Category: Product Management

Join My 2026 Continuous Discovery Habits Book Club: Build Weekly Discovery Routines That Stick

Continuous Discovery Habits turns five this year, and I’m celebrating by inviting you to read it with me. Over 135,000 people have bought the book. I’ve seen these habits transform outcomes, reduce rework, and sharpen product strategy in my teams and across the product community, but I also know it’s not easy to sustain the practice—especially when you feel like the lone champion in your organization.

To make it easier and more social, I’m launching the 2026 Continuous Discovery Habits Book Club. We’ll read the book together—one section per month—with discussion questions, practical exercises, and resources that help you actually do the work, not just read about it. Whether you’re picking up the book for the first time or revisiting it, the goal is to build real muscle memory in discovery.

By December, you won’t just understand continuous discovery—you’ll be practicing it.

Each month, I’ll share a reading guide with reflection prompts, exercises you can run solo or with your product trios, and short videos to help you spread the ideas across your team. I’ll monitor comments throughout the year so you can ask for help, share what’s working, and connect with peers—even if you join late.

I’ll also host quarterly live discussion sessions so we can compare notes, push through sticking points, and swap tactics with other empowered product teams. If you want to participate, grab a copy of the book (or dig up your old copy), share the "Spread the Love" videos to get friends and colleagues on board, reserve time to try the team exercises, and register for the community sessions. Let’s do this.

🎖️ This reading guide is brought to you by New Year, New Habit: The 5-Day Customer Interview Challenge. Become a more confident interviewer in less than a week. You’ll conduct one practice interview a day, get personalized and detailed feedback so you know exactly what to improve, and we’ll be giving out daily prizes to the most improved. Join the challenge today.

This Month’s Reading: Introduction; Chapter 1: The What and Why of Continuous Discovery; Chapter 2: A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery. Estimated reading time: ~40 minutes.

These chapters will introduce you to why discovery and delivery are not phases—they happen continuously. You’ll see a clear benchmark for what "continuous discovery" looks like, learn what product trios are and why they’re the foundation for good discovery, and explore six prerequisite mindsets (outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, continuous) you’ll need before these habits can stick. You’ll also get the opportunity solution tree—a visual framework for connecting what you’re building to why you’re building it. Need a copy? Grab the book: https://amzn.to/3hGkNYT?ref=producttalk.org

We learn best in community. Use these short videos to share key concepts with teammates and invite them to read along: What is product discovery? https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/799fdbb41e16ebc4f0/what-is-product-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — a quick intro to the key idea behind discovery work. Defining continuous discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/a79fdbba151ee3c72e/defining-continuous-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — a clear benchmark to aspire to. The rhythm of continuous discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/4d9fd5b4111ee0c2c4/the-rhythm-of-continuous-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — the two small research activities you should do every week. The underlying structure of product discovery https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/449fdbb5191fedc4cd/the-underlying-structure-of-product-discovery?ref=producttalk.org — how outcomes, opportunities, and solutions connect. What’s a product trio? https://videos.producttalk.org/videos/a79fdbb31e1be2c12e/whats-a-product-trio?ref=producttalk.org — why cross-functional collaboration matters.

🎖️ This reading guide is brought to you by Just Now Possible, a podcast about how AI products come to life—straight from the builders. If you are being asked to add AI features to your roadmap, you don’t have to start from scratch. Get a head start by hearing how other teams are navigating similar challenges. Find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

When we reflect and discuss what we read, we absorb more and apply it better. This month is about building awareness of where you are today—no judgment. The first step in any change is getting a baseline. Next month, we’ll take small steps to strengthen the habits.

Here are three prompts for individual reflection. 1) Think about a recent product decision your team made. Did you rely more on opinions, data, or customer input? Get specific. 2) Which of the six prerequisite mindsets (outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, continuous) is strongest for you personally? Which would require the biggest shift? 3) What’s your reaction to weekly customer touch points? Does this excite you? Scare you? Something else?

And here are three prompts for team discussion. 1) Who on your team is responsible for discovery and delivery? How interconnected are these activities? 2) How does your team currently collaborate cross-functionally? When product, design, and engineering come together, is it to make decisions—or to hand off work? 3) Think of a recent feature your team built. What opportunity did it address? What else could you have built to address that opportunity?

For this introductory month, focus on seeing your current system clearly. In my experience, visibility alone reveals friction and makes the path to change obvious—and measurable.

