In response to growing interest in the challenges of product management, we organized a roundtable focused on “Expert Opinions on Product Management Challenges in 2024.” This session brought together leading product managers to discuss the evolving landscape of product development, the key obstacles they face, and the strategies they employ to navigate them. Discussions centred around the impact of emerging technologies, the importance of customer-centric innovation, balancing speed with quality, and optimizing the user experience.
Our experts:
Heta Vaishnani, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft
Alper Özer, Senior Product Manager at Vinter
Lilian Ekpere, Senior Product Manager at SeamHealth Innovations
Daria Beliakova, Senior Product Manager at Monday.com
Murat Candogan, Senior Product Manager at Yandex
Alex Zinoviev, Founder GenAI Lab
Shumaila Batool, Senior Product Manager at CAFU
Akinrodolu Oluwaseun, Product Manager at Federal Ministry of Communications
Akogwu Martha Ochefije, Senior Product Manager at AjoCard
Bruno Leo-Nwoye, Product Manager at OmniRetail Technology Limited
Alex Perestykh, Senior Product Manager at MySky
Evgeny Pavlov, Staff Product Manager at Deel
Heta Vaishnani, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
Challenge 1: The Challenge of Thoughtful AI Automation in 2024
In 2024, the biggest challenge in product management wasn’t just about adding AI — it was about using it thoughtfully to deliver real value. Many products rushed to include AI features, but often AI was only added to enhance the product with minimal impact. One common mistake was adding chatbots without fully understanding AI's potential. AI’s true value lies in automating workflows, improving decision-making, and enhancing customer experiences, not just adding trendy features. We focused on integrating AI as an active automation engine, predicting user needs and offering intelligent suggestions. Balancing automation with user control was key — ensuring users felt empowered rather than overruled. Transparency and trust in AI actions were also crucial, so we allowed users to reverse actions and fine-tune how automation worked for them. The challenge moving forward will be refining AI models to be more context-aware, ethical, and trustworthy.
Challenge 2: The Challenge of Speed, Simplicity, and Personalization
As user expectations evolve in 2024, speed, simplicity, and personalization have become central challenges. Users now expect instant results — whether it’s onboarding, search, or task completion. If a product takes too long, they drop off. To meet these demands, we prioritized speed by streamlining processes, minimizing steps, and leveraging AI to automate tasks. Additionally, users no longer want to search for what they need; they expect the product to surface relevant content and actions automatically. This led us to shift from a navigation-based experience to a personalization-driven one, using AI recommendations and smart defaults. Another challenge was retaining users, as they quickly jump between platforms. To increase adoption, we experimented with bite-sized experiences that rewarded users in smaller, more manageable steps. As users continue to demand effortless experiences, the future of product management will focus on continuous simplification, automation, and personalization.
Alper Özer, Senior Product Manager at Vinter
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
One of the biggest challenges I faced as a Product Manager in 2024 was adapting to the rapid evolution of technology and shifting user expectations.
The rise of AI, especially tools like ChatGPT, transformed the landscape. Users now demand hyper-personalized, AI-powered experiences that deliver instant value. While integrating such advanced capabilities into our products, we had to navigate the fine line between innovation and ethical responsibility, ensuring data privacy and trust.
Balancing the speed of technological advancements with the need for thoughtful, user-centric design was a constant test. It wasn’t just about keeping up; it was about staying ahead while creating meaningful, responsible solutions.
Lilian Ekpere, Senior Product Manager at SeamHealth Innovations
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
One of the biggest challenges I faced as a product manager in 2024 was managing competing priorities among stakeholders. In any product development cycle, it’s common for engineering, sales, leadership, and users to have different — and sometimes conflicting — expectations. Engineering might advocate for technical feasibility and debt reduction, sales push for quick-win features to close deals, leadership focuses on long-term roadmap goals, and users want immediate solutions to their pain points. Striking the right balance between these demands has required constant prioritization and clear communication.
