Effective AI prompting involves providing a detailed narrative of the situation, user, and goals. This forces the AI to ask clarifying questions, signaling a deeper understanding and leading to more relevant answers compared to a simple, direct command.
Product managers are trained to think "customer-first" and prioritize the desired outcome. This context-rich, output-driven approach to prompting AI yields better, more nuanced results than the logical, command-based "input" thinking common to engineers.
Instead of trying to write the perfect prompt from scratch, engage the AI in a preliminary brainstorming session. Use this initial dialogue to refine your thinking, clarify context, and collaboratively construct a much more powerful final prompt for another AI instance.
Don't just give AI a task; give it a job title. Prompting it to act as a "calorie tracker" or "critical mentor" transforms generic advice into personalized, role-specific guidance that actively helps you achieve your goal, rather than just providing abstract information.
AI models are designed to give a complete-sounding answer quickly. To get to a truly great answer, you must challenge their output. Ask "Are you sure this is the best way?" or "What am I not seeing?" to force the AI to perform a deeper, second-level analysis.
Beyond building successful automations, the true mark of an expert is deep reflection on what isn't working. Their ability to discuss current limitations in AI memory, agent orchestration, and other challenges proves they've moved past simple use cases and are operating at the cutting edge.
Most users hide project tensions from AI. Instead, explicitly state known risks. This prompts the AI to generate mitigation plans, contingency options, and more realistic solutions, rather than just providing an idealized path forward. It fundamentally changes the AI's perspective.
To discern a true AI-native product manager from a tourist, ask what they have built or automated. The ability to point to specific agents created or workflows automated demonstrates deep, practical expertise, which is far more valuable than just discussing AI concepts.
Generative AI has made building a functional demo faster than ever. However, the journey to a scalable, production-ready product is more complex due to new challenges like ensuring consistent answer reliability and data privacy, which are harder to solve than traditional software bugs.