a PM who sits down to write code slows the whole boat down. In large systems, steering provides far more speed than one extra pair of hands on a pull request.
“One of the things that PMs can do is focus on acceleration,” Yehoshua notes. “We've all been hearing how things are moving so much faster, but the PM can really help accelerate what's happening in their team.”
Institutionalizing AI Fluency
Adoption does not happen by telling people to be faster. Atlassian formalized this shift through two concrete operational habits: an AI Fluency Index and quarterly AI Builder Weeks.
AI Builder Weeks give teams dedicated time to build functional internal tools and product prototypes with new models. The Fluency Index tracks how comfortably staff across different crafts apply modern tools to their daily workflow. This creates clear visibility into which teams are using tools effectively and which teams are stuck doing manual work.
What to Do With This
Audit your calendar from the past two weeks and categorize your hours into rowing (building prototypes, testing features, drafting copy) versus steering (customer calls, prioritization, removing blockers). If your engineering team spent time blocked on scope while you built a side prototype, stop coding and steer. If your engineers are waiting on basic mockups you could build yourself in an hour, open a tool and start rowing.