Your question implies that it can be developed, and to that point, I 1,000% agree. Contrary to what a lot of PMs believe, product sense is not something you need to be born with. It’s a learned skill, just like any other PM skill.
Love this article. Would add one other big bucket outside of "Build empathy" and "Improve creativity":
3. Dissect the product sense loop:
a. Identify all product and users assumptions
b. Construct experiments and approaches to prove/disprove
c. Deeply analyze outcomes, and reflect on why you were right or wrong [and repeat]
This last piece is the way to _prove_ and know that you are actually improving product sense over time. If your product assumptions get proven more and more frequently (i.e. when you started, you were right 2/10 times and now you are right 8/10 times), you know your product sense is improving. The process of actively reflecting on this helps speed up the skill being developed.
Truly loved this article. It was very insightful and gave practical tips to develop empathy and improve creativity. thank you so much Lenny for sharing this .
This is really insightful. I had a question. So if we take an example of a B2B legacy enterprise product, where the users are just concerned with the jobs to be done and not with other aspects like user experience and parameters, how do we ensure that we are adding value to the product
Love this article. Would add one other big bucket outside of "Build empathy" and "Improve creativity":
3. Dissect the product sense loop:
a. Identify all product and users assumptions
b. Construct experiments and approaches to prove/disprove
c. Deeply analyze outcomes, and reflect on why you were right or wrong [and repeat]
This last piece is the way to _prove_ and know that you are actually improving product sense over time. If your product assumptions get proven more and more frequently (i.e. when you started, you were right 2/10 times and now you are right 8/10 times), you know your product sense is improving. The process of actively reflecting on this helps speed up the skill being developed.
Fantastic article! Lots for me to learn from this.
Great article with practical takeaways!
Truly loved this article. It was very insightful and gave practical tips to develop empathy and improve creativity. thank you so much Lenny for sharing this .
This is a great article and opportunity to learn! Thank you so much for sharing this!
thank you so much for this article! So helpful and filled with so much related content!
So much wisdom in one such article - Looking forward to article on how to get better at execution.
Is it possible to highlight specific lines using a highlighter in Substack app or in web?
This is really insightful. I had a question. So if we take an example of a B2B legacy enterprise product, where the users are just concerned with the jobs to be done and not with other aspects like user experience and parameters, how do we ensure that we are adding value to the product
Amazing article! So many gems. Also, shout out BPM!! Good stuff Jules👏🏾