Exercise: Draw Your Current Discovery Process. Time: 60 minutes. Do this solo first, then compare with your team. Take a blank sheet and draw how your team actually decides what to build. Show where ideas come from, who makes decisions and how, where (if anywhere) customers enter the picture, and how you know if you built the right thing. Then compare drawings with teammates. Where do perceptions differ? What does that say about your shared understanding?

Exercise: Audit Last Week’s Decisions. Time: 30 minutes. Do this solo or with your team. List every product decision your team made last week—big or small. For each decision, note who made it, what information it was based on, and whether customer input was part of the process (and how). Then look for patterns: how many included direct customer input versus assumptions, opinions, or secondhand information?

If you prefer an audio summary of this month’s reading—including the book chapters and the resources below—listen here: Stop Building The Wrong Things Faster (audio summary by NotebookLM): https://www.producttalk.org/content/media/2025/12/January—Stop_Building_The_Wrong_Things_Faster.m4a

Related in-depth guides to go deeper: Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Know: https://www.producttalk.org/product-discovery/ Product Trios: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Get Started: https://www.producttalk.org/product-trios/ Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize Your Discovery to Stay Aligned and Drive Outcomes: https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-trees/

Other voices worth reading: Product Discovery: Pitfalls and Anti-Patterns by Chris Jones: https://svpg.com/product-discovery-anti-patterns/?ref=producttalk.org Addressing the Challenges of Product Discovery by Saeed Khan: https://medium.com/swlh/the-challenges-of-product-discovery-6ac6109d13a8?ref=producttalk.org Making Product Discovery Work in Small Teams by Sofia Quintero: https://www.chargebee.com/blog/product-discovery/?ref=producttalk.org Product Waste and the ROI of Discovery by Richard Mironov: https://www.mironov.com/waste?ref=producttalk.org

Related course if you want structured practice: Product Discovery Fundamentals – this course walks you through the complete continuous discovery framework with hands-on exercises: https://learn.producttalk.org/cdh-master-class?ref=producttalk.org

Our live discussion schedule for 2026 (sessions are not recorded): Wednesday, March 18, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Tuesday, June 16, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Thursday, September 17, 2026: 9am–10am PDT and 4pm–5pm PDT. Wednesday, December 16, 2026: 9am–10am PST and 4pm–5pm PST. Invitations will go out to Supporting Members and CDH Members two weeks beforehand—reserve the time now.

As you work through this month’s material, connect it to your product strategy, outcomes vs output OKRs, and product roadmapping and sprint planning. In my teams, discovery sticks when product trios own the rhythm, weekly customer touch points are normalized, and the opportunity solution tree keeps everyone aligned on outcomes.

I’m thrilled to learn alongside you this year. Grab the book, invite your trio, and let’s build habits that last.

Inspired by this post on Product Talk.

January 5, 2026
Build vs Buy in 2026: How I Make Confident, AI-Savvy Software Decisions That Scale

Every planning cycle, I’m asked the same high-stakes question: should we build or buy? In 2026, with generative AI reshaping the software landscape and budgets under scrutiny, the classic calculus needs an upgrade. The right call can accelerate time to value, protect precious engineering capacity, and sharpen competitive differentiation—while the wrong one can quietly inflate total cost of ownership for years.

“Navigate the build vs buy software dilemma, learn how AI is changing the game, and what you should leverage (and when).” That’s been my north star for product strategy this year, and it’s how I guide teams when the pressure is on.

My first principle is simple: build where we differentiate, buy where we need parity. If the capability is central to our value proposition or our defensibility, I’m inclined to build—often with a phased approach that de-risks scope. If it’s a non-differentiating layer (think billing, analytics plumbing, basic CRM integration), I’ll buy to accelerate, then revisit once scale and specialization justify a deeper internal investment.

AI changes the equation on both sides. On the “buy” side, modern platforms now ship agentic AI, fine-tuning options, and robust APIs that let us compose advanced capabilities fast. On the “build” side, AI workflows and toolchains (from code copilots to eval-driven development) compress cycle time, making bespoke solutions more attainable. The trade-off has shifted from pure functionality to questions of AI risk management, model governance, data privacy, and the portability of prompts, embeddings, and training data.

I evaluate decisions across two economic horizons: time to value versus total cost of ownership. Buying often wins the first round—faster deployment, proven reliability, and lower initial lift. But TCO can creep: integration work, per-seat or consumption SaaS pricing, training, vendor-driven roadmap gaps, and the “shadow ops” of maintaining connectors in our CI/CD. Building flips that profile: slower early velocity, higher upfront complexity, but potentially lower long-run costs and tighter fit with our platform scalability goals.

