The Manager Who Doesn't Use AI Has Already Lost: Hard Skills
Developers code with AI. Designers mock up with AI. QA automates with AI. How about you? TL;DR: AI removes the manager's cognitive limit. You should use it to sharpen your decisions, not just to summarize emails. This is the first part of the extended article version of my ninth talk at Nerdearla , in September 2026. The second part covers the soft skills: managing people. The talk is in Spanish…
In the 1990s, maintaining a video rental system required physical presence in an office setting with limited communication channels. Decisions were made through office gossip, and managers only supervised from a distance. The planning process involved creating extensive Gantt charts and estimating project completion times, which often turned out to be inaccurate. Estimation methods were mostly guesses, and project timelines were rarely accurate.
Fast forward to today, where developers code, designers mock up, and QA automate using AI. The manager's cognitive limitations are removed, allowing them to make sharper decisions through the use of AI. Planning now occurs in short, adaptable cycles, typically lasting a few months, with priorities and dates not clearly defined from the start.
AI tools like /analyze-constraints, /prioritize, and /slicing help identify bottlenecks, rank work against goals, and split tasks into smaller increments that can be delivered and verified separately. Estimation has shifted from relying on magic methods to learning as you go, with prioritized backlogs constantly changing. The prototype development process has evolved from mockups and COBOL shells to vibe coding, allowing for real-time user validation and immediate feedback.
Time tracking has become less relevant in the modern era, as the focus is on iterative and incremental development rather than estimating completion times.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
