Productboard Spark, AI built for PMs. Now available & free to try in public beta.
Try SparkProductboard Spark, AI built for PMs. Now available & free to try in public beta.
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company founded
2022
location
Canada
"The one thing that really kept me coming back is the shared context and continuity within the platform. That was the primary pain point Spark improved for me."
Digital Product Manager
Productboard Spark
18th March 2026
Web services
company founded
2022
location
Canada
"The one thing that really kept me coming back is the shared context and continuity within the platform. That was the primary pain point Spark improved for me."
Digital Product Manager
Solo product managers don’t have peer reviews. No one to sanity-check a user story before it goes to developers. No PM team to validate whether an idea actually solves a core problem. Just you, your judgment, and the hope you’re making the right call.
Jason Kothary knows this reality well. As the only product manager for SkillingUp at March of Dimes Canada, he leads product discovery, user research and design, vendor alignment, and development collaboration for a digital skills training platform serving people with disabilities across Canada.
Every stakeholder request and ambiguous idea that enters backlog refinement starts with him.
The platform delivers everything from basic assistive technology training to advanced job skills through partnerships with LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft, helping users build the digital literacy needed for employment in tech-enabled roles. Jason is responsible for ensuring the product evolves in ways that are useful, accessible, and aligned with real user needs.
But writing strong user stories—alone—was one of the hardest parts of the job.
Working solo means making calls without backup. When a stakeholder submits a request, Jason reviews the context and evaluates the need, deciding whether it’s worth exploring.
But the real pressure comes next. How do you confidently turn an ambiguous idea into a development-ready user story? And how do you do so without over-scoping it, under-defining it, or solving the wrong problem?
Before Spark, Jason’s workflow was fragmented and relied on generic AI tools. That meant:
Generic AI tools have no memory of the SkillingUp platform and no understanding of its users. This meant Jason was relying on tools that couldn’t build on previous conversations.
“In Copilot, you’re often going to have to re-explain the same thing over and over again. It’s very difficult to draw upon previous conversations that you’ve had. You get varied results with some of the outputs. Oftentimes I have to rework them more than I would with Spark."
— Jason Kothary, Product Manager, SkillingUp
For a solo PM, rewriting AI outputs isn’t just inefficient. It’s risky. Every revision cycle adds friction before backlog refinement and increases the chance of shipping something misaligned.
Jason needed more than documentation help. He needed a thinking partner that could pressure-test ideas and help him craft clear, development-ready user stories grounded in context.
When Jason joined Productboard Spark’s beta, the biggest advantage for him was continuity.
Unlike generic AI tools that reset every conversation, Spark builds on prior context. Jason could document SkillingUp’s mission, user personas, roadmap direction, assessment framework, and constraints only once. And Spark would retain all that foundation.
“The one thing that really kept me coming back is the shared context and continuity within the platform. That was the primary pain point Spark improved for me.”
— Jason Kothary, Product Manager, SkillingUp
Instead of starting from scratch each time he drafted a story, Jason could reference existing initiatives, roadmap documents, and research artifacts directly inside Spark. That continuity changed how he approached user story creation.
Before Spark, Jason’s path from idea to user story was mostly linear and reactive:
The validation happened late, after the story was already written.
With Spark, there’s now an explicit validation layer before a story ever reaches development.
“I’ll jump into Spark when I think we’re ready to move to development—or at least considering what the scope of development would be,” he explained. He doesn’t just ask Spark to write a user story. He uses it to interrogate the idea first:
Spark provides a structured starting point that Jason can review, refine, and adjust before bringing it to developers. All with background context and suggested scope. That means engineering is working from clearer requirements with fewer open questions, reducing rework and protecting their time.
“The Spark outputs are quality, so it gives you a sense of direction—especially when you're working with ambiguous ideas or you're not really sure if they're solving a core problem. Oftentimes I'll have a fantastic reference point, and then I can modify it to my liking just using my own knowledge and abilities.”
— Jason Kothary, Product Manager, SkillingUp
Instead of drafting from scratch and rewriting heavily, Jason now works from a high-quality foundation. He estimates he’s working 30–40% faster on user story creation and research planning compared to his previous workflow.
One feature Jason values is Spark’s ability to iteratively refine outputs. Unlike other tools that overwrite everything, Spark allows him to:
Sometimes the issue isn’t the entire story, but the level of detail. Instead of rewriting the story by himself, Jason refines it directly in context.
For a solo PM, that refinement capability acts like a built-in peer review. “If you're a bit unsure about the approach you’re taking for something, it's always great to have that reference point,” he said.
One recent example illustrates the transformation.
Under Jason, SkillingUp launched a digital skills assessment to help users choose the right training path. Jason wanted to optimize how contact information was collected (either before or during the assessment) to better track program outcomes.
This required:
With Spark, Jason didn’t need to rebuild that context. “I already have so many documents in Spark related to this feature that it’s aware of the context. Once you referenced them, it became fairly succinct and fairly detailed.”
Spark helped him distill the idea into clear user stories while simultaneously generating objectives and hypotheses for the experiment. This reduced ambiguity before development began. Without Spark, Jason believes it would have taken significantly longer to re-establish context and align on framing before writing the stories.
Instead of “thrash,” he refined.
Spark gives Jason:
For a one-person product management team, confidence in a user story means confidence in what gets built. In a mission-driven organization serving people with disabilities, that clarity matters.
“I'm able to make a more confident decision myself regarding whether or not we pursue an idea, and when we do.”
— Jason Kothary, Product Manager, SkillingUp
Less time rewriting stories means more time understanding users. More structured stories mean better developer conversations. Better framing means features that truly support accessibility and digital inclusion.
His advice for other solo PMs? Don’t overthink it. “I would just go in Spark and experiment as much as possible,” Jason said. “See just how far you can take it with AI that has that continuity.”
As March of Dimes Canada continues advancing its digital maturity, Spark is proud to be Jason’s behind-the-scenes collaborator. Together, we’re refining ideas, strengthening user stories, and moving from ambiguity to execution with confidence.
Working solo? See how Productboard Spark can become your thinking partner for product discovery and user story creation.
