What Is Product Sense? | Vantage

Product Sense Product sense is the ability to identify what makes a product great — to evaluate features, experiences, and trade-offs with sound judgment about what users need and what makes business sense. It is the combination of user empathy, business acumen, and aesthetic sensibility that lets experienced PMs make good product decisions with incomplete information.

Why product sense matters

Product sense is the core judgment capacity that separates exceptional PMs from average ones. Data and frameworks are available to everyone. Product sense is what determines which data matters, when to deviate from frameworks, and what to build when no clear signal exists. It is the primary factor evaluated in senior PM interviews and the primary driver of product quality at the decision margin.

How it works

Product sense is developed through deliberate practice: studying great products (understanding why they work, not just that they work), building products and observing what users do, conducting many customer interviews, and reflecting on past product decisions. Strong product sense is evidenced by the ability to critique any product insightfully, to generate multiple divergent solutions to a problem, and to quickly identify the most important dimension of a complex trade-off.

Common mistakes

• Confusing product sense with following best practices (product sense is knowing when to deviate)

• Thinking product sense is innate and cannot be developed (it is a skill built through practice)

• Evaluating product sense only through hypothetical scenarios rather than real past decisions

• Assuming strong analytics skills substitute for product sense (data cannot tell you what matters)

• Not actively cultivating product sense between projects (it requires ongoing, intentional study of products)