Kindle Launch: Date vs. Scope Trade-Off
Company: Amazon
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product / Decision Making
Difficulty: hard
Interview Round: Take-home Project
##### Question
A new Kindle has eight planned features (five software, three hardware). The project is running four months late, jeopardizing a Black Friday launch that drives most annual sales.
Craft the strongest arguments for delaying launch to keep the full feature set.
Craft the strongest arguments for shipping on time with a reduced scope.
Given a table that lists progress, user value, cost, and complexity for each feature, choose which to cut or keep to meet the Black Friday date and explain your prioritization in order of importance.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a product manager's competency in launch planning, scope-vs-time trade-offs, stakeholder prioritization, and quantitative feature prioritization under constraints such as hardware certification timelines and over‑the‑air update capability.
