Success Metrics for a Product You Love, Seen From a Program Management Office
Company: Expedia
Role: Product Manager
Category: Analytics & Experimentation
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Pick your favorite product. In the role of its PMO, how would you measure whether it is succeeding?
```hint Outputs or outcomes
Decide early whether shipping the roadmap on time counts as success, or only what that shipped work changed for users and the business.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Does PMO here mean a program management office that oversees delivery across the product's projects, or simply the person who owns the product?
- Should success be measured for the product as a whole, or for the portfolio of initiatives currently being built for it?
- Over what horizon: a quarter, or the product's health year over year?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear choice of product and a one-line statement of the value it creates for users and the business
- A primary success metric with a few input metrics and guardrails, each defined precisely
- The delivery measures a PMO would track, and how they connect to product outcomes
- A cadence and mechanism for reviewing the metrics and acting on them
### Follow-up Questions
- Your portfolio ships nearly every project on time, but the product's main metric is flat. What do you conclude?
- If leadership let you report only three metrics, which would you keep and why?
- How would you judge a project that was cancelled halfway through?
Overview: A product metrics question that asks how you would measure the success of your favorite product from the seat of a program management office. It tests separating outcome metrics from delivery measures, choosing a primary metric with guardrails, and tying shipped work back to user and business results.