# Why I care about product thinking

> PM = product manager, or product management depending on the context.
>
> Also, I promise I'll find real-world hands-on examples soon, at the moment I can't think of one.

- I want to influence you to think that "product thinking" is a great thing for us engineers.
- I care about "product thinking" because I have seen in the past that it helped me give purpose.
- With purpose, I can build something to solve a problem that I agree with.
- Chisara Nwabara, a PM at Engineering Better, talks about "product thinking" as opposed to "product management", since "product thinking" is a set of skills that will exist throughout teams regardless of your role.
- The blog posts are [What is a Product Thinking Mindset?](https://www.engineerbetter.com/blog/product-thinking/) and [Why is Product Thinking important?](https://www.engineerbetter.com/blog/product-why/)
- "Product thinking" has 4 areas, but these four areas are based on data-based influencing: the goal is to influence and convince by presenting data, instead of forcing decisions by means of hierarchy.
- The 4 areas are:
- problem validation where we focus on the problem before the solution,
- ruthless prioritization where we strategically give priority to the "most impactful item" by backing off the prioritization with the data we gathered (if the data is missing, gather it!),
- defining what success means using more data, and
- sharing customer empathy, where we share ownership of empathy for users in the team, increasing engineers engagement and giving more purpose.
- What should we remember from what I said?
- We can start having a "product thinking" right now, even without a PM;
- And adopting a "product thinking" mindset will make it easier to welcome PMs since we will understand their concerns, and we will be able to be proactive in the product process;
- "product thinking" is not about top-down, it is all about influence through data!

Books I recommend to learn more about product thinking:

- [Escaping The Build Trap](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Build-Trap-Melissa-Perri/dp/149197379X) (Melissa Perri)
- [The Lean Startup](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602) (Eric Ries)