Working on an AI Copilot: A Day in the Life of an AI Product Manager

Allow me to tell you what it’s like to be a product manager working on Planview Copilot.

It’s been over a year since I last wrote about my realistic “day in the life as a product manager at Microsoft Bing.” Now that I’ve left for a smaller company called Planview and become the product manager (PM) for their flagship AI product, I figured it was time to refresh what my daily day looks like for everyone.

Again, I’m giving you a deeper dive into a more “realistic” day. Don’t worry, I don’t go past 60-hour work weeks. So without further ado…

My name is Kasey. I started my product career at Microsoft, and I now work at Planview as their product lead for Planview Copilot, an AI assistant that sits across Planview’s suite of portfolio and VSM solutions! If you want to learn more about how AI-based Copilots work, check out my article here.

Note: I usually go to the office for this job, and I only work from home once or twice a week. I tend to find myself more productive in the office, especially on days when my entire product team is there with me.

Nevertheless, I’ll go through a day in the life for both days.

Working from the office

7 AM 🥱

This is typically the time I get up. I know. It’s early for a tech person, but there’s a reason, and I’m sure for most of us who work with remote teams, you’ll understand. Some of the other product teams I have to collaborate with to ship our Planview Copilot properly are in CT, EST, and even GMT (UK time). Because I’m in Pacific time, we have to compromise to meet during overlapping work hours.

Anyway, I spend no more than 15 minutes getting ready and dressed; I’m usually out the door by 7:15 AM, hoping to reach the office by 8. Sometimes, if I have earlier meetings that I can’t avoid and I don’t have enough time to commute to the office cause of other meetings in the morning, I’ll wake up at 6 am and get to the office by 7. Early mornings are a common pain we suffer from living in PST.

8 AM

is usually the average time I arrive at the office. I try to get there a few minutes before the hour, cause usually my meetings come racing in with barely any time to put on a seatbelt. Again, sometimes you’ll find me there at 7:30 AM or 8:30 AM depending on when my earliest meeting (that I can’t avoid) is waiting for me. And before you tell me to just take it at home before commuting — I literally can’t. My calendar is clogged all morning 😮‍💨.

8–12 PM

During this time, my schedule is full of meetings. But let’s dive into it more: it’s usually a combination of customer calls (presentations about our AI Copilot — introductions to generative AI, how our product delivers value for customers, and potential use cases), delivery/execution syncs with other product teams, meetings with our data science or marketing teams in Austin TX.

Scrums with my Planview Copilot team.

I’m pretty much in constant discussions about the strategy surrounding a single product, but due to the number of other Planview platforms in which we’re shipping Copilot, there are numerous dependencies to constantly track as well.

For example, some product teams are more scrappy and some are more methodical with their backlogs, and thus you have to work with different planning schedules. One thing to note is that I’m always trying to get some actual work done on the side during these calls, depending on how important they are.

Developing and Testing Copilot

I’m testing out our Copilot, filing bugs, answering Slack questions or complaints, and fixing our product roadmap.

But before I go further, let me dive into our product (Planview Copilot) more and how it works! As you know, Copilots are AI assistants that have been sweeping the technology industry by storm, using LLMs (large language models) like OpenAI’s GPT4 model to generate text-based answers to user prompts. Planview Copilot, as you can imagine, operates as a customer-facing product that’s powered by these types of models. Additionally, there is a lot of architectural work with both our team and the data science team to ensure we can handle user prompts at scale. Customer data is where Planview Copilot shines — since our AI model can interpret customer data, our team has to balance between working on new cool features (like a new retry button) and backend work to improve our AI system. This is because our product team develops both the product’s UI (user interface), as well as the backend system that manages all the LLMs and customer data that enhance Planview Copilot’s responses.

Anyway, I digress — if I’m not doing all of that, I’m probably working on some sort of slide deck. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be able to get everything completed on time due to the numerous meetings I’m in.

An example of a slide deck would be a quarterly review that we provide to executives, where I report the quarterly success metrics for the product, as well as the features we’ve delivered and the upcoming plan for the next quarter.

12–1 PM

This is my usual lunchtime 🥪🍽️, but sometimes, due to different time zones with other teams, I take a call at 12:30 or 12 depending on how important it is. These calls can vary — customer calls or internal team chats to align on strategies for Planview Copilot. Otherwise, I’ll grab lunch and give myself a break for half an hour or so.

1–3 PM

More meetings are on my calendar, with a few breaks in between for getting actual work done. Again, I’ll have discussions with marketing, sales, and engineering, but the afternoon is often when I try to chat with my designer on a bi-weekly basis as well to go over the latest UI designs, ideas, and user stories. One constant (but common) struggle is working to get alignment on design/UI ideas for features; for example, while the designer and I like a prototype, others within the company above our pay grade may not. From here, it’s about stakeholder management and leadership without authority.

