Modern software teams are built around four core functions - Engineering, Product, Design, and Research (EPDR) - working together to ship valuable software. Engineers code, designers visualize, researchers synthesize user behavior, and product managers align all inputs to define what users prefer and guide the team toward building the right product.

But the pace of software development is fundamentally changing. With the rise of AI tools - from IDE copilots and automated PR reviews to prompt-to-app and prompt-to-design platforms - the speed of shipping code has increased by up to 10x. The success of applications going forward transitions from technical bottlenecks to the speed and accuracy with which teams distill and act on user preferences.