Operational risk matters just as much as features. I look at incident management posture, SRE maturity, SLAs, and DORA metrics to gauge resilience. If a vendor can’t meet our uptime and recovery expectations—or if their roadmap pace mismatches our deployment frequency—we’re effectively renting risk we can’t control. Conversely, if our team can’t realistically support the operational burden, buying is the safer choice.

Security, regulatory compliance, and data governance are non-negotiables. I assess privacy-by-design, data residency, audit logs, role-based access, SOC2/ISO coverage, and threat detection and response. For AI-heavy systems, I add model lineage, red-teaming practices, PII handling, and retention policies. If we can’t verifiably meet our obligations in a build scenario within the launch window, we buy and require clear data exit and portability clauses.

To keep decisions objective, I use a lightweight scorecard across five dimensions: differentiation, urgency/time to value, regulatory/security risk, integration complexity, and AI leverage/portability. We weight criteria with product trios (PM, design, engineering), run discovery spikes, and validate assumptions with stakeholder management up front. A disciplined scorecard curbs recency bias and helps us communicate trade-offs to leadership.

In practice, I favor staged commitments. When uncertainty is high, we buy to learn—ship value quickly, instrument usage, and collect evidence. If adoption proves sticky and integration pain remains moderate, we double down with deeper vendor integration. If we uncover unique needs or cost inflection points, we pivot to a build plan that reuses learnings, data models, and UX patterns from the bought solution to reduce risk.

AI-specific choices deserve their own pass. For example, if we need retrieval-augmented generation, I’ll often buy for the orchestration and observability layer while building our domain-specific retrieval-first pipeline and prompt engineering guardrails. That split gives us speed plus control: we retain our IP and data gravity while tapping best-in-class tooling that evolves with the ecosystem.

Vendor strategy matters as much as technology. I negotiate clear data export, transparent API quotas, sandbox environments for continuous discovery, and price protections for growth. I pressure-test roadmaps, ask for integration references, and align on outcome-based milestones rather than feature checklists. Strong partners welcome this rigor; weak ones stall—another useful signal.

On the build side, I right-size ambition. We target minimum lovable scope, isolate risk in early sprints, and leverage open source where it’s mature and secure. We design for modularity so we can swap components without rewriting the world, and we budget time for in-app guides and product tours to smooth adoption, because user activation is the real finish line.

Here’s the playbook I return to: buy to validate and compress time to value; build to differentiate and reduce long-run TCO; continuously re-evaluate as the AI toolchain and our scale evolve. With a transparent scorecard, a bias for learning, and a clear view of risk, the build vs buy decision becomes less of a leap of faith and more of a repeatable product management capability.

2026 will reward teams that move fast without mortgaging the future. Make the call deliberately, instrument the outcomes, and stay humble—because the best strategy is the one you can adapt as new evidence arrives.

Inspired by this post on Product School.

January 5, 2026
4 Costly Misconceptions About Building AI Agents—and How I Turn Them Into Wins

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked for a “quick AI agent” that can autonomously fix customer problems, write code, or run sales ops. The promise is intoxicating—and I get why. But in practice, sustainable impact comes from disciplined product thinking, not wishful automation. Drawing on my experience leading product for complex, agentic AI initiatives, I want to debunk four misconceptions I see repeatedly and share what actually works.

Misconception 1: AI agents are plug-and-play. The reality is that effective agentic AI behaves more like a new product line than a feature toggle. It needs clear job stories, domain grounding, tool access, and guardrails. I start by narrowing scope to one painful job to be done, then design AI workflows that reflect real constraints (SLAs, compliance, edge cases). From day one, I instrument with Agent Analytics and set up eval-driven development so we can see failure modes early and iterate with intent.

What consistently moves the needle is treating the agent like a teammate you onboard: define responsibilities, provide the right tools, and measure outcomes. I pair scripted validations with live evals, track containment rates and handoff quality, and balance precision/recall depending on the risk profile. This is slow to fast, not fast to broken.

Misconception 2: Bigger models make better agents. In my experience, architecture outperforms horsepower. A retrieval-first pipeline, tight context window management, and practical prompt engineering often beat an oversized model that hallucinates. Tool use matters more than model size: give the agent reliable APIs, clear schemas, and deterministic fallbacks. For LLMs for product managers, the play is to right-size the foundation model and invest in data quality, prompts, and evaluators that reflect your true acceptance criteria.

When I see erratic behavior, I don’t immediately swap models; I improve retrieval, prune irrelevant context, and clarify the agent’s planning loop. Most performance gains come from better state management and grounding rather than a pricier token budget.

