Clarify a problem before choosing solutions through structured questions about team assumptions, affected people, and overlooked stakeholders. Produce a completed problem canvas, a refined problem statement, and a question to guide solution exploration.
- Clarifying why users abandon onboarding
- Reframing a stakeholder's feature request
- Aligning teams on the problem to solve
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Assess whether a product is mature or declining, then compare extending it, replacing it, or retiring it. Use diagnostic questions, a product portfolio worksheet, and a replacement risk register with backup plans to document the next move.
- Choosing between a product refresh, replacement, or retirement
- Checking whether a mature product is entering decline
- Setting consistent plans across an aging product line
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Evaluate SaaS customer economics and cash efficiency using acquisition costs, customer lifetime value, margins, and payback periods. Compare segments and channels, estimate how long cash will last, and assess whether to expand spending or improve efficiency.
- Reviewing customer economics before increasing paid acquisition
- Comparing acquisition costs and payback across channels
- Estimating cash runway and funding needs
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Map stakeholders using two grids: power versus interest, and impact versus power. Compare the results to decide how closely to involve each group, identify overlooked voices, and plan concrete actions to increase their participation.
- Prioritizing stakeholder involvement before a roadmap review
- Finding affected groups with little decision-making power
- Revisiting stakeholder strategy after a reorganization
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Split large feature requests or user stories, descriptions of what users need, into smaller deliverable pieces. Eight patterns guide the breakdown, with acceptance criteria and checks that each piece provides value and can be developed and tested independently.
- Breaking down work that will not fit in one sprint
- Clarifying backlog items that are too large to estimate
- Separating stories with multiple acceptance scenarios
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Evaluate an AI product or feature idea by connecting customer problems, business outcomes, testable assumptions, risks, and differentiation. Produce a structured recommendation with lightweight experiments, success measures, and next steps for an investment decision.
- Deciding whether to invest in an AI feature
- Comparing AI solution options by outcomes and risk
- Preparing a proposal for executive or budget approval
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Guide a workshop one question at a time with visible progress and clear answer options. The skill adapts to supplied context, handles interruptions and pauses, and closes with a summary of decisions and actionable choices.
- Guide a product team positioning workshop
- Structure the kickoff of a discovery sprint
- Facilitate a retrospective on a failed beta launch
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Calculate and interpret SaaS subscription revenue, customer churn, and revenue retained from existing customers. Compare customer groups and revenue sources to uncover retention problems, explain growth, and prepare metrics for leadership discussions.
- Preparing revenue and retention metrics for a board presentation
- Checking whether revenue growth hides customer churn
- Comparing retention by customer start date
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Turn user research and complaints into a clear problem statement. Identify who is struggling, their desired outcome, barriers, root causes, constraints, and emotional impact, then summarize the problem in one sentence for team discussions or product planning.
- Agreeing on the user problem before proposing solutions
- Writing a concise problem statement for a PRD
- Finding the underlying problem behind feature requests
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Map a user's journey into activities, steps, and tasks, then organize the work by priority and release. The skill helps teams define a usable first version, place backlog items in context, and spot missing parts of the experience.
- Organize a flat backlog around the user journey
- Define the scope of a minimum viable product
- Split work into releases that each deliver usable value
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Estimate market size at three levels: total demand, the market your product can serve, and the share it could realistically capture. Use supplied figures or guided research to produce calculations with explicit assumptions, sources, and constraints.
- Estimating market size for a new product idea
- Preparing market figures for investors or executives
- Rebuilding a market estimate with unclear sources
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Guide a team through questions about users, workflows, and priorities to create a user story map. Organize activities and tasks, then define a minimum viable product and later releases that each cover the full workflow.
- Facilitating a team story mapping workshop
- Reorganizing a flat backlog around user workflows
- Defining the scope of a minimum viable product
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Prepare for a senior product leadership role or work through challenges after taking one. Adaptive questions identify your transition stage and produce targeted recommendations on organizational leadership, executive relationships, role evaluation, and communicating business outcomes.
- Prepare for the move from Director to VP or CPO
- Evaluate a leadership offer and prepare questions for the CEO
- Set priorities during the first months in a new role
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Plan how to approach a key stakeholder by examining their role, authority, concerns, and situation. Get tailored messaging, communication methods, frequency, mutual expectations, and a concrete next action with an owner and deadline.
- Preparing executive alignment before a roadmap review
- Planning a conversation with a resistant stakeholder
- Including frontline users in decisions that affect them
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Draft customer announcements for retiring a product, feature, or plan. Match the message length and communication stages to the impact, explaining the reason, key dates, customer disruption, support, and next steps, including cases with no replacement.
- Writing a retirement notice for a product or feature
- Explaining migration from a legacy product to its replacement
- Preparing an exit announcement when no replacement exists
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Assess whether to retire a product or feature by reviewing customers, revenue, commitments, and migration options. Get a reasoned recommendation to proceed, wait, or maintain it with limited investment, plus an appropriate effort level.
- Deciding whether to retire a legacy feature
- Sizing the effort for a product retirement
- Checking commitments before announcing retirement
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Assess an industry's five competitive forces using documented evidence, including AI substitutes and supplier dependencies. Identify where profits concentrate and what pressures margins, then connect those findings to a market entry or strategy decision.
- Evaluating whether to enter a market
- Investigating structural causes of shrinking margins
- Assessing the threat of AI substitutes
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Plan the first 90 days as a VP or CPO product leader through organizational interviews, validation, and evidence-based action. Build a people assessment, identify unwritten priorities, and choose three to five changes grounded in what you learn.
- Planning the first 90 days in a product leadership role
- Preparing questions for the CEO before accepting a CPO offer
- Validating organizational findings before making changes
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Assess how political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal changes could affect a product or market. Summarize external opportunities, threats, and recommended actions to support market entry decisions, strategy reviews, and longer-term product planning.
- Assessing risks before entering a new market or region
- Reviewing external assumptions behind an annual strategy
- Reassessing product plans after regulatory or economic changes
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Prepare customer-facing teams before announcing a product or feature retirement. Create support FAQs, honest replacement comparisons, objection responses, and escalation guidance, with the scope adjusted from a short support note to a broader training pack.
- Prepare a support FAQ before announcing a retirement
- Create sales comparisons that include replacement gaps
- Draft responses to customer objections
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Design workflows where specialized AI agents share recurring product management tasks. Define each agent’s role, required information, handoffs, and human review points, then create monitoring and evaluation plans for the overall workflow.
- Designing parallel agents for weekly competitive research
- Defining agent roles and information handoffs
- Planning quality checks and cost monitoring
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Guide a product team from a problem hypothesis through customer interviews, research synthesis, and solution experiments. Use six structured phases to gather evidence, compare options, and decide whether to build, change direction, or stop.
- Validating customer problems before development
- Investigating onboarding drop-off or churn
- Organizing interviews and research synthesis
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Structure customer research around what people want to accomplish, the difficulties they face, and the benefits they seek. Explore practical tasks, social perceptions, and emotions to clarify unmet needs and guide product positioning or priorities.
- Uncovering needs behind feature requests
- Organizing findings from customer interviews
- Revisiting product positioning around customer goals
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026
Compare business growth options across existing and new products and markets. The skill connects each option to documented demand signals, rates its risk, and recommends an order of action with the assumption that could change it.
- Compare growth options for next year's business plan
- Check the evidence behind a diversification proposal
- Sequence growth initiatives by risk and funding needs
deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills☆ 7.6KUpdated Oct 16, 2026