Minimize development delays by streamlining story groom with AI
Case Study: Sharon Chestnut's AI powered approach to surfacing critical details early and streamlining the story grooming process.
Before diving into today's article, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone. Your support has helped our "10x PM Productivity with AI" bootcamp make it to Maven’s Top 100 courses. I'm deeply grateful. For those interested in the bootcamp, there's a special gift at the end of the article.
Now, lets get to Sharon’s awesome story.
You don't know what you don't know. And for non-technical product managers, that can spell disaster during story grooming sessions.
Uncovering the right technical details is crucial for accurate planning and smooth execution. But without the necessary expertise, probing questions that uncover potential issues, dependencies, and risks often go unasked.
This gap can lead to costly delays, missed opportunities, and strained relationships with engineering teams.
Sharon Chestnut, a Senior Product Manager at Home Depot, found a solution in AI. Her goal was to leverage AI to generate comprehensive technical questions upfront, allowing her to uncover critical details early and prevent common pitfalls.
In today’s newsletter, I’d like to share:
Why good technical questions matter in story grooming
How Sharon used AI to generate comprehensive technical questions (her exact prompts)
The benefits Sharon enjoyed from using AI, and
Lessons learned
Sharon developed this automation in my 10x PM Productivity with AI bootcamp.
The crucial role of good technical questions.
Good technical questions are at the heart of any story grooming process. Without them, you risk:
Inaccurate Estimates: Leading to unreliable project planning and stakeholder dissatisfaction.
Missed Dependencies and Blockers: Causing unexpected delays and project disruptions.
Unmanaged Risks: Potential problems that could have been mitigated early become major issues later.
Inefficient Resource Use: Resulting in suboptimal productivity and resource allocation.
Poor Communication: Creating misunderstandings and misalignment between PMs and the technical team.
Sharon used AI to generate comprehensive technical questions.
Asking the right questions is hard enough for a seasoned product manager; for non-technical managers, it can be near impossible.
Sharon turned to AI to help her generate a comprehensive list of technical questions for the story grooming process, aiming to preemptively identify potential pitfalls and ensure more accurate planning.
Here is the exact prompt she used to brainstorm potential technical questions.
Role:
You are the most experienced person when it comes to building great products. Act like an expert at asking technical discovery questions. When you respond, your tone is warm, friendly, smart, and direct to the point.
Input:
Feature Description: <input your feature description here>
User Story: <input related user stories here>
Additional Details: <known back ends and integration points, data types, and / or performance and scale preferences>
Instructions:
Generate a list of 20 unique technical questions based on the input.
Questions must encompass possible changes needed on back end systems like APIs, DBs, pipelines, Kafka topics, etc.
Questions must also probe into issues related to scale, performance, security, accessibility, and compliance with regulations.
Questions should be open ended, use clear and concise language. Also include a set of 5 follow up questions
Format:
When you respond, please organize the questions in 3 - 5 key categories
[Category #]
[Questions]
Follow up Questions
[Questions]
Provide your responses in a numbered listHere is the response.
You can view the entire chat here.
The benefits Sharon experienced with AI integration
Sharon enjoyed the following benefits:
Reduction in development bottlenecks: By asking the right questions upfront, Sharon minimized unexpected issues during development.
Improved accuracy in time estimations: With a clearer understanding of technical requirements, time estimates became more reliable.
Enhanced efficiency in the grooming Process: The AI-generated questions led to more structured and insightful grooming sessions.
Substantial time savings: Tasks that previously took extensive back-and-forth communication and delayed sprints were now handled with much greater efficiency.
Wisdom from the trenches: Sharon's perspective.
I asked Sharon if she wanted to share insights after working with AI. Here is what she shared with me:
“The power of AI is that it helps you to produce ideas or starting points, expand on those ideas, and fill in all the gaps you may have forgotten.
AI allows you to think like an architect, be as organized as a project manager and strategize like a product manager, making you one of the most well-rounded assets of your team.”
I could not have said it better myself.
Conclusion and next steps.
Every day, I receive emails from PMs asking why their prompts aren’t working. In 9 out of 10 cases, it’s because they don’t follow basic best practices.
Sharon’s automation was successful because she followed these three simple steps:
Assign the LLM a clear role
Provide detailed input
Give specific instructions
That’s it.
This is one of 100+ lessons I teach in 10x PM Productivity with AI bootcamp.
I’ll show you how to automate any PM task, save time, deliver top-notch work, and boost your productivity. Stop blaming the LLM for not “getting it” and learn how to harness its immense power more effectively.
Special gift
As mentioned earlier, the bootcamp was recently featured as one of Maven’s Top 100 courses. To celebrate this shared success, Maven is offering a special 25% friends discount. If you have colleagues who could benefit from supercharging their productivity with AI, please share this link with them: 25% off discount link.
Happy Building!!
Whenever you are ready, here are 2 ways that I can help you:
#1. 10x Product Manager Productivity With AI Bootcamp (public): An intense 3-week bootcamp, where PMs learn how to leverage AI to save time, deliver top-notch work, and accelerate velocity. New cohort starts 6/7. Use the MAVEN100 promo code for a 25% discount, valid till 6/7 only.
#2. 10x Product Teams Productivity With AI Bootcamp (private): Private version of the above bootcamp. 100% customized to your organization. Includes hackathons, coaching, mentoring, and executive playbacks.