Misconception 3: Agents replace teams. High-performing organizations design human-in-the-loop systems. I implement human review on high-risk actions, explicit escalation paths, and simple override mechanisms. That’s not just safety theater—it’s good product design. AI risk management and data governance are part of the product backlog, not an afterthought. In customer support ai strategy, for example, the agent drafts, a specialist approves, and the system learns from deltas to tighten future responses.

The social system matters as much as the technical one: clear role boundaries, audit trails, and feedback loops turn the agent into a force multiplier. Teams gain leverage without surrendering accountability.

Misconception 4: Shipping the agent equals success. Adoption is earned, not announced. I treat agent launches like any product-led growth motion: define activation events, remove friction with in-app guides and product tours, and A/B test prompts, tool choices, and UI affordances. We track time-to-value, task completion rate, and user trust signals (edits, undo patterns, and escalation requests). When we get those leading indicators right, retention follows.

Increase revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk with Pendo’s Software Experience Management platform. Optimize the entire software experience to drive adoption and improve engagement.

My playbook is simple and repeatable: frame the problem narrowly, ground the agent with the right tools and data, measure with eval-driven development and Agent Analytics, then grow adoption with a disciplined go-to-market inside the product. The agents that win don’t feel like magic—they feel dependable. That’s what customers trust, and that’s what scales.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Best Practices.

January 4, 2026
Agent Analytics That Matter: How Pendo Drives Adoption, Cuts Costs, and Reduces Risk

Every quarter, I revisit the same three questions: Are we accelerating adoption, lowering cost-to-serve, and managing risk without slowing the roadmap? Tools that help me answer all three with clarity earn a place in my stack. That’s why the concept behind Pendo’s Agent Analytics resonates so strongly—it gives product leaders a way to see, in one view, how users engage with AI-powered assistants, in-app guides, and core workflows, and how those behaviors translate into product-led growth.

Increase revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk with Pendo’s Software Experience Management platform. Optimize the entire software experience to drive adoption and improve engagement.

In practice, Agent Analytics functions as a unified analytics platform for the modern product team. I can observe how users interact with agents and nudges inside the product, connect those interactions to user activation and retention analysis, and prioritize improvements that deliver measurable outcomes. The result is fewer blind spots across the journey and a tighter feedback loop between discovery and delivery.

The real value shows up when I pair analytics with targeted interventions. For example, I’ll instrument critical paths, baseline activation, then use in-app guides to remove friction at the exact moment users need help. I incorporate A/B testing and continuous discovery to validate which prompts, pathways, or workflows actually move the needle. With a clean view of adoption, engagement, and time-to-value, my team can double down on what works and retire what doesn’t—faster.

Risk reduction is equally important. With clear behavioral signals, I can spot confusing prompts, unhelpful agent responses, or unexpected drop-offs before they scale into churn or support volume. That visibility informs our product strategy, aligns stakeholders on trade-offs, and keeps our governance tight without stifling innovation—especially critical as AI Strategy becomes part of everyday product decisions.

If you’re weighing whether Agent Analytics deserves a place in your toolkit, consider this: better instrumentation yields better decisions. When you unify guide interactions, agent engagement, and core product usage, you can attribute uplift more precisely, forecast impact with greater confidence, and operationalize product-led growth. That’s how we increase adoption, cut unnecessary cost, and de-risk the roadmap—while building experiences customers actually love.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 4, 2026
Stop Choosing: Blend Inside-Out and Outside-In Thinking to Accelerate Product-Led Growth

I’ve never seen great products emerge from a one-sided mindset. Inside-out thinking (strategy-first) and outside-in thinking (customer-first) aren’t rivals—they’re a flywheel. When I weave product vision and defensible differentiation together with real customer signals and behavioral data, adoption climbs, engagement deepens, and the roadmap becomes a catalyst for growth rather than a list of features.

For clarity: inside-out anchors on product strategy, value proposition, and the unique capabilities only we can deliver. Outside-in centers on continuous discovery, user research, and telemetry that reveals what customers actually do—not just what they say. At HighLevel, we pair these perspectives in every planning cycle so we’re bold in direction and grounded in evidence.

Increase revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk with Pendo’s Software Experience Management platform. Optimize the entire software experience to drive adoption and improve engagement.

That promise captures why the blend matters. Product-led growth lives or dies on moments like activation, time-to-first-value, and day-30 retention. Inside-out thinking ensures we’re building toward a compelling vision; outside-in thinking ensures users can discover, adopt, and realize value through clear onboarding, in-app guides, and contextual product tours.

