FreeExam

Product sense and execution

A product manager interview on choosing the right problem, measuring success, scoping and shipping, and making trade-offs with evidence.

These prompts are original practice. They are not questions from a named employer or a live hiring loop.

  1. 1.A bike-share team gets a request to add an e-bike filter to the map. Before writing a spec, what is the most useful thing to learn?

  2. 2.A county library wants to improve holds. Which problem statement gives a team the most to work with?

  3. 3.A payroll service sells to small business owners, but office managers run payroll each week. Owners request more reports. Churn interviews keep citing mistakes during the weekly run. Which problem matters most for retention?

  4. 4.A meal-kit service has an average satisfaction score of 7 out of 10. Split by household, families score 9 and single people score 4. What is the main takeaway?

  5. 5.A doctor at one practice complained loudly about a double-booking bug in a clinic scheduling product. How should the product manager decide how urgent it is?

  6. 6.Members of a grain co-op track their sale contracts in spreadsheets. Which signal best shows this problem is worth solving?

  7. 7.A dog-walking marketplace built its persona around busy young professionals. Data shows 40% of bookings come from older owners who book by phone. What should the product manager do next?

  8. 8.An invoicing tool for freelancers is weighing multi-currency support. Which estimate is most useful for sizing it?

  9. 9.A recipe app team is interviewing home cooks about meal planning. Which question is least leading?

  10. 10.A language-learning app surveyed users, and 80% said they would pay for a premium plan. Why is this weak evidence of demand?

  11. 11.A podcast app recruits all its interview participants from its community forum. What is the main bias?

  12. 12.A product manager notices their interview notes mostly contain quotes that support the feature they already favor. What is the best fix?

  13. 13.Team chat users say in interviews they want more customization. Logs show only 3% have ever changed a setting. What is the best reading?

  14. 14.A team is running discovery interviews with hotel housekeeping staff about a room-status tool. When is it reasonable to stop?

  15. 15.In interviews, field service technicians say the work-order app is fine. On ride-alongs, they write notes on paper first and type them in later. What does this suggest?

  16. 16.A bakery ordering app shows its satisfaction survey only right after a successful order. What bias does this create?

  17. 17.During an interview, a user of an expense reporting tool says, 'Just add a button to export to Excel.' What is the best follow-up?

  18. 18.Which statement best describes the job commuters hire a parking app to do?

  19. 19.Parents mostly use a kids reading app to keep children busy on car trips. Who are the app's real competitors?

  20. 20.Tutors on a tutoring marketplace say their spreadsheet schedule is painful, yet few move to the platform's built-in scheduler. What most likely explains this?

  21. 21.Sellers on a thrift resale app say they left it for a local consignment shop. What is most useful to learn from them?

  22. 22.Couples on a wedding planning tool share their checklist with parents mostly to show that things are under control. What does this suggest for the product?

  23. 23.Gym members say booking popular classes is stressful because they fill within minutes. Which success definition best matches their need?

  24. 24.Feature A should add about $40k a year and take 2 engineer-weeks. Feature B should add about $120k and take 10 engineer-weeks. Confidence is similar. Ranking by value per week of effort, which comes first?

  25. 25.A feature's impact estimate for an e-signature tool rests on one customer's claim that it would double their usage. How should that affect prioritization?

  26. 26.A state rule requires a new disclosure in a pet insurance signup flow by March 1, or the company cannot sell there. A different feature scores higher on value. What should come first?

  27. 27.Engineers on a farmers market app say the old checkout code makes every change take three times longer. How should the product manager respond?

  28. 28.A human resources onboarding team has capacity for 3 of 7 projects. Stakeholders ask to run all 7 at once at lower intensity. What is the main risk?

  29. 29.A rental property platform must decide two things: the wording on a button and the data format partners will build integrations on. How should effort be split?

  30. 30.A photo printing site has shipped only small conversion tweaks for a year, and each new one gains less. What is the best judgment?

  31. 31.A translation service uses a scoring sheet to rank ideas. The top-scoring idea strikes most of the team as wrong. What should the product manager do?

  32. 32.Which of these is most likely a vanity metric for a budgeting app?

  33. 33.A carpool app is picking a north star metric. Which best reflects value delivered to both riders and drivers?

