Linked Better Practices over Stacked Best Practices

​Dear Reader,​

Sorry for the slip in sending this one out on Friday. To make up for it, there will be (for the first time ever) two newsletters going out this week.

Recently, a CPO told me about an engineer who had used AI to develop a proposal. But when the decisions in it were questioned, the engineer kept referring him back to the output.

The CPO wondered how that conversation would go when they needed to ask others for funding. Using multiple models hadn’t resolved his concern.

AI can help you compare options and consider approaches you might otherwise miss. But you still need to understand why a recommendation makes sense for your strategic context.

For example, imagine using AI to develop a proposal for automating part of your customer onboarding. The proposal might explain how automation could help customers get started faster and reduce the work required from your support team.

A colleague asks whether simplifying the existing onboarding steps would achieve a similar result with less effort.

To discuss that alternative, you need to understand what makes onboarding difficult and why automation seems worth pursuing. You might have evidence that supports your recommendation. You might also realize that you haven’t considered the simpler option closely enough. Or how it links up to business goals.

Of course, defending a decision doesn’t mean sticking with it regardless of what you learn.

With all the beautiful possibilities to speed up the creation of products, strategies, OKRs, and PRDs, keep in mind to use that freed-up time wisely. Like investing in making sure you have a narrative backbone.

Before your next review, ask a colleague to question one consequential choice in a proposal you developed with AI, and pay attention to where you struggle to explain the reasoning beyond repeating what the document says.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

​Tim​

Who is Tim Herbig?

As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions.

I focus on better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery.