2025 was a year marked by big shifts in just about everything, from the workplace, tech, and the job market, to product management itself. Maybe the biggest influence has been AI and the overhaul of product it inspired. Another has been the general feeling that some of the discipline’s fundamentals are shifting, we’ve both read and published a lot about leading through change and what happens when everyone is product.
Across Mind the Product, we published and curated hundreds of articles exploring what this all means in practice. Through our Prioritised newsletter, we also kept a close eye on what resonated most with readers. If you haven't subscribed to our weekly curated newsletter, sign up for free here!
A few themes stood out
Looking back at what captured the attention of our Prioritised newsletter subscribers this year, a few clear themes emerged:
Strategy, judgment & business framing: many of you want to extend your influence beyond execution and into executive-level decision making. Some articles that stood out here:
AI: Practical and grounded. Totally understandable, and many readers especially enjoyed articles that eschewed the hype for measurable, applicable approaches. Some pieces that stood out were:
- Customer Interview Analysis: Where AI Helps and Hurts
- A deep dive into NotebookLM
Product craft & foundations: your bread and butter (and ours!). There was a lot of interest in deepening understanding of the basics and getting up to speed on best practices. Some notable mentions:
Roadmaps, planning & execution amid ambiguity: especially around planning season. We understand, and we have your back. Some of your favourite articles included:
- Pre-mortems: How a Stripe Product Manager prevents problems before launch
- How To Plan Your 2026 Product Roadmap With AI Without Bleeding Money
Influence, communication & people problems: a good PM wears many hats, but perhaps none of them as often as those of communicator, mediator, peace-keeper. They must stand up for their vision, advocate for their team, influence at all organisational levels, and stay sane while doing it all. What stood out:
Most read articles on the Prioritised newsletter in 2025
These themes played out across hundreds of articles throughout the year, but ten rose to the top as the most-read by Prioritised subscribers. Together, they reflect what product managers found genuinely useful in 2025.
1. Is That Your Final Answer? Why Product Managers Should Always Present a Recommendation by Jason Knight
Product managers often hesitate to make recommendations, whether from past experiences or fear of being overridden. But not making a recommendation means giving away your chance to influence decision-making.
2. Prove Your Business Case by Amy Mitchell
It's no longer enough to be the voice of the customer, product managers must connect technology investments to measurable business outcomes. Without a compelling business case, funding shifts to initiatives that demonstrate clear ROI and strategic alignment.
3. What AI can't—and shouldn't—do for product managers by Jenny Wanger
AI can handle scheduling, transcripts, and pattern-matching, but great products are built on human connection. This article discusses how we need to draw the line at outsourcing the deep empathy and understanding that comes from personally processing user research and building layered insights over time.
4. 3 Valuable Lessons I've Learned About Designing Products for Internal Tool Users by Yuval Asis
Internal users are accessible yet often overlooked. Spend time shadowing them to understand their workflows and frustrations. Design for efficiency and guidance. Your colleagues' productivity and success depends on these tools working seamlessly in their everyday work.
5. 5 Product Vision Mistakes You Should Avoid by Roman Pichler
Product visions should stay largely fixed like the North Star, captured as big, hairy, audacious goals. Avoid stating solutions or business goals in your vision, narrow visions are more likely to change as products evolve across their lifecycle.
6. The Orchestration Challenge for Product Managers by Amy Mitchell
As organisations flatten and AI accelerates delivery, orchestration becomes the missing bridge from requirements to outcomes. PMs who can hold the threads together earn leadership trust and deliver customer value.
7. Precision over hype: A product manager's playbook for launching AI that lands by Harshal Tripathi
Skip the AI buzzwords and focus on solving real user problems with measurable outcomes. Successful AI features require clear use cases, appropriate technology choices, and transparent expectations about what the AI can and cannot do.
8. How to succeed as a product manager building developer experiences by Siddarth Ramadoss
Technical PMs must understand developer workflows and tools, from ETL processes to data pipelines. Your product should seamlessly integrate with existing ecosystems, enhancing productivity rather than creating additional work.
9. Product Roadmap Best Practices – 11 Do's & Don'ts to Instantly Improve Your Roadmap by Janna Bastow
Your roadmap is a strategic tool for solving problems. Don't treat it like a product backlog or become a feature factory. Regular updates ensure your roadmap remains an actionable guide that drives product success in a fast-moving environment.
10. Data Without Structure is Just Noise by Ochade Udome
Scattered signals across email threads, Slack messages, and Notion pages feel like chaos without a system to surface them. Without a structured framework to tell the data story, even the most important problems sound like just another opinion.
Did we miss your favourite article? Let us know at editor@mindtheproduct.com!
