Most PM interviews have a prequel – A case study on “tell us how you would implement feature x in our app, how would you go about it”.
Here are some points I’d definitely cover, but in case you have limited time, keep a check on the need to be detailed.
Structure:
- Vision
- 1-2 sentence description of target customers, their unmet needs, and your proposed solution.
- You can probably also include the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Persona(s)
- Motivation
- Jump into the demographics of the user/customer you’re building for. What are his goals, mantras, needs and worries. What are the key metrics of success?
- Can repeat this for Secondary and Tertiary persona(s) as well
- Research Design
- You could then go on to cover a couple of experiment designs, discoveries, and ideas to help get to the features that you want to implement.
- This followed by Lo-Fi MVP Testing (stuff like emails, surveys, chatbots, etc) and present your results.
- You could also do a competitor analyses at this stage covering Competitor, Key Strength, Key Weakness, etc (both direct and indirect) and then share your key takeaways and points of differentiation
In case of a feature in an existing app, you can do these steps on a very low scale.
- Key Path Scenarios
- Now move on to a simple walkthrough or workflow. You could also go about building out a very simple wire-frame (lots of tools available like proto.io) if you have time
- This would ideally cover my entire user journey, but can be limited since you’re building out only a part or a new feature
- Design & Features Description
- Can focus on the feature description rather than design
- Very important to cover the dependencies and priorities in this case
- Suggested Information Architecture
- What will the views look like? If you have a tech background, you can also emphasize on the requirements that you feel will be needed/suited
- Roadmap
- Next, move on to the timelines and roadmap. Since different versions will have different requirements, I’ve divided this into three sections.
- Provide a summary of the functionality proposed for your MVP, the next version of your product, and the mature product.
v1 aka Minimum Viable Product: The MVP solely focuses on helping the basic features up and running. Should answer the question: What functions are absolutely necessary?
vNext: The vNext version is focused on helping the users on secondary benefits. Should answer: What additional features would give me a better functionality?
vLongterm: The vLongterm functionality will further enhance the core functionality in v1 and vNext. Should answer: What are some features that aren’t necessary but will definitely enhance user experience?
- Milestones / Timing
- Describe the planned timing of releases and key activities for your first release.
- What are your major milestones (internal demo, beta launch, full launch, etc.)?
- Are there natural points for reassessment? Consider linking to a spreadsheet with a PERT / gantt chart.
- Describe the major elements of your Go-to-Market plan. What marketing methods do you plan to leverage, in what sequence, etc?
- Metrics
- What are the primary metrics that you’d want to track?
- These can be related to Value to Users, Virality, Super Users, and Growth, Cohort Retention, NPS, MAU, DAU, CAC etc.
- Projected Costs & Operational Needs
- How many engineers * weeks will the project require? How much will different components, individuals, or usage cost you for storage and compute resources?
- At some point, you will need to get estimates from engineers (or via Upwork) on the amount of time and potential costs for your project.
- Some that you could include:
- Engineering Costs
- Marketing / other Costs
- Risks
- Last but not the least, consider key risks and dependencies, what might be a probable explanation and what you think are some mitigants that you believe might work.
While this looks like a whole lot of detail, feel free to use it as a guide and pick sections based on the time available.
Feel free to drop me a message on suhasmotwani@pragmaticleaders.io and I’d be happy to go through your case-study solution and provide some feedback!