How to Develop Your Product Sense as a Product Manager.
In product management, in order to develop a successful product, having a keen understanding of user needs, the market, and the ability to create a product that solves a problem or fulfills a need is very crucial. Hence, that is where product sense comes in.
In this article, we will explore what product sense is — the difference between product sense and intuition, its importance, and how you can sharpen your product sense.
What is Product Sense?
Product sense is about having a well-rounded understanding of your product, your users, and the market. It’s a combination of experience, analytical skills, market research, business strategy, and project management to help guide successful product development and management.
What is the difference between product sense and intuition?
Most time people tend to confuse product sense with basic intuition, let explore the difference below;
- Product sense is a function of deeply understanding the product, user needs, and market, while Product intuition is a function of gut feeling or instinct.
- Product sense supports its hypothesis with data and can be validated through testing and user feedback, while Product intuition makes it difficult to validate the hypothesis and sometimes it does not have a hypothesis to validate against.
- Product sense insights are drawn from data, user research, market analysis, and domain experience, while Product intuition insights are based on personal experience or feelings.
See the chart below from Lenny’s survey of ~1,000 PMs
Importance of Product Sense to Product Manager:
- As a product manager, having a product sense helps you understand and empathize with your users.
- It allows you to make informed decisions about feature prioritization, product roadmaps, and trade-offs.
- A strong product sense helps you spot opportunities for innovation.
- It enables you to articulate a clear vision for the product and align stakeholders around it.
- It helps you identify the root causes of issues and address them in ways that improve the overall user experience.
- Product sense helps ensure that the product fits well within its market segment.
How to Develop Product Sense
Product sense is a skill and not a talent. So you can refine it through practice, so much that it’s almost natural.
- Great product managers understand their target audience and their needs.
- Conduct market research and user testing to gain insights into your audience’s wants from time to time, taking into consideration factors such as pricing, marketing, and distribution.
- Keep an eye on the competition.
- Use data and user feedback to improve your product continually.
In conclusion, Product sense is an essential skill for us product managers, it enables us to create products that meet user needs, fit within the market, and achieve business goals. By developing and refining our product sense, we can make better decisions, spot opportunities for innovation, and lead your product to success.
