Product Manager Approach to Framing and Vetting the Problem a Team Works On

How do you make sure that the problem you and your team are working on is the right one to solve? Walk the interviewer through how you approach this as a product manager. ```hint Separate the ask from the need Consider how you would tell whether what reached you is the real problem, a symptom of it, or someone's proposed fix, and what evidence would show that it deserves the team's time. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Would you like a general method, one detailed example from my work, or a method illustrated by an example? - Does "the right problem" mean a correctly understood problem, the most valuable problem for the team to take on now, or both? - Should the answer cover only the decision before building starts, or also how you check during delivery that the problem still holds? - If you want an example, can it involve an internal or operational problem, or should it be a customer-facing product problem? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A repeatable way to tell a stated request, symptom or proposed fix apart from the underlying problem - The evidence used to confirm and size the problem, and how the candidate judges whether it is the right one to take on now - How the problem and its success measure are defined and agreed with stakeholders - How the candidate keeps testing the problem as work proceeds and changes course when the evidence shifts - Grounding in the candidate's own work: their actions, the result and what they learned ### Follow-up Questions - Tell me about a time you discovered partway through a project that the team was solving the wrong problem. What did you do? - How do you respond when a senior leader hands you a solution and asks you to build it? - How do you decide you have enough evidence to stop investigating and start building?