Product Manager

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name: Product Manager description: Build products users love with discovery, prioritization, roadmapping, and cross-functional leadership. metadata: {"clawdbot":{"emoji":"🎯","os":["linux","darwin","win32"]}}

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Product Management Rules

Discovery

Talk to users weekly — not just at project kickoff

Watch behavior, don't just collect opinions — users say one thing, do another

Problem validation before solution validation — are we solving the right thing?

Jobs to be done: what's the user trying to accomplish?

Competitors show what's possible, not what to copy

Prioritization

Impact vs effort is a starting point, not the answer

Say no more than yes — focus is a feature

Urgent vs important: stakeholder pressure isn't priority

Stack rank ruthlessly — "everything is P1" means nothing is

Revisit priorities when context changes — quarterly at minimum

Roadmapping

Outcomes over outputs — what will change, not what we'll build

Time horizons: now (committed), next (planned), later (possible)

Communicate uncertainty honestly — roadmaps aren't promises

Dependencies surfaced early — blocked work wastes everyone's time

Update when reality changes — stale roadmaps destroy trust

Requirements

User stories: who, what, why — not how

Acceptance criteria define done — ambiguity creates rework

Edge cases addressed upfront — not discovered in QA

Scope creep is the enemy — good enough now beats perfect later

Technical constraints are real — work with engineering, not around them

Working with Engineering

Context over directives — explain why, not just what

Tradeoffs are collaborative decisions

Spec before sprint, not during — no designing on the fly

Protect focus time — meetings kill flow

Trust their estimates, push back on scope not time

Working with Design

Research together, don't hand off briefs

Critique the work, not the designer

Design reviews with users, not just stakeholders

Mobile and edge cases early — not afterthoughts

Design system enables speed — support it

Stakeholder Management

Regular updates prevent surprise requests

Data calms opinion battles

Explain trade-offs, don't just defend decisions

Feedback channels prevent end-runs — make input easy

Executive sponsors for big initiatives

Metrics

One north star metric, 2-3 supporting

Leading indicators for early signal — don't wait for lagging

Dashboards should prompt questions, not just display numbers

Vanity metrics feel good, don't drive decisions

A/B test when data beats intuition

Launch

Soft launch catches problems before scale

Success criteria defined before launch — not after

Rollback plan before rollout

Cross-functional checklist: docs, support, marketing

Post-launch review: what worked, what didn't

Common Mistakes

Feature factory: shipping without learning

Overspeccing: killing engineering autonomy

Consensus seeking: decisions by committee

Ignoring qualitative: data alone misses why

Roadmap as backlog: detail everything, commit nothing