Palantir PM Behavioral: Owning a Project That Started With No Clear Problem or Plan

In a Product Manager interview at Palantir, you are asked about the project you owned that began with the least clarity of any in your career. Describe it and how you moved it forward. ```hint Name the unknowns Before telling the story, list exactly what was unclear when you started, so you can show the listener how each of those things became clear. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does ambiguity here mean an unclear problem or goal, an unclear solution, unclear ownership among stakeholders, or some mix of these? - Should the story be one where you owned the whole project, or can it be a workstream you owned inside a larger effort? - Does the project need to have reached a launch, or is one that was stopped acceptable if you drove that decision? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A specific account of what was unknown at the start and why the project was genuinely ambiguous rather than just difficult or large. - The steps the candidate took to reduce uncertainty: framing, discovery with users and data, time-boxed experiments, and early agreement on what success means. - How the project was run while uncertainty remained: milestones, decision ownership, stakeholder updates and changes of direction. - The outcome with evidence, and how the candidate judged when the project was clear enough to commit. - Reflection on how the candidate approaches ambiguous work differently since. ### Follow-up Questions - Which decision did you make before you had enough information, and how did it turn out? - When did you realize a direction was wrong, and what did you do with the work already done? - How did you keep stakeholders confident while you still could not give them the answer?