Here’s how I apply it in practice. We start by articulating the smallest, sharpest version of our strategy—who we serve, the jobs we must win, and the non-negotiable outcomes. Then we pressure-test that thesis with continuous discovery: call snippets, funnel analysis, pathing, and retention analysis by cohort. When friction shows up in onboarding or early feature adoption, we deploy targeted in-app guides and tours to accelerate user activation without bloating the product or training costs.

A simple operating rhythm keeps the balance: begin each quarter with outcomes vs output OKRs tied to adoption and retention; instrument flows to expose drop-offs; ship iterative improvements; and reinforce them with just-in-time guidance. We use outside-in signals to sequence what we tackle next, and inside-out conviction to avoid chasing noise. The result is faster learning cycles and fewer expensive reworks.

Measurement closes the loop. I track activation rate, time-to-first-value, engagement with the few behaviors that predict renewal, and the impact of each guide or tour on completion rates. When we see lift, we codify the pattern; when we don’t, we prune and refocus. That evidence-based cadence keeps teams empowered and stakeholders aligned.

Culture makes this sustainable. Empowered product teams own outcomes, not tickets. Stakeholder management becomes easier when decisions are grounded in a clear strategy and transparent evidence from real users. And customers feel the difference when the product teaches itself—meeting them with the right help, in the right moment, without getting in their way.

If you’ve been choosing between inside-out and outside-in, stop. Fuse them. Lead with a crisp product strategy, listen with humility, and operationalize adoption through purposeful onboarding, in-app guides, and product tours. That’s how we compound learning, reduce risk, cut support costs, and accelerate product-led growth.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 4, 2026
AI Context Pulling Playbook: How I Get LLMs and Teams to Collaborate for Better Product Outcomes

In my role leading product, I’ve learned that the fastest path to higher-quality deliverables from large language models (LLMs) is not a clever prompt—it’s rigorous context. I call the practice AI context pulling: a repeatable way to assemble, compress, and structure the most relevant knowledge before the model ever starts generating. Done well, it turns generative AI into a dependable partner for discovery, prioritization, and execution.
AI context pulling means I proactively gather the right artifacts (customer insights, analytics, strategy, constraints), manage context windows intentionally, and shape the model’s task with clear objectives and guardrails. This reduces hallucinations, improves alignment, and creates traceability back to sources—critical for product management leadership and stakeholder trust.
Learn a new way in which product professionals can collaborate with AI to get even better results on their projects.
Here’s the simple flow I use: first, I define the intent (e.g., “synthesize discovery interviews for a positioning brief”). Next, I inventory relevant context: top customer pains from product discovery, usage patterns from Amplitude analytics, recent support trends from Intercom, and any constraints from our product strategy. Then I run a retrieval-first pipeline to select only the most pertinent slices—favoring recency, representativeness, and canonical sources.
Because context window management matters, I compress long documents into short, source-cited summaries and keep raw excerpts handy when nuance is important. My prompts follow a consistent structure: role and objective, constraints and audience, curated context, the explicit ask, preferred output format, and a brief self-check (e.g., “cite sources and flag uncertainty”). This is prompt engineering for reliability, not theatrics.
A quick example: when drafting a one-page feature brief, I attach three items—the product strategy paragraph that sets the frame, a usage cohort analysis that highlights who’s affected, and five verbatim customer quotes. I ask the LLM to propose a problem statement, success criteria, and a shortlist of solution hypotheses, each tied to a cited piece of evidence. The result is a grounded, decision-ready artifact I can share with product trios and stakeholders.
Tooling-wise, I keep it pragmatic. A lightweight retrieval-first pipeline (embeddings, metadata filters, and recency rules) ensures the LLM pulls what matters. I version prompts and contexts together so I can run quick A/B testing on output quality. And I log decisions and sources to support eval-driven development and continuous discovery.
Common pitfalls are avoidable. Too little context yields generic answers; too much overwhelms the model. Stale docs can mislead; curate aggressively. Vague asks invite fluffy prose; specify outcomes, audiences, and formats. If the task is high risk, I bias toward smaller, well-cited outputs and expand iteratively with human review in the loop.
To measure impact, I track rework rate, review time, and stakeholder alignment on first pass. Over time, teams adopting AI context pulling report clearer artifacts, faster synthesis cycles, and more confident decisions—because every recommendation traces back to evidence. That’s how humans and LLMs truly collaborate better: we provide the right context, and the model amplifies our judgment.
If you’re ready to operationalize this, start by templatizing your most common product workflows—discovery synthesis, roadmap rationale, and release notes—and attach small, high-signal context packs. With a retrieval-first mindset and disciplined prompting, AI becomes an extension of your product craft, not a gamble.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 4, 2026
From Idea to Impact: How AI Supercharges Product Design, Testing, and Time-to-Value

AI is changing how I build products, not by replacing designers or researchers, but by amplifying the quality and speed of what our product trios can deliver. The real breakthrough isn’t a single tool; it’s the way genAI and traditional methods combine into a tighter discovery–design–delivery loop that shortens time-to-value without sacrificing rigor.

