How do you give AI useful context in product management?

The answers agree that AI needs rich, specific context—ranging from company strategy to domain expertise and human judgment—to be truly useful in product management work.

7 answers

Answers

  • Marty Cagan

    Partner · Silicon Valley Product Group

    Company Strategic Context

    Marty Cagan recommends configuring your favorite language model with your company strategic context, so it knows your product vision, product strategy, the problem you're trying to solve, and which model you're using.

    Mind the Product · Watch on YouTube

  • Tamar Yehoshua

    Chief Product and AI Officer · Atlassian

    The Teamwork Graph

    Tamar Yehoshua says AI tools work when they understand the context of your organization, which at Atlassian is built on the teamwork graph.

    Lenny's Podcast · Watch on YouTube

  • Jonathan Evens

    Product Lead · Google Deepmind

    Deep Domain Expertise

    Jonathan Evens says deep domain expertise—being close to the end use case and vertical—is the superpower for AI product PMs, needed to understand workflow intricacies and know how to use AI to automate or augment them.

    Mind the Product · Watch on YouTube

  • Hilary Gridley

    Founder

    Clear, Shared Context

    Hilary Gridley says managers must ensure everyone, human and robot alike, has the right context to make the best possible decisions, and that this is more important than ever because people can now move and produce much faster.

    Worklife with Adam Grant · Worklife with Adam Grant · Listen at 15:06

  • Oji Udezue

    Author · Productmind

    Judgment

    Oji Udezue says the scarce skill with AI today is judgment — deciding "this one and not that one" — something you cannot prompt your way to and must apply on top of automations yourself.

    Product Growth · Product Growth · Read

  • Ravi Mehta

    Angel Investor · Traveljoy

    Creativity

    Ravi Mehta says creativity provides the context that harnesses AI's potential; without humans, AI is inert, and someone must kick it off, give it rules, and tell it what success looks like.

    Reforge · Watch on YouTube

  • Dianne Na Penn

    Head of Product Management, Research · Anthropic

    Hands‑On Experience

    Dianne Na Penn says hands-on experience is what it takes: managers must spend time actually shipping with AI and being in the details, since it's hard to see what a good AI product looks like without building one yourself.

    Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career · Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career · Listen at 50:32

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