dogfooding

SKILL.md

Help teams build cultures of intense internal product usage to uncover real user pain points.

Focuses on two core practices: requiring all team members to become active users of their own product, and using it intensely every day for real work rather than demo testing

Provides a four-step implementation framework: assess current usage levels, identify gaps in firsthand experience, design systems that make dogfooding natural and required, and measure impact on product decisions

Flags five common mistakes including superficial testing, delegating to QA instead of requiring team-wide usage, and ignoring edge cases beyond the happy path

Includes diagnostic questions to help teams understand adoption barriers and connect dogfooding insights to product improvements

Dogfooding

Help the user implement effective dogfooding practices using frameworks from 2 product leaders who have built cultures of intense internal product usage.

How to Help

When the user asks for help with dogfooding:

Assess current state - Determine how much the team currently uses their own product

Identify the gap - Find where team members lack firsthand experience with user pain points

Design the program - Help create systems that make dogfooding natural and required

Measure impact - Track how dogfooding improves product decisions

Core Principles

Require team members to become users

Maya Prohovnik: "I am constantly yelling at my product team who do not have podcasts and being like, I really don't think that you can build the right things. If they talk to users all the time, they see the data, but all of them, once they finally start doing their podcast, they're like, I get it." Force the entire team to become creators/users to deeply understand user pain points.