For example, there were moments when the sales team urgently needed a feature to secure a deal, but implementing it would have disrupted the engineering team’s efforts to stabilize the platform. In such scenarios, I’ve relied on frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to evaluate priorities objectively and ensure alignment with our strategic goals. Transparent communication about trade-offs was also essential to manage expectations and keep teams focused on delivering impactful outcomes.
As a product manager focused on health tech, I also faced the unique challenge of navigating the boom in AI and its immense opportunities within this space. The rapid advancements in AI have created high expectations for innovation, especially in healthcare, where AI has the potential to revolutionize patient care, diagnostics, and operational efficiency. However, integrating AI effectively in health tech requires balancing the promise of cutting-edge technology with the practicalities of delivering real value to clinicians and patients.
For instance, while working on an AI-driven feature for patient management, I faced significant pressure to launch quickly to capitalize on market demand. However, ensuring the feature’s accuracy and usability in clinical settings was paramount. Health tech tools directly impact patient outcomes, so speed-to-market could not come at the expense of safety or compliance.
To address this, we prioritized rigorous testing, gathered extensive feedback from clinicians, and refined the feature to seamlessly integrate into their workflows. This process also involved navigating complex regulatory requirements, ensuring data privacy, and maintaining transparency about AI’s limitations. Balancing these demands required constant collaboration across teams and a focus on practical innovation — ensuring the AI truly enhanced patient care without adding unnecessary complexity for users.
Ultimately, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that product management is a constant exercise in trade-offs. Whether it’s managing stakeholder expectations or ensuring that an AI feature truly improves patient care, success lies in maintaining focus on what will deliver the most value — not just in the short term but also for the product’s long-term vision.
Daria Beliakova, Senior Product Manager at Monday.com
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
My biggest challenge as a product manager in 2024 has been navigating prioritisation in an increasingly efficiency-focused market.
The economic slowdown shifted the tech industry towards profitability and concrete results. The traditional 'fail fast' mindset has been replaced by a more calculated approach to product development. The bar for what constituted "an acceptable product experiment" kept rising, requiring product managers to become much more rigorous in evaluating potential initiatives and more skilled at stakeholder communication.
In 2024 product bets needed to have a more straightforward path to ROI, which meant:
- Building more substantial business cases for product features tied directly to revenue instead of having an option to focus to engagement/adoption growth;
- Having more complex conversations about tradeoffs between short-term wins and long-term product innovation which required stronger communication skills and sometimes significant levels of emotional intelligence;
- Spending more time on pre-validation to de-risk initiatives before committing resources as leadership sought not 100%, but 110% conviction in priorities.
Murat Candogan, Senior Product Manager at Yandex
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
In 2024, changing economic conditions have posed significant challenges for product managers as companies recalibrated their strategies. Access to cash for growth has become harder than ever, shifting the focus to profitability and cash-positive operations. As a result, organizations are concentrating on their core businesses — where revenue is most reliably generated. Unfortunately, this has often led to tough decisions like layoffs, emphasizing the "80/20 rule," where 20% of the talent drives 80% of the outcomes. This challenging environment highlights the need for product managers to refine essential skills such as communication, execution, and analytics to remain indispensable. With the average person expected to hold around 12jobs over their career, developing a strong foundation of core skills isn’t just a strategy — it’s a necessity for thriving in an ever-evolving professional landscape.
Additionally, the product management job market has become increasingly competitive, with open roles shrinking by 40%, according to Lenny’s Newsletter. Having gone through a job search this year, I witnessed how much tougher the hiring process has become since my previous experience in 2022. Back then, a few interviews often led to multiple offers within weeks. In 2024, the journey was far more rigorous, with multi-step processes including week-long assignments, technical assessments, and over 10 interviews for some roles. This experience taught me three critical lessons: mastering fundamental PM skills is essential; meaningful connections with colleagues can provide invaluable support during the job search; and interviews are a two-way street. It’s crucial to assess a company’s culture, expectations, and success metrics to ensure alignment and satisfaction in your next role.
