PM interview questions:
General Product Management:
1. Why do you want to move to Product Management?
Answer #1: I wanted to see the products I develop succeed. As a software engineer, and later a lead developer, I was deeply involved with how the product worked, but I was spending more time implementing than understanding the how and why of certain features appearing in Python on the screen in front of me. I was working as lead engineer at a startup company named Personal Spider when we missed the mark with a few product releases. I decided to move upstream and gather better requirements before sitting down to code with my team in a "measure twice, cut once" type of mentality. It led to better product, and I was hooked.
1 a. What is the role a Product Manager.
Answer: Product Managers will not be closely supervised. Little to no authority will be handed to PM. PM will not have direct managerial oversight for the people who work on your stuff. PM will be highly accountable for success or failure. As a PM it's very important to remember: a) Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. b) Communicate to different people in their own language and find out what motivates them.
1 b. How to get respect from engineers.
Answer: Clear obstacles, Always take the blame, Explain the why, Update engineers with the information about how the product is bringing money and business in the company.
1 c. How to get respect from sales?
Answer: Know their numbers, get on phone with customers, Make promises so don't have to.
1 d. How to get respect from executives?
Answer: Have a vision, Be patient, know your competition, make your commitments.
1 e. How do you estimate the work?
Answer: Rule of thumb for estimates:
- Likely estimate (L) "How long do you think it will take"
- Pessimistic estimate (P) "Ok, but what's the longest it could take, accounting for unforseen roadblocks?"
- Optimistic estimate (O) "What's the least amount of time required is everything goes well?"
[ O + (Lx4) + P ] / 6
2. What are the gretest skills of a Product Manager?
3. What are the draw backs of a Product Manager?
4. What are the Pros and Cons of eBay web site?
5. What metrics you will be using to monitor the features of the site.
6. Where do you want to see yourself in 2 years
Answer: Well ultimately that will depend on my performance on the job and on the growth opportunities offered to me. I have already demonstrated leadership characteristics in all of the jobs I've held, so I'm very confident that I will take on progressively greater responsibilