How to improve
your Product
Sense?
Manjeet Singh - The Ninja PM
@CoachManjeet

What will you learn from this
presentation?
1. Deconstruct product sense
2. Framework to improve
3. Useful exercises to level up
4. Identify gaps to align with continuous improvement plan
5. Lesson learned and key takeaways

● Group PM @ ServiceNow
● Product Manager @HP
● Founder of Agile Fitness
● Various roles@ Startup
Me

What is product sense?

Product
Manager
Analytical
Sense
Product
Sense
Leadership
Sense
Technologies: AI/ML/BlockChain/IoT/Cloud/Mobile/Chatbots/Apps
People: User Needs/User Experience
Execution
Sense
Health
Sense

What is
product
sense?
● Empathy: having good self awareness and
empathy about the user.
● Domain Knowledge: ability to understand what
makes a product great.
● Creativity: ability to find novel solutions to a
situation/problem.
● Business Value: ability to build for value

Product sense = The
ability to build for value
● 3 ways to create value
● Think about product value from
the user perspective.
● Sharp product sense + drive to
deliver = ship delightful products.

Example questions to test product sense
1. Build a new product to solve for X?
2. How would you build an X [type of product] for Y [user]?
3. How to improve an existing product?
4. What is your favorite product/app and why?
5. Product design, identify KPIs, or user journey mapping exercise

How to improve Product Sense?

Building expertise in any skill involves deliberate
practice, consistent routine, and a daily willingness to
progress beyond physical and mental pain.

1 2 3 4
Framework: correct sequence + right input
Identify
customers
Understand
their problem
and needs
Help create
winning solution
Tell the story
and manage the
product

Understand
what makes a
product great
● Utility
● Ease of use
● Delighter/Wow factor
● Strategic alignment
● Overall potential

Frame and reframe the problem
● Good problem statements articulate
three elements:
○ Audience- who are you building for?
○ Problem - what is the specific
need/problem?
○ Value - what is the value of solving the
problem?
● A good problem statement aligned with
strategy brings excitement.
Example from Amazon:

Useful exercises
to level up

Exercises:
Identify
user and
product
goals
● Take a popular product that you use
○ Write down who uses the product
○ Write down all of the goals
○ Look at the PR & Marketing material
● Do design teardown exercise
○ wow moments, questions, doubts, broader observation
● Come up with problems not solved in the
product . Then suggest possible solutions to it.
● Consider technical and non-technical products

Airbnb: Breaking down the app
Source: Medium

A great example
of how design
influences our
actions

Learn to
identify
good
insights
● Review product highlights:
○ Go to product hunt or app store and read lots of
product reviews by many people.
○ They point out what someone loved and what they wish
was better.
○ Write up where you disagree and discuss with friends.
● Write down your own summary of famous
keynote conferences.
○ Focus on what they think about the product and how
the demo was structured.
○ Read https://stratechery.com/

Exercises to
come up
with new
use cases
● Use SCAMPER brainstorming framework.
○ For example, what happens when you combine Dropbox
and Airbnb?
○ Or integrate Facebook for work and Outlook
● Think of adjacent areas beyond a particular
feature.
● Think about how a similar problem is solved in a
different industry.
● Think about how you can leverage it in your
situation.

Example: How would you design a bookshelf for children?
● Word association
○ Write all personas
○ Features
● SCAMPER:
○ Substitute
○ Combine
○ Adapt
○ Modify
○ Put to another use
○ Eliminate
○ Reverse

Ask experts in your org/network
● It is not your job to have good
ideas. It is your job to champion
them.
● Map out the value curve of your
product space.
● Let team play with your POC and
ask them to think “as user”

Strategy: find alignment and
intersection
Bottom up from Customer
● Enterprise use Saas platform to
improve business value gain.
● In ITSM, these consumers are doing
through digitizing and optimizing their
service/process workflows.
Top down from Company
● Enable regular people to route work
effectively through the enterprise.
● Digitize your workflows
● Make work, work better

4 common
ways you can
create new
products
● Solve a problem for people
● Change the experience of an existing product
● Target a fear/insecurity in people
● Make rich people stuff available to commoners

Identify skill gaps and create continuous
improvement plan

Product sense: the ability to make
correct product decisions even when
there is significant ambiguity.
Execution sense: the ability to align
people towards an objective and build
complex projects.
Analytical sense: the ability to frame the
right questions, evaluate a problem from
multiple facets, simulate outcomes, be
able to use data.
10-30-50 framework for growth in the PM Role
Credit: Shreyas Doshicredit : Shreyas Doshi

Are you the PM you really want to be?
● Identify your skills and strength
○ What comes easy
○ What you enjoy doing and keep
doing without getting paid
○ What makes you grow
● Not all PM positions are equal
○ Find alignment between your
current responsibilities and the
work that you really want to do.

Manage your career like a project
Assess your Skills
today
Gap: Additional Skills
Goal: Become the best
PM leader

Lesson learned and
key takeaways

Become a
student of
useful
frameworks
● AARRR: How to define KPIs
● HEART: How to choose right UX metrics
● 5 W's & H: How to get requirements right
● Hooked: How to build habit forming product
● Cost/benefits/risk: How to prioritize
● 4P’s: Marketing mix
● 5 C’s: Product Pricing

Mistakes to
avoid
● Selling yourself on your own idea: "this will work."
● Build products without fully understanding the
customer problems.
● Trying to solve product-market fit by adding loads
of new features.
● Not talking to customer/dev/design teams
frequently
● Believing that releasing a product is the end
goal.

Interview
preparation
tips
1. Do targeted preparation based on company/role.
2. Think about persona, solution and mistake you made
from previous similar product (your stories)
3. Be curious to new product insight that are not easy to
find using a quick search.
4. Talk about KPIs- what is one unique KPI to capture value
5. Show your technical abilities. AI/ML/Coding, problem
solving.
6. Talk about creative solutions - baseline plus something
new.

1 2 3 4
Recap: Key Takeaways
Identify gaps in your
strengths, lay out a
plan to improve, and
start deliberate
practice. Everyday.
Become a student of
frameworks and the
continual
improvement
mindset.
Focus on learning,
test your idea quickly.
Strive to become
customer champion
asap.
Be intentional about
who you work with
and what product you
work on.

Do not forget to build your ‘Health Sense’
(because when you are sick in bed - all other strong PM senses are
of no use)
-Coach Manjeet

Thank you for being
here.