Speed Isn't Strategy: Onil Gunawardana's 5Ps Before AI Automation

Before You Automate: The 5Ps of Product You Can't Skip

AI can make your team move faster. It will not tell you where to go. As Onil Gunawardana puts it, "Automation increases velocity, but it doesn't create direction." If your team hasn't aligned on the problem or the user, speed becomes a liability.

The 5Ps of Product at a glance

5Ps of Product is a simple way to connect strategy to execution before you add tools or automation. It forces the decisions that actually guide the work.

• Problem: What painful, valuable problem are we solving? What evidence proves it's real now? How will we know it's solved?
• Persona: Who is the primary user and buyer? What job are they trying to get done? What context, constraints, and triggers matter?
• Product: What is the core value and sharp scope? What are explicit non-goals for this release?
• Platform: Where does it live (web, mobile, data stack)? What tech, data, privacy, and integration constraints shape our choices?
• Promotion: How will people discover, try, and adopt it? Which channels, pricing/packaging, and enablement are required?

What breaks when you automate too soon

• Unclear problem definitions produce endless output with no outcome.
• Misaligned priorities create thrash across design, eng, and GTM.
• No owner for tradeoffs means scope creeps while accountability disappears.
• Teams struggle to answer: Why does this exist? Who is it for? What does success look like?

Tools are enablers, not judgment

Automation is great at execution-backlog grooming, test generation, experiment analysis, content ops. It does not make the calls that matter. Scope, prioritization, and success criteria are leadership decisions. Do the hard thinking first; then let the tools help you scale it.

Apply the 5Ps this week (90-minute sprint)

• 15 min - Problem: Write a one-sentence problem statement and a single success metric. Example: "Reduce onboarding time for mid-market admins from 45 to 15 minutes."
• 15 min - Persona: Pick one primary persona. List their top three pains and the trigger that makes them act.
• 20 min - Product: Define the smallest testable solution. Add a non-goals list to protect focus.
• 20 min - Platform: Note platform decisions, dependencies, and constraints (data, privacy, integrations, performance).
• 20 min - Promotion: Map the first activation path: channel → promise → proof → action. Set one activation metric.

Guardrails before you switch on AI

• Decision log: Document the 5Ps and share them in your work hub.
• Owner: Name a single DRI for scope changes and tradeoffs.
• Prioritization: Pick a simple method like RICE so automation doesn't flood you with noise. See Intercom's overview of RICE prioritization here.
• North Star: Tie all automation output to one product outcome. A primer on the North Star Framework is here.

One-page 5Ps template

• Problem: Statement, evidence, success metric
• Persona: Primary user/buyer, JTBD, key pains
• Product: Core value, scope, non-goals
• Platform: Tech decisions, data needs, constraints
• Promotion: Channel, message, proof, pricing/packaging, activation metric

Where AI automation fits

• After the 5Ps are locked: use AI for research synthesis, competitor diffing, PRD drafts, test cases, release notes, and support macros.
• With guardrails: tie prompts to your Problem and Persona, limit scope to your non-goals list, and review outputs against your success metric.

Why this framework is credible

Onil Gunawardana has led product teams at Google, Snowflake, eBay, and LiveRamp, contributing to products that generated more than $2B in incremental revenue. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and engineering degrees from Stanford and Yale. He also co-founded Inspire, a nonprofit that has supported over 300,000 students.

Next steps

• Run the 90-minute session with your core team and publish the one-page 5Ps.
• Turn on automation only where it accelerates what you've already decided.
• Level up team skills for responsible AI use with focused training: AI courses by job and AI automation certification.

Speed is easy. Direction is earned. Do the 5Ps, then automate.