Product Sense: A Key Skill For Product Managers

Product managers are the heart and soul of any product development team. Their overarching view helps development teams deliver the product as per the vision. Today, most companies use "product sense" as a key benchmark to evaluate and hire product managers.

But what is Product Sense? It's a kind of 6th sense that one develops as a product manager. It's an ability to understand the success or failure of a product with the right intuition/judgement. But do all product managers possess this superpower since career birth? Not really; it's a learned skill. Developing product skills is just like developing any other talent.

You develop an almost natural instinct when you do something multiple times, like how the user's brain is trained to search for a back button on the top left corner of an app interface on any touchscreen device. Touch screens have been so deep-seated in our minds through knowledge and practise it feels almost natural now to use any other touch-related medium.

As product managers, there will be instances where your team members will rely on your decisions. And to make quality decisions, product sense will play a crucial role. It helps bring unique insights, drives user value, and impacts overall business performance.

Four essential practices that can help build product sense:

• Observe user experiences and reactions to different products: Observe products used by the masses (your own + competitors). This will help you identify user needs and help you understand what works and what doesn't.?

• Deconstruct different products: To better understand why some products in the same category perform well and some don't, the best practice is to compare them against each other from ground zero. This helps one understand key product decisions and strategies. The more you observe and deconstruct different products, the more insights you gain.

• Learn from the Masters (Product Thinkers): To learn a skill well, you need to learn from its master. For example, if you admire someone's creativity in your team or area of work, learn from them. Observe their decision-making skills and how they implement them during difficult situations.?

• Always be curious about emerging trends: Learn about different trends in technology, be it your industry or another. For example, if something is booming among users in your domain, as a product manager, try to take inspiration and reshape your product around it if it's a natural fit. Ask yourself, "If this trend booms, what opportunities can I create for the product?"

Developing product sense takes time and practice. It is not an instant miracle. However, developing product sense alone does not mean that the product will be the most lovable. Successful products are the cumulative effect of product sense, user research, quantitative & qualitative analysis, experimentation, teamwork and years of knowledge and expertise.