Analytics interview for Product managers

Role of Analytics in Product management

When exactly does a Product manager do ?

• Ideates - Designs new products, services, features and improvements.
• Prioritises - Which Ideas to build and implement.
• Persuades - Convinces Leadership, Engineering team and other stakeholders. This is where the Product Manager spends most of his day. Using data to create a story to convince the stakeholders.
• Executes - Build and launch products. Track and manage performance.

“ As a Product manager you are really responsible for two things. What game are you playing and how do you keep score. “ - Adam Nash

Analytics in Product management Interviews?

What does the Interviewer really want to know ?

1. Can you identify what data is relevant ?
2. Can you correctly interpret the data to make decisions ? When any metric is up or down do you know what it means ?
3. Can you use data to persuade others ? Can you create a story out of your data ?
4. Are you realistic about what data can be collected ? Some data points are not easy to comprehend like sentiment analysis data.
5. Can you identify what levers that can be controlled ? Even if you can identify all the data in the world do you know which ones you can control as a Product Manager ?

Structure of questions and why they are asked ?

All Product Analyses can be grouped into 4 buckets :

1. Opportunity Sizing :

• Should we launch this product/feature in a new market ?
• How many people are going to use it ?
• Is this idea worth pursuing based on your budget ?

2. Prioritisation :

• With a limited resources which feature are we going to build ?
• Given X amount of Time/Money which ideas should we prioritise?
• Success Definition and Measurement :
• How will you define what success means ?
• Pick one metric ( North Star Metric ?? ) to manage your feature, which one would you pick ?

3. Diagnosing Issues :

• After Product Launch, how do you go about diagnosing what is going wrong ?
• If some metrics has changed then how do you analyse that ?

BONUS : How to do Opportunity Sizing ?

1. Clarify the Scope of the problem or the goal you want to achieve. Make assumptions and confirm your assumptions.
2. Identify the Serviceable population ( SAM ). How many people will have access to the service.
3. Identify the target population ( TAM )
4. Identify the purchase/usage frequency. How many times will the user use your product or service ?
5. Identify the purchase price/Average basket size.