  34. 34.A plant nursery shop is testing a change meant to raise add-to-cart. Which guardrail matters most?

  35. 35.Accounting firms renew a tax software subscription once a year. The team plans by quarter. Which metric should it steer by?

  36. 36.An IT helpdesk measures agents on tickets closed per hour. What is the most likely side effect?

  37. 37.A note-taking app counts an active user as anyone who opens the app. What is the problem with this definition?

  38. 38.Adding push reminders to a music lessons app raised daily active users by 8%. What should the product manager check next?

  39. 39.A laundry pickup service's average turnaround holds steady at 24 hours, but late-order complaints are rising. What should the team do?

  40. 40.Why might a product team choose a usage-based north star instead of revenue?

  41. 41.A salon booking app adds auto-rebooking so stylists no longer schedule a client's next visit by hand. Which success metric fits best?

  42. 42.A coworking booking site has 10,000 visitors, 3,000 start a booking, 2,400 finish the details, and 240 pay. Which step has the lowest conversion?

  43. 43.A habit tracker's cohort retention falls to 15% by week 4 and then stays flat through week 12. What does the flat part suggest?

  44. 44.A craft marketplace's monthly users keep growing, but each new monthly cohort retains worse than the one before. What is going on?

  45. 45.A team calendar tool is choosing an activation milestone for new users. What makes a good one?

  46. 46.On a whiteboard app, users who invite a teammate in week one retain three times better. The team plans to require an invite during onboarding. What is the main risk?

  47. 47.A food bank volunteer site added a required question at step 1 of signup. Step 2 conversion rose from 40% to 60%. Why be cautious about calling this a win?

  48. 48.A car wash subscription finds that 30% of cancellations come from failed card payments. What is the best first move?

  49. 49.A summer camp registration site is used once a year by most families. Which retention measure fits best?

  50. 50.A job board is buying more traffic, but 70% of new employers leave before posting a job. What should come first?

  51. 51.An insurance quote flow test shows a 0.3% conversion lift that is statistically significant. The change adds ongoing upkeep. What should the product manager do?

  52. 52.A product manager at an apartment listings site checks a test every day and stops it on day 3, the first day the p-value dips below 0.05. What is wrong?

  53. 53.A new feature in a sports league scheduling app shows a strong lift in its first week, then the gap shrinks each week after. What is the best reading?

  54. 54.A hiking trail app test is flat overall. One of 12 segments, Android users in the north region, shows a significant win. What should the product manager do?

  55. 55.A password manager test raises free signups by 5% but lowers 30-day paid conversion by 4%. What is the right way to judge it?

  56. 56.A vet clinic reminder test was set to split users 50/50 but ended at 52/48 across 200,000 users. What should the product manager do first?

  57. 57.A legal intake form test is not significant. The confidence interval for the lift runs from -2% to +3%. What does this mean?

  58. 58.A moving marketplace gives half of customers a discount. Both groups book from the same limited pool of movers. Treated bookings rise 20%. Why might this overstate the effect?

  59. 59.A warehouse picking app is sold to 40 warehouses. The product manager wants to A/B test a new pick-list layout across accounts. What is the better approach?

  60. 60.A founder building a home inspection reporting tool asks what a minimum viable product is for. What is the best answer?

  61. 61.A team is building an app for neighbors to buy groceries in bulk together. The biggest unknown is whether neighbors will coordinate orders at all. What should the MVP be?

  62. 62.A school bus tracking app must launch before the school year starts, and the plan no longer fits. What should the product manager do?

  63. 63.A clinic scheduling product wants to match referred patients to specialists automatically. What is a cheap way to test demand first?

  64. 64.A pharmacy refill reminder pilot is starting. What makes a good exit criterion for deciding whether to build it out?

  65. 65.Midway through building an invoice reminder feature, sales asks for an extra report 'since you're in that code anyway.' What should the product manager do?

  66. 66.A music festival app is building ticket purchase, which spans several screens and services. What is a good first slice to build?

  67. 67.Which is the best acceptance criterion for card errors at checkout in a garden supply shop?

  68. 68.A product manager's requirements doc says 'use Redis for caching search.' What is a better way to write this requirement?

  69. 69.An engineer estimates a feature at six weeks. The product manager expected two. What is the best next step?