3–5 PM

Finally, my focus time arrives. Thanks to the differences in time zones, usually 3 is when other teams based in CT start logging off, leaving me the opportunity to go into silent mode and catch up on a day’s (or week’s) worth of product management work. This includes writing Jira epics and user stories, revising our roadmap, doing market research, and working on slide decks. I usually present to ELT or customers once every few weeks on average.

Perhaps what makes my role more fun is the chance to work with LLMs and practice prompt engineering. After all, our product is an AI-based Copilot that sits inside other Planview products, acting as an AI assistant for productivity, efficiency, and coaching.

As you know by now, Planview Copilot is Planview’s AI Assistant which helps Planview users (portfolio managers, scrum masters, and product managers) increase productivity, learn faster, and interpret metrics more easily. Through a chat window interface that sits on the page of other Planview products like Planview Viz (a value stream management tool), users could ask questions such as, “How do I reduce our project bottlenecks?” and Planview Copilot would generate a response using customer data and Planview’s shiny cabinet of resources.

Of course, since Planview has a whole array of products, we’re planning to launch Planview Copilot across more of them, with the same idea of being able to provide AI-generated insights based on the page the user is on.

5–6 PM

Typically this is when I decide to go home. Sometimes I don’t leave until 5:30 PM, but that’s only because I know by the time I arrive home, I’m not touching my work laptop until the next day, so I have to get my sh*t done before departing.

6:30–10 PM

I’m usually at home working on my side projects, working out at the gym, or calling with friends. Side projects consist of writing Medium articles (like this one), writing a manuscript for a new novel idea (I’m a fiction author), building a prototype for a code project (I also like to learn a bit of coding), working on my website, or working on my PM tech community in Vancouver. Otherwise, I’ll be, you know, taking a quick nap ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜.

One thing I want to note is yes, I do take breaks 😵‍💫. In between meetings or even focus sessions, I’ll read some newsletters, browse Reddit, read personal emails, reply to messages from friends, or even just go outside on a quick walk to get some steps in. After all, being sedentary all day isn’t great for anyone’s back, and unfortunately, my office doesn’t have many standing desks.

Working from home

The time I get up for work ranges drastically. It could be another 7 AM start to the day (yeah, I know, ugh 🥱), or it could just be 8:30 AM. It usually just depends on when my first meeting of the day is. I have a new working espresso machine at home, so of course anyone’s got to dedicate at least 15 minutes to making the perfect latte. It’s a necessity :) otherwise you’re going to see me head back to bed 🛏️.

9 AM–12 PM

More meetings 😵‍💫. Again, these types of meetings are roughly the same as before: customer presentations, alignment calls with other teams such as product, marketing, or data science, or even updates to leadership.

Again, I do take a few breaks now and then during the morning. I’ll make some coffee, catch up on personal emails or newsletters, check the stock markets, and even browse Reddit.

12–1 PM

Time for a productive lunch 🥪🍽️. If I manage to get at least half an hour to myself, then I’ll try to make something simple like a sandwich or use up a frozen meal. This is my chance to just relax and eat at home while reading a book. Recently, I picked up Mark Manson’s Everything is F*cked: A book about hope.

1–2 PM

I’m usually engrossed in more meetings. Besides the usual alignment calls with marketing, sales, and design, I also have to report to the CTO every week on product development progress, and this slot is usually when we have the call. If I’m not in a meeting, then I usually encounter an afternoon slump during this time and often struggle to keep myself awake without a second cup of coffee. Of course, if I got to wake up later than usual, then I struggle less with this.

2–3 PM is a mixed bag

If I don’t have anything, then I take a brief power nap to push myself through the day 🥱. Otherwise, I’m usually either on my last call for the day or working on either a slide deck or a requirement document (what some people call “specs”).

3–5 PM

It’s similar to my office days — finally, some focus time to follow up on a large list of to-dos. Replying to emails 📩, working on slide decks, reviewing the roadmap, writing user stories, testing out the product, prompt engineering, or getting something done for my boss (who’s luckily in the same timezone as me). I usually hardly go past 5 PM when I work from home since I start earlier in the mornings.

5–9 PM

Time for dinner, working out at the gym, reading, or working on side projects! Weekends are typically when I try to get more time in to get personal sh*t done.

And that’s it!

Of course, weekends are a different story altogether. I have so many streams of projects and activities going on outside of work that I could turn it into a different article, but I reckoned the work days is what most of you are all curious about anyway.

Hopefully this breakdown provides some fun insight!

About Me

My name is Kasey, AKA J.X. Fu (pen name). I’m passionate about writing, technology, AI, gaming, and storytelling.

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