Learn how Pendo’s product design team is using genAI and traditional tools to speed up design and development.

In practice, that’s exactly the pattern I see working across my teams: we treat genAI as part of the AI product toolbox—great for rapid exploration, structured synthesis, and test preparation—while we rely on our proven techniques to validate outcomes. For early-stage concepting, I use prompt engineering to generate multiple storyboard options and interaction flows in minutes, then refine those outputs with our design system for alignment and accessibility. It’s a pragmatic “gen ai for product prototyping” approach that lets us compare more alternatives, faster, with better signal.

On the testing front, AI accelerates everything around A/B testing without diluting statistical discipline. We draft hypotheses, define success metrics, and estimate minimum detectable effect (MDE) with guardrails, then deploy variants via feature flags in CI/CD. That pairing—LLMs for product managers plus eval-driven development—keeps experiments reproducible while boosting deployment frequency. The outcome is fewer opinions, more evidence, and a tighter feedback loop from build to learn.

Research goes from weeks to days when we combine a retrieval-first pipeline for qualitative data with strong data governance. I’ll ingest interview notes, support tickets, and session transcripts to cluster themes, then pressure-test the clusters with live customer calls. Privacy-by-design and AI risk management remain non-negotiable: we redact sensitive fields, constrain context windows, and keep a human-in-the-loop for decisions that affect user experience or compliance.

Where analytics meets adoption, tools like in-app guides and product tours help us translate insights into behavior change. I’ll prototype a flow, auto-generate guidance variants, and run controlled rollouts to target segments, measuring activation and retention analysis in parallel. This is product-led growth in action: discover the friction, design the intervention, instrument the journey, and validate outcomes with unified analytics.

Organizationally, empowered product teams and continuous discovery make the difference. Our product trios work from outcomes vs output OKRs, pairing competitive differentiation with product strategy to keep bets focused. We meet weekly to review experiment readouts, model trade-offs with the Kano Model, and update product roadmapping and sprint planning based on verified learning—never vibes alone.

If you’re getting started, begin with one workflow—say, prototype generation plus structured experiment design—and measure impact across cycle time, experiment throughput, and decision quality. Layer in communities of practice to share prompt patterns, establish eval baselines, and codify what “good” looks like. The companies winning with AI aren’t chasing shiny objects; they’re building a repeatable system that turns curiosity into customer value.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Best Practices.

January 4, 2026
Master Burger Prompting: Build a High-Impact AI Resume Coach with Proven LLM Structure

I’ve been refining a hands-on approach to “burger prompting” that turns prompt engineering into a reliable, repeatable system. Using an AI resume coach as the proving ground, I’ll walk through a detailed prompt structure to get the most out of your LLM and share what’s worked for me in product environments where clarity, consistency, and measurable outcomes matter.

At a high level, burger prompting follows a simple mental model: the top bun frames the role and mission, the fillings pack in context and examples, and the bottom bun locks in output format and quality guardrails. It’s deceptively simple and extremely effective for Generative AI use cases where you need predictable behavior across different inputs and user personas.

For the top bun, I establish the AI’s role, audience, and objective in one place. In the resume coach flow, I define the assistant as a structured, unbiased reviewer tasked with aligning a candidate’s resume to a specific job description. I set constraints on tone (supportive but direct), scope (resume and job description only), and safety (avoid speculative claims, defer legal or medical advice). This crisp intent statement reduces ambiguity and prevents the model from wandering outside the product’s value proposition.

The fillings are where context window management becomes crucial. I inject the job description, the candidate’s resume, a capability rubric aligned to the role, and the company’s style preferences. If the content is long, I chunk inputs and, when needed, use a retrieval-first pipeline to fetch only the most relevant snippets. I also include a brief style guide with voice, depth, and formatting expectations so the AI doesn’t drift between terse and verbose responses across sessions.