Alex Zinoviev, Founder GenAI Lab
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in 2024 has been balancing rapid GenAI advancements with prctical application. It’s tempting to try every new tool that promises to streamline innovation and product development, but not all of them truly deliver value. You can lose a lot of time experimenting if you don’t keep the real customer problem in focus. That’s why it’s crucial to choose only a few tools to pilot and be prepared to revert to proven methods if they don’t prove worthwhile.
Another challenge has been recognising the critical role of unique data assets in shaping product strategy. Data is the foundation for delivering personalised customer experiences, enabling agentic workflows, and unlocking new product features and extensions. In the world of AI, leveraging data effectively has become a significant competitive advantage, however it requires careful planning and alignment to fully realise its potential.
The roles within product teams are evolving. We are now moving towards AI-native teams, which come with the added challenge of integrating AI agents or Custom GPTs as core team members. I found myself needing more technical fluency. As these agents take on tasks traditionally handled by humans, I had to rethink team dynamic, providing onboarding, training, and ongoing support for AI agents, much like human colleagues. Balancing this requires new frameworks for collaboration, accountability, and ensuring both human and AI contributions align with the product vision.
Bruno Leo-Nwoye, Product Manager at OmniRetail Technology Limited
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
As a Product Manager in a B2B ecommerce startup where technology underpins every operational facet, my challenges in 2024 revolved around harmonizing diverse perspectives, scaling sustainably, and navigating rapid technological shifts. Here’s a deeper dive into these hurdles and how they shaped my approach:
1. Aligning Cross-Functional Stakeholders Amid Conflicting Priorities
In a startup environment, departments often operate with competing KPIs. For instance:
- Sales pushed for client-specific features to secure short-term revenue.
- Engineering prioritized foundational refactoring to avoid long-term technical debt.
- Operations demanded system stability to maintain daily efficiency.
This misalignment risked delays and fragmented efforts. During a product expansion phase, tensions peaked when Sales urgently requested a high-value client customization while Engineering was mid-way through overhauling a legacy system. To resolve this, I:
- Hosted collaborative workshops to map priorities to overarching business goals.
- Introduced a weighted scoring framework to evaluate feature impact (e.g., revenue potential vs. scalability).
- Instituted bi-weekly stakeholder syncs to maintain transparency and adjust roadmaps dynamically.
This fostered trust, reduced conflicts, and ensured short-term wins didn’t compromise long-term resilience.
2. Balancing Innovation with Technical Health
The pressure to outpace competitors with AI-driven features (e.g., predictive inventory management) often clashed with the need to maintain system reliability. Early iterations of rushed AI tools caused outages, disrupting Operations. To address this:
- Partnered with Engineering to implement phased rollouts and "stability thresholds" (performance benchmarks for full deployment).
- Dedicated 20% of sprint cycles to tech debt, framing it as "future-proofing" to secure stakeholder buy-in.
- Launched a shared dashboard tracking feature performance and system health metrics, aligning teams on trade-offs.
Shumaila Batool, Senior Product Manager at CAFU
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
2024 has been a whirlwind year for product managers, with exciting innovations and tough challenges shaping how we approach our work. Here are some of the biggest challenges I faced — and how they reflect the trends shaping the world of product management.
Aligning Cross-Functional Teams Without Losing Momentum
In large organizations, alignment is everything — but it’s also one of the hardest things to achieve. Leading a significant migration project required constant coordination between engineering, sales, and operations teams. Misalignment could have meant missed deadlines or failed launches, so I turned to quarterly roadmaps, regular alignment meetings, and stakeholder workshops. The result? We hit our goals without dropping the ball.
Balancing Innovation and Stability
2024 has been the year of automation and AI, but introducing innovation often comes with the risk of disrupting existing workflows. For instance, while automating key operational processes saved time and reduced errors, it was crucial to ensure the feature was reliable enough to avoid operational hiccups. Balancing bold changes with stability has become a core part of modern product management.