  70. 70.A designer proposes a flow the product manager disagrees with. What is the most productive way forward?

  71. 71.Days before launch, an engineer flags that an e-signature feature might let one user view another's documents. What should the product manager do?

  72. 72.Mid-sprint, new research shows a planned feature in a kids reading app misses the real need. What should the product manager do?

  73. 73.A family photo backup service is writing a spec for shared family accounts. Which item most belongs in it?

  74. 74.How should a product roadmap for the next year usually be organized?

  75. 75.A fleet maintenance tool's largest customer, 15% of revenue, demands a custom feature no other customer would use. What should the product manager do?

  76. 76.The CEO asks for a feature after hearing a friend complain about the product. What is the best response?

  77. 77.Sales promised a customer a feature by June to close a deal. The team cannot deliver until fall. What should the product manager do?

  78. 78.Marketing wants a referral program and support wants better self-service help, and both fit the same slot. What should the product manager do?

  79. 79.Support asks the product team for a new internal dashboard that is not on the plan. How should the product manager decline well?

  80. 80.A community garden booking app gets dozens of feature requests a month. What is the best way to handle them?

  81. 81.Leadership chooses a direction the product manager argued against. What is the right way to proceed?

  82. 82.A launch that leadership is counting on is going to slip by three weeks. What should the product manager do?

  83. 83.A ferry ticketing app is launching a new seat selection flow. What is the safest rollout plan?

  84. 84.A hotel housekeeping app is launching a new task assignment screen next week. What should the team do before launch?

  85. 85.A grain co-op is ready to launch a new contract tool to members. Harvest starts in two weeks and lasts six. When should it launch?

  86. 86.A county library is replacing its old catalog search with a new one. How should it handle patrons who rely on the old version?

  87. 87.The day before launch, testers find a bug in a survey tool that affects 2% of users on a minor settings page. A simple workaround exists. What is the best call?

  88. 88.A human resources onboarding product is choosing what to charge by. Which unit best tracks the value customers get?

  89. 89.A team chat product has three tiers. Which features fit best in the top tier?

  90. 90.A meditation app wants to raise its price. What is the most careful way to learn the impact?

  91. 91.A note-taking app is drawing the line between its free and paid plans. What is a sound principle?

  92. 92.Sales for a school learning platform routinely gives 40% discounts to close deals. What is the main risk?

  93. 93.A boat slip reservation startup wants to know if marina owners will pay $99 a month. What gives the most reliable signal before building billing?

  94. 94.Accounting software for dental offices is adding an advanced reporting module used mostly by large group practices. How should it be packaged?

  95. 95.A grocery delivery app's daily orders fell 12% overnight. What should the product manager check first?

  96. 96.A parking app's payment completions fell 15%. The drop is only on Android, starting the day a new Android version of the app shipped. What is the most likely cause?

  97. 97.An online chess club's signups fell 20% in one country. Nothing changed in the product. What should the team look into?

  98. 98.A pet supply shop's average order value fell 8%. Average order value for new customers and for returning customers each stayed flat. What happened?

  99. 99.A sleep tracking app's weekly active users fell 9%. What is a sound order for investigating?

  100. 100.A ski rental app's traffic falls 40% in April. Leadership asks why. What should the product manager do first?

  101. 101.A quote tool for roofing contractors sees conversion jump 30% overnight with no release. What should the product manager do?

  102. 102.A city permit office is adding an assistant that drafts replies to applicants. How should the team judge whether it is good enough to launch?

  103. 103.Which planned feature needs the strictest controls against made-up answers?

  104. 104.A pet insurer wants an AI model to make claim decisions. What is the most responsible design?

  105. 105.A support bot for a solar panel installer keeps stating the wrong warranty terms. What is the best fix?

  106. 106.A real estate client management tool adds AI-drafted follow-up emails for agents. Which metric best shows the feature is useful?

  107. 107.A meeting notes product uses a large, costly model for summaries. A cheaper model is available. How should the product manager decide?

  108. 108.A university financial aid chatbot sometimes gets questions it cannot answer reliably. What should it do?

  109. 109.The vendor behind a product's AI feature releases a new model version. What should the team do before switching?

  110. 110.A therapy practice wants to use an outside AI service to summarize session notes. What must the product manager confirm first?