Strong examples are the meat of the burger. I include a few annotated comparisons that show what “excellent,” “good,” and “needs improvement” look like for specific competencies, from impact statements to quantification. These examples are compact and domain-specific, so the LLM sees the pattern I expect without overfitting to a single profile. I encourage transparent reasoning by asking for stepwise evaluations that reference evidence from the resume and job description, while keeping the explanations concise and user-friendly.

The bottom bun finalizes structure and guardrails. I specify an output schema that always returns a brief summary, evidence-backed strengths, concrete gaps with examples of what’s missing, and a prioritized action plan with suggested rewrites. I also request a rubric-aligned score to support eval-driven development, and I cap length to ensure scannability inside product UI. This predictable format reduces downstream parsing errors and keeps the AI workflow snappy.

To operationalize this in a product context, I run small A/B tests on the prompt variants and measure utility through user activation and completion rates. I tune the prompt with tight feedback loops, comparing structured scores against human spot checks until the variance narrows. When I see drift, I adjust the constraints, swap underperforming examples, or expand the rubric to capture overlooked signals.

Quality and trust are non-negotiable. I add guidance to avoid hallucinated credentials or inflated claims, enforce privacy-by-design around sensitive data, and encourage the assistant to cite which resume lines support each recommendation. When the model is uncertain or the resume lacks evidence, the assistant should explicitly say so and propose realistic next steps rather than guessing.

The result is an AI resume coach that feels both helpful and disciplined. With burger prompting, you get a durable prompt pattern you can reuse across adjacent AI workflows, from portfolio reviews to job description rewrites. Once you internalize the top bun, fillings, and bottom bun, you’ll find it far easier to ship prompts that scale, maintain consistency across releases, and deliver tangible, career-advancing outcomes for users.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Best Practices.

January 4, 2026
Inside PendomoniumX London: AI’s tipping point and what product leaders should do next

I walked into PendomoniumX London energized by a simple question: are we finally past the AI hype cycle and into real product impact? From the hallway conversations to the main stage, the momentum was unmistakable—and deeply practical.

PendomoniumX’s sixth stop brought 350+ software leaders together for a day of AI transformation, real-world stories, and product innovation.

That scale and focus say a lot. Across the dialogues I joined, the center of gravity has clearly shifted from experiments to execution: building an AI Strategy that aligns with product roadmaps, turning promising prototypes into production-grade AI workflows, and measuring value in ways that reinforce product-led growth. It’s the inflection point where Generative AI moves from isolated pilots to cross-functional capabilities.

My biggest takeaway for product leaders: treat AI like any other durable capability. Start with sharp problem framing and customer outcomes, run continuous discovery to validate use cases, and sequence delivery through product roadmapping and sprint planning. Pair this with privacy-by-design and sensible governance so your teams can move fast without cutting corners.

Operationally, I’ve found it essential to design experiences that accelerate user activation—think thoughtful onboarding, in-app guides, and product tours that reduce friction while teaching new AI-powered behaviors. For teams adopting LLMs for product managers, keep your evaluation loops tight, instrument the journey end-to-end, and make sure every iteration maps to a clear value proposition customers can feel.

Events like PendomoniumX London remind me why community matters: they compress learning cycles. If you’re steering an AI portfolio, now is the moment to translate vision into repeatable systems—prioritize the right bets, make adoption effortless, and let data tell you when to double down or pivot. That’s how we turn AI transformation into durable product innovation.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 3, 2026
Master the Five Stages of Software Experience Maturity and Prioritize What to Fix First

Experience quality compounds just like code quality. To align teams and accelerate outcomes, I rely on a clear, five-stage software experience maturity model to assess where we are, why we’re there, and how to advance. It turns fuzzy debates into concrete product strategy and reinforces a product-led growth mindset.

Find out where you stand—and what to fix first—with this maturity framework.

Why a five-stage model? It gives product, design, engineering, and go-to-market a shared language for trade-offs, helps us move from opinions to evidence, and ties day-to-day improvements to outcomes vs output OKRs. Instead of spreading effort thin, we sequence the right bets at the right time and build momentum with measurable wins.

Here’s how I apply it in practice. I start with a brief, honest self-assessment across the customer journey: onboarding clarity, user activation moments, in-app guides and product tours, UX writing, support loops, reliability, and analytics coverage. Then I layer in learnings from continuous discovery and product discovery—interviews, usage patterns, and support transcripts—so we see the experience as customers do, not just as we intended.

