Product sense is about making better decisions. If you have a deep understanding of the domains you’re operating in, you’ll naturally make better decisions.

To become a domain expert, you'll want a good understanding of:

Customers and Consumers

Start by talking to your customers. The people that buy your product. The people that use your product. And potentially the people that consume the output. Try to understand the problems they're facing, and the outcomes they'd like to create.

The Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework is a good place to start. The premise is that people don't buy products. They hire them to make progress in their lives. They usually don't think about hiring a product until they have a struggling moment. You need to understand these moments and position your product to help them in that context.

If this concept is new to you, I suggest watching the video below to get a basic understanding.

Customers are often segmented by demographics. But you want to understand causation, not correlation. First, identify the jobs they want to get done. Leverage that knowledge across product development, marketing, and sales.

There's probably a distinct set of causes behind the reason they buy your product. When you talk with your customers, try to understand the timeline of events that led up to the initial purchase so you can uncover those hidden causes.

From jobstobedone.org

During this journey, forces are pulling in multiple directions.

• What was pushing them towards buying?
• What anxieties were pulling them away from the purchase?
• What are the tradeoffs they're willing to make?

You need to understand the progress they are trying to make. And the thing that's preventing that progress.

This approach can help you empathize with customers, and discover their struggling moments. But it means you need to talk to your customers. And you need to talk to them in a specific sort of manner.

Below is an example of what this type of interview might look like.

Another useful tactic is to break down your customer's job into a series of process steps. For example, most content creators can break down their work into these steps:

1. Plan/Schedule the Work
2. Design/Create the Work
3. Publish the Work
4. Analyze the Results
5. Make Changes based on Performance

Most jobs will follow a similar pattern, that can be broken down into distinct steps. Your product won't need to address every step, but you should understand where you fit in to the entire job that needs to get done.

Excerpt from 💻
Outcome-Driven Innovation: JTBD Theory in Practice

Analysis of hundreds of jobs has revealed that all jobs consist of some or all of the eight fundamental process steps: define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify and conclude

A job map is not a customer journey or customer experience map: it does not describe the journey the customer goes through to buy, receive, set-up, use, upgrade, clean and maintain a product.

Read Moreby Tony Ulwick
jobs-to-be-done.com

For each step there are one or more desired outcomes. You can then use quantitative methods to ask customers how important the job is, and how satisfied they are with an existing solution or service.

jobs-to-be-done.com

Satisfied needs do not motivate a change in behavior.

Make sure you understand the problems they have at each step and the progress they’d like to make. The struggling moment creates demand. Make your product fit that context.

Further Reading

on Customers and Consumers

Industry and Competition

Now that you understand the jobs your customers have, you can decide which ones you want to focus on. What are the alternatives they can choose? How will you be different? A deep understanding of the industry and competition can help you deliver a successful product.

To understand your industry and competition, you'll need to know the trends that drive buying decisions and you can uniquely position yourself. It's therefore important to answer:

• Who is our target customer?
• Why are they selecting our product instead of our competition?
• How will we reach them?

Watch the video below to see how this is done.

• Target Customer – a segment of the workstation market that was underserved and growing fast
• Why They Choose – need to build at least one custom application and/or use great productivity apps (with interpersonal computing)
• Distribution Strategy – developer camp to increase bottem-up demand (3x faster than Sun)

A set of customers who need great productivity apps and want to connect to others. The market is still relevant 30+ years later. And we're all part of it. Vision 🔮.

It helps to understand the dimensions of performance that your customers care about, and understanding how you can uniquely improve their experience. Below is a more recent example of defining your basis of competition.

Managers and industry analysts often keep their framing of competition simple, but from the JTBD perspective competition is not limited a single category.

Netflix doesn't compete with video-streaming companies, they compete with all our screen time options. Their focus is on improving that experience.

In the software world, where you can build almost anything, it's crucial to have a well-defined scope for your product. Choose your competition wisely, as you'll want to focus on where you can add the most value compared to alternatives.

Where to start

1. Find the first step in the workflow where you can add new value
2. Plan how to transistion from the previous step

Where to stop

1. When the next step is done by a market leader
2. If the next step can be completed in many different ways
3. You're at a step where you can't add value

Some steps may be well-served by industry leading companies, but others might be underserved and ripe for improvement. To get the most leverage, you'll need to focus where you add value and not try to build everything. You need to define a competitive position that is unique and valued by customers.

You need to understand your industry and competition.

It often takes grunt work to identify the relevant resources to help you get this understanding. If you're lucky, you might already know an expert that can help you speed up the process. Either way, you'd better get to work.

Further Reading

on Industry and Competition

Product and Technology

Product knowledge means knowing your product inside and out – its benefits, its limitations, what users love about it, and what they hate.

You should understand how all the features in a product are connected together, so you are able to evaluate different designs and pick a solution that customers will more easily understand. You don't need to sweat minute technical details, but you should be able converse at technical level about architecture and product decisions alike.

The exact amount of technical knowledge needed will depend on the product. Something developer focused (like an SDK) or involving data science will require more than a UX-driven product.

Of course it never hurts to have more technical skills than required. A solid foundation would include basic knowledge of:

• Front end technologies - HTML, CSS, JS
• Backend technologies - programming languages, APIs, databases
• Architecture, devops and testing

On top of this, it's helpful to have knowledge of general principles around UI design and usability.

Further Reading

on Product and Technology

Some final words

on Domain Knowledge

Great PMs possess knowledge across multiple domains. Acquiring this knowledge can take time, but it pays off with better outcomes in the end.

Anything Missing?

If you think something is missing from this section, please use the link below and I'll add it if it makes sense.

Otherwise, continue to the next section in Product Sense to learn about the importance of empathy, and how to improve your interpersonal communication.

Empathy