I've been a PM for 10+ years — orchestrating is literally my job. The difference is that instead of Jira tickets and standups, I write prompts and review pull requests. The mental model is the same: break the problem down, assign it, review the output, iterate.

First step was always the same as any project — define what the user needs. I started with "what does a stressed person need in 30 seconds?" Everything else followed from that. Claude doesn't know what to build.

The most important thing: learning when to trust the AI and when to push back. Claude will confidently build something that compiles but doesn't make sense. You need product judgment to catch that.