When it comes to what to fix first, I prioritize prerequisites over polish. If the value proposition isn’t clear, onboarding is confusing, or activation is inconsistent, we address those before adding new features. I instrument the funnel end-to-end, establish a minimum detectable effect (MDE) for A/B testing, and ensure we can answer basic questions about who activates, who retains, and why.

Measurement is non-negotiable. I pair retention analysis and activation metrics with qualitative signals to avoid local maxima. Amplitude analytics helps reveal behavioral patterns, while Pendo and in-app guides close gaps in comprehension and guidance. Intercom and CRM integration with HubSpot connect product signals to account health, so we can see how experience maturity drives revenue and retention.

Operationally, I anchor the roadmap to a small set of experience outcomes, link them to product strategy, and review progress in cadence with leadership. This approach builds product management leadership muscle: sharper stakeholder management, clearer trade-offs, and faster feedback loops. Most importantly, the team sees how each improvement ladders up to a better, more durable user experience.

If you’re mapping your own path across the five stages, start by sizing the gaps that block activation and retention, commit to a few high-leverage fixes, and measure relentlessly. With a shared maturity model, your team gains focus, your customers feel the difference, and your product compounds value with every release.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Best Practices.

January 3, 2026
Unlock Peak Support Performance with Pendo Agent Analytics to Drive Adoption and ROI

When agent performance improves, everything else follows: faster resolutions, happier customers, and stronger product adoption. In my role leading product management at HighLevel, I use Pendo Agent Analytics to build a shared, measurable view of how our support motions shape the entire software experience and influence product-led growth.

Increase revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk with Pendo’s Software Experience Management platform. Optimize the entire software experience to drive adoption and improve engagement.

In practice, I connect Agent Analytics with our product strategy by pairing product signals (user activation, onboarding progress, feature usage depth) with operational signals (first-response time, time-to-resolution, and deflection rates). This lets me see how in-app guides, product tours, and contextual tooltips impact outcomes across segments without guesswork.

To separate signal from noise, my team runs small, controlled experiments and targeted A/B tests. For example, we’ll instrument a guide for a complex workflow, then compare cohorts on activation, retention, and support ticket volume. If engagement improves and cost-to-serve drops, we standardize the pattern and scale it.

The real advantage is alignment. By treating analytics as a unified analytics platform that integrates agent activity with product insights, we tie day-to-day support work to our value proposition and roadmap. That transparency sharpens prioritization, accelerates adoption, and creates a clear line of sight from agent coaching to measurable business impact.

For teams getting started, baseline your agent performance metrics, map the key friction points in your user journey, and instrument those moments with precise, helpful in-app guides and product tours. Review outcomes weekly, double down on what reduces effort and drives engagement, and keep refining the loop until adoption and satisfaction compound.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Best Practices.

January 3, 2026
Safeguard Customer Data with Pendo Agent Analytics: Drive Adoption, Cut Costs, Reduce Risk

Protecting customer data is non‑negotiable—and it must coexist with our need for precise product insights. In my role, I frame every analytics initiative, Pendo Agent Analytics included, around measurable outcomes and rigorous governance so we can accelerate growth without compromising trust.

Increase revenue, cut costs, and reduce risk with Pendo’s Software Experience Management platform. Optimize the entire software experience to drive adoption and improve engagement.

To make that promise real, I anchor implementation in privacy-by-design. Practically, that means data minimization, purpose limitation, role-based access control, auditable workflows, and clear retention policies. These are the same standards I expect from any unified analytics platform and the operating guardrails my team applies in partnership with security and legal.

On the product side, I focus Agent Analytics on the behaviors that move the needle: adoption, feature engagement, user activation, and time-to-value. Paired with in-app guides, product tours, and thoughtful tooltip design, insights become timely interventions that drive product-led growth—while staying within our data governance boundaries.

Reducing organizational risk demands discipline. I pair analytics rollout with a documented data map, DPIAs where appropriate, vendor risk assessments, and clear incident management protocols. We align with regulatory compliance requirements and integrate with cybersecurity practices for continuous monitoring and threat detection and response.

I track success through business and trust metrics: higher adoption, stronger retention analysis, fewer support tickets, and cost savings from deprecating low-value features—alongside clean audits and consistent adherence to governance standards. The outcome is a tighter feedback loop, smarter roadmap decisions, and sustained customer confidence.

If you’re evaluating Agent Analytics, start with a controls checklist, define the minimum viable telemetry for your KPIs, validate consent flows, and pilot with a narrow audience before you scale. This approach balances velocity with vigilance, ensuring we harness analytics for impact without sacrificing privacy or compliance.

Inspired by this post on Pendo – Perspectives.

January 3, 2026