Prompt your way to Product Management Productivity

As a Chief Product Officer, I've always been on the lookout for tools that can enhance the #productmanagement process. My career has been a journey through the intricacies of data-driven decision-making, collaboration, and product leadership. When I first heard about ChatGPT like everyone else back in Oct 2022, I was intrigued. Had #genai really evolved to a point that it could assist in the nuanced world of product management? After spending some time with ChatGPT 4 Plus, Google Bard, Claude 2, and others, I really can't live without it! It's saved me hundreds of hours of manual effort, and has been an invaluable resource to bounce and test ideas with. But it wasn't easy, I've had to live with and experiment quite a few times, as well as having dealt with hallucinations in early incarnations. However, I'm quite confident that I've found the perfect blend and partnership with such tools.

In this post, I share my experience and insights, drawing from various excellent articles featuring the best ChatGPT prompts, and my own LinkedIn posts on topics ranging from data-driven product management to debating data science vs decision science to help you get started.

The Power of Prompts

ChatGPT's utility lies in its prompts. A well-crafted prompt can yield insights that rival those of entry-level PMs, as pointed out by the brilliant Aatir Abdul Rauf. (Whom you should immediately follow here). But the tool is not a replacement for human intuition and experience. It's a supplement that, when used correctly, can provide significant advantages.

Aligning Product Teams

One of the most challenging aspects of product management is aligning various teams towards a common goal. I've talked about the importance of collaboration in my article "How does your dynamic duo of Product Managers (PMs) and Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) partner together?" in my LinkedIn posts. A prompt like "Write a 1-pager that I can share with my engineering & design team to explain the product vision" can help you quickly draft a document that ensures everyone is on the same page.

Weighing Pros & Cons of Product Decisions

Decision-making is a critical part of product management. In my article "Decision Science vs Data Science and why you should care", in which I discussed the importance of decision science. ChatGPT can assist here by providing arguments for and against each option when you're debating a new feature or service.

Questions to Uncover Jobs-to-be-Done

Understanding your customer's needs is crucial. As I've discussed in this article "Why User Research is a Critical Compass, Especially in the Face of AI". ChatGPT can help you formulate the right questions to ask your customers, taking inspiration from methodologies like the "Mom Test."

Generating Roadmap Ideas

Creating a product roadmap is a complex task that have written at length about in "How to Navigate and Fix the Potholes in your Product Roadmap" as well as "Zen and the art of avoiding Feature Bloat", as well as "Achieving Product Market Fit ... Again". ChatGPT can help you brainstorm ideas aligned with your product strategy, saving you valuable time.

Generating Product Copy

Whether you're in PM or PMM, writing messages and additional copy for your product can be time-consuming. ChatGPT can quickly generate success and error messages, helping you focus on more strategic tasks. In this article I asked ChatGPT to help me summarize my thoughts around "10 Ways you can be more Supportive". I listed my top 10 traits and it produced single line descriptions which resulted in the post. It tool all of 15 minutes from idea to posting.

But beware, read this post first before relying on what it produces "ChatGPT Creates Corny Marketing Copy, and it's our Fault"

Beyond ChatGPT. What about Google Bard, Claude 2 and Google Duet?

ChatGPT is not a magic wand, but it's a powerful tool that can significantly aid product managers. As Cumul.io pointed out, it's all about the quality of input you feed it. Garbage in, garbage out. But with the right prompts, you can leapfrog over those who resist adopting such tools. There are other tools as well like Google Bard, Anthropic's Claude 2 (great for summarization), and the newly GA Google Duet for Google Workspace . These are all great tools, but it comes down to personal preference, and actually I use ALL of them in varying degrees, depending on the task I need to accomplish. If you want to see my experiment - albeit a few months old, which is a comparison between ChatGPT and Google Bard, click here.

So, is ChatGPT worth the investment? In my experience, absolutely. It's a tool that complements the skills of a product manager, rather than replacing them. And in today's fast-paced world, any edge you can get is worth exploring.

Enough Already! Where are the Prompts you Promised me You Click baiter 😂

Ok finally we get to the meat of why you read this article in the first place. Hopefully you already have an account in one of the tools mentioned. If not, first you have to sign up! Then it's seriously worth considering Chat GPT 4 Plus (the $20 a month paid service), and taking advantage of the plugins like "Link Access" (Formerly Link Reader). But I digress, here are the list of 50+ prompts you can use to boost your Product Management Productivity.

Strategy & Planning

1. "Generate a SWOT analysis for our upcoming product."
2. "List the key milestones for our product roadmap for the next quarter."
3. "Describe the target customer persona for our new feature."
4. "Outline the go-to-market strategy for our new SaaS offering."
5. "Provide a competitive analysis between our product and [Competitor's Product]."

Team Collaboration

1. "Draft an email to the engineering team explaining the importance of the upcoming sprint."
2. "Create a 1-pager to align the marketing and sales teams on the new product launch."
3. "Write a Slack message to celebrate a team milestone."
4. "Generate talking points for the next all-hands meeting."

Decision Making

1. "Weigh the pros and cons of implementing a freemium model."
2. "List the risks involved in delaying the new feature launch."
3. "Provide arguments for and against outsourcing our customer service."
4. "Analyze the impact of COVID-19 on our product strategy."

Customer Understanding

1. "Draft a survey to understand customer satisfaction."
2. "List questions to uncover our customers' Jobs-to-be-Done."
3. "Create interview questions for user research."
4. "Generate prompts for A/B testing customer preferences."

Product Development

1. "Describe the MVP features for our new mobile app."
2. "List the technical requirements for the new backend system."
3. "Generate user stories for the new checkout process."
4. "Outline the UX design principles we should follow for the new interface."

Data Analysis

1. "Explain how to interpret the results of our latest A/B test."
2. "List the KPIs we should track for user engagement."
3. "Describe how to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)."
4. "Provide a framework for analyzing churn rate."

Marketing & Sales

1. "Draft a press release for our new product launch."
2. "List the key selling points for our upcoming feature."
3. "Generate SEO-friendly blog post titles related to our product."
4. "Create email copy for our post-launch follow-up campaign."

Communication & Documentation

1. "Write release notes for the latest software update."
2. "Draft an FAQ section for our new service."
3. "Create a user guide for our mobile application."
4. "Generate common success & error messages for our billing module."

Innovation & Creativity

1. "List potential new use-cases for our existing technology."
2. "Generate ideas for expanding into new markets."
3. "Describe how we can leverage AI in our product."
4. "Provide suggestions for improving our current onboarding process."

Time Management & Productivity

1. "Outline a typical day in the life of a Product Manager at our company."
2. "List the tools and resources a new Product Manager should familiarize themselves with."
3. "Describe the Agile methodologies we should adopt for better project management."

Miscellaneous

1. "Generate a list of industry events and conferences we should attend."
2. "Draft a plan for customer retention."
3. "List potential partners for business development."
4. "Provide a checklist for the product launch."
5. "Generate a list of books every Product Manager should read."
6. "Create a crisis management plan."
7. "List the ethical considerations for our new data collection feature."
8. "Draft a proposal for increasing the product development budget."
9. "Generate a list of awards and recognitions our product can aim for."
10. "Create a plan for remote team building activities."

Feel free to adapt these prompts to fit your specific needs and contexts. But one last warning, beware of hallucinations, and don't be just copying and pasting the info returned. Curate the results carefully. Happy prompting!

References

• Rows.com
• Cumul.io
• Product School
• HelloPM
• GPT Prompts Hub
• Aatir on Substack