When AI Feels Like More Work Than Help
If you’ve ever used ChatGPT to draft a user story or summarize a meeting, you know the feeling:
- You ask it something.
- It gives you something...
- And you spend the next 20 minutes fixing what it wrote.
In a recent podcast, entrepreneur Guido van Winden said it plainly: "By the time I'm done editing, I could’ve just written it myself."
Many Product Owners are in the same boat. Curious about AI tools, they try using prompts—but quickly run into friction. Instead of saving time, it becomes just another task to manage.
It’s Not About Using AI. It’s About Working With It.
Most frustrations stem from a common misconception: that AI should work perfectly from the start.
But AI isn’t a magic button. It’s more like a junior colleague—fast and capable, but only when given the right direction.
This is where Product Owners shine.
Your product context, customer insight, and clarity of intent are exactly what AI needs to be useful. Instead of asking vague things like “Write a release note”, you’ll get better results by:
- Sharing a past example you liked
- Explaining your preferred tone or structure
- Giving it just enough background to make it relevant
Repeatable Success Starts with Saving Good Prompts
One of the simplest yet most impactful habits? Save your best prompts and reuse them.
Just like we use templates for user stories or retrospectives, prompts benefit from structure. Tools like ‘Open Prompt Manager’ (a free Chrome extension) let you organize your prompts so you’re not starting from scratch every time.
It’s a small shift with big results—and one that aligns perfectly with the Product Owner mindset: Think in systems. Build for repeatability.
Product Owners Are Already Prepared for This
You don’t need to be an AI expert to make AI useful.
You just need to bring what you already have:
- Vision
- Context
- Structure
- Ownership
That’s the real shift: from experimenting with AI to working with it as a reliable part of your toolkit.
The new PSPO-AI Essentials course dives into practical habits like this, helping Product Owners build fluency and confidence with AI. In this training we practice with storing your prompts. But even if you’re just starting out: Your product skills matter more than your prompts.