Let’s be honest.
There’s nothing fantasy football “experts” love more than mentioning 127 players in the preseason so they can brag later, “I told you about him in June.”
I hate it.
So naturally, I’m doing the exact same thing, just with AI, project management, product ownership, business analysis, and a few spicy takes about the future of work.
Call it what you want: forecasting, educated guessing, digital dart-throwing. But if even a few of these hit in a year or two?
I will absolutely repost this with a smug “told you so.”
Let’s go.
AI in the Workplace
- Every major PM tool will have a built-in AI that suggests tasks, risks, and status updates before you even log in.
- “Prompting” will quietly sneak into job descriptions under phrases like “AI-assisted communication.”
- Someone will lose their job for pasting an entire vendor proposal from ChatGPT, unedited. It’ll be called “Promptgate.”
- AI copilots will start writing meeting notes, summaries, and action items in real time, meaning you’ll finally be able to pretend you were listening.
- You’ll hear the phrase, “Should we just ask the AI first?” at least once per project kickoff.
Agile & Project Management
- A Fortune 500 company will publicly walk away from SAFe, citing “complexity over value.”
- Gantt charts will make a sad little comeback in leadership decks. Just because they “feel more real.”
- The word “Agile” will start disappearing from job titles, replaced by things like “Digital Velocity Strategist.”
- Someone will use the term “Agile 3.0” unironically, and we will all groan.
- Executive dashboards will use real-time AI-generated risk summaries and 80% of leaders still won’t read them.
Product Ownership
- “Product Owner” will vanish in orgs doing true empowered product work folded into “Product Manager” or “Outcome Lead.”
- AI will be used to test roadmap prioritization based on historical failure patterns and user feedback.
- The best product thinkers won’t ask ChatGPT for help. They’ll have a saved GPT tuned like a cofounder.
- Product discovery will include AI-generated user scenarios that get weirdly accurate and occasionally concerning.
Business Analysis
- Requirements documents will morph into living conversations between humans and AI.
- Business analysts will become the stewards of AI alignment, ethics, and “are we seriously doing this?”
- Some BA somewhere will go viral for building an MVP solo with nothing but AI tools and time-blocked caffeine.
- AI tools will start asking better questions than some stakeholders. (You know the ones.)
Work Culture & Org Design
- The IC-to-manager ratio will go up. Way up. Jassy wasn’t joking.
- The “agile pod” model will evolve into something more fluid, like “dynamic coalitions.” Bonus points if it sounds sci-fi.
- One org will run an experiment with a completely managerless team supported by peer feedback, AI insights, and probably tears.
- There will be a Chief Simplicity Officer. And for once, it won’t be ironic.
Wildcards I’m Rooting For
- Someone will build a plugin that turns Jira tickets into dramatic movie trailer voiceovers. And yes, I will use it.
- The first fully AI-paired Scrum Master will emerge. Their retros will be fire. Their team will be confused.
- A PM will accidentally ship an entire new feature by chatting with their AI assistant and forgetting to tell anyone.
- A new job title will show up: Collaboration Architect. It’ll be half facilitator, half organizational therapist.
- Someone will use AI to simulate the behavior of their exec team during change management just to pre-train their actual response strategy.
Final Word (Before I Screenshot This for Later)
Will all of these come true? Absolutely not.
But will I pretend I predicted the future if even three of them land?
You bet I will.
So go ahead and bookmark this. Or print it. Or send it to your least fun coworker who thinks “Agile is just a process.”
Because the future’s coming fast. And if you’re not ready to evolve, automate, and laugh a little along the way, you’re gonna miss it.