Navigating Economic Pressures
Budget constraints were a defining challenge this year. Every feature needed a clear ROI to secure investment. When stakeholders proposed changes to pricing models, I modeled the potential revenue boost and customer impact using interactive calculators. Data-driven decision-making saved us from costly mistakes — a trend that’s only growing more critical.
Driving Adoption in Competitive Markets
Saturated markets make it harder to stand out. In 2024, launching innovative features was only half the battle; the real work came in driving adoption. Partnering with teams to create tailored training materials and onboarding experiences helped us boost adoption rates and ensure features delivered real value.
Embracing Generative AI — Without Losing the Human Touch
Generative AI became the superstar of 2024, transforming everything from data analysis to customer communication. But the challenge was in using it thoughtfully. AI tools accelerated decision-making and operational tasks, but I found the sweet spot was treating AI as a collaborator, not a replacement. It’s about balancing speed with strategic judgment.
2024 has proven that product management is a field of constant evolution. From aligning teams to embracing AI, the challenges may be tough — but the opportunities to innovate are endless. Here’s to 2025 and all the possibilities it brings!
Akinrodolu Oluwaseun, Product Manager at Federal Ministry of Communications
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
AI is everywhere, and companies are racing to integrate it into their products. But I’ve learned firsthand that not every AI feature actually solves a real user problem. I’ve been on teams that spent months building AI-powered features, only to realize that users didn’t find them valuable — or worse, they still preferred a more human-driven approach.
The excitement around AI can sometimes cloud judgment, leading teams to ship features that look impressive on paper but fail in execution. Just because something is powered by AI doesn’t mean it improves the user experience. The best AI implementations feel invisible, seamlessly enhancing workflows, reducing friction, and providing real value.
The real lesson? AI should be a tool for impact, not a checkbox for innovation. If it doesn’t solve a clear problem, it’s just noise.
Akogwu Martha Ochefije, Senior Product Manager at AjoCard
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
Managing stakeholders can be quite challenging, particularly when working with individuals who may not fully understand the role of a product manager. Often, stakeholders approach product managers with broad or unrealistic expectations, assuming that technology can solve any issue. They may present problems without a clear understanding of constraints, expecting immediate solutions — whether it’s a business challenge or an ambitious request, such as sending their child to the moon. This mindset reinforces the belief that technology alone should provide answers, without considering the complexities involved.
This challenge is particularly evident within the Nigerian startup ecosystem. In more established companies, product managers typically oversee specific features or segments of a product. However, in many Nigerian startups, a single product manager is often responsible for managing multiple features across an entire product. This structure creates an expectation that one individual can continuously improve every aspect of the product, which is not always feasible.
Engaging with stakeholders about the limitations of a particular approach or advocating for an alternative direction can sometimes be met with resistance. As a result, one of the key skills I am actively developing is the ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders. Understanding each stakeholder as an individual — how they think, what their priorities are, and how they approach problem-solving — allows for more effective communication. By tailoring conversations to different stakeholders, I aim to help them see things from my perspective, fostering better collaboration and ultimately contributing to the success of the product. Managing stakeholders, in many ways, has become a skill that requires continuous refinement — a dynamic and strategic effort rather than a straightforward process.
Alex Perestykh, Senior Product Manager at MySky
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
Product management is not clearly defined, especially in the MENA region where I’m currently working. The biggest challenge lies in balancing the day-to-day operational tasks of team leadership and project management with the long-term goals of product management, research, and deep thinking.
Evgeny Pavlov, Staff Product Manager at Deel
What have been the biggest challenges you've faced as product manager in 2024?
The biggest challenge for me is to make a correct prediction of how AI will impact the PM role. I have not seen much impact yet besides thinks like helping to draft a PRD but I see the trend. I believe in the near future the traditional product squads (PM+designer+engineers+qa+data) will cease to exist. Instead there will be just 1 IC who is capable of doing design with AI, coding with AI and shipping with AI.