Product Manager Practices for Delegating Work to Generative AI: "Accountability must not be delegated to non-human actors"

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02504v1
• Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:19:49 GMT
• Title: Product Manager Practices for Delegating Work to Generative AI: "Accountability must not be delegated to non-human actors"
• Authors: Mara Ulloa, Jenna L. Butler, Sankeerti Haniyur, Courtney Miller, Barrett Amos, Advait Sarkar, Margaret-Anne Storey,
• Abstract summary: Generative AI (GenAI) is changing the nature of knowledge work, particularly for Product Managers (PMs) in software development teams.<n>We conducted a mixed-methods study at Microsoft, a large, multinational software company.<n>We contribute: (1) PMs' current GenAI adoption rates, uses cases, and perceived benefits and barriers; (2) a framework capturing how PMs assess which tasks to delegate to GenAI; and (3) PMs adaptation practices for integrating GenAI into their roles and perceptions of how their role is evolving.
• Score: 14.99180726933919
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Generative AI (GenAI) is changing the nature of knowledge work, particularly for Product Managers (PMs) in software development teams. While much software engineering research has focused on developers' interactions with GenAI, there is less understanding of how the work of PMs is evolving due to GenAI. To address this gap, we conducted a mixed-methods study at Microsoft, a large, multinational software company: surveying 885 PMs, analyzing telemetry data for a subset of PMs (N=731), and interviewing a subset of 15 PMs. We contribute: (1) PMs' current GenAI adoption rates, uses cases, and perceived benefits and barriers and; (2) a framework capturing how PMs assess which tasks to delegate to GenAI; (3) PMs adaptation practices for integrating GenAI into their roles and perceptions of how their role is evolving. We end by discussing implications on the broader GenAI workflow adoption process and software development roles.

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