Here are some highlights from the slide content of Des Traynor’s talk “Agentifying your product” that I found particularly interesting.
Launch is just the beginning [18:05]
- You can hype up your agent, you can boast and benchmark, but reality bats last in software.
- Good PMs obsess about shipping.
- Great ones about obsess their product being adopted.
- The best ones obsess about ongoing usage and engagement.
- But PMs in the era of Al need to also obsess about a new question: does it actually work?
If you’re building an agent [21:05]
- Be as ambitious as you can be, but no more.
- Understand + Respect the job in all its edge case ridden gory detail.
- Shape & Scope to something that is definitely valuable, but also definitely doable, otherwise it’s dead.
- Build the workflows around the Agent, not just the agent.
- Don’t just sell the product, explain the transformation that your customers need to make.
When buying/evaluating agents… [21:47]
- Look for credible deployments, at scale, that would challenge the Agent.
- Run your own evals, but compare the Al agent with reality, not with perfection.
- Understand the organizational transformation you will go through (I realize this sounds like buzzword nonsense, but I mean it) – when 60% of your work is now handled in a totally different way, instantly, things will change.
- Learn how you can maintain & improve the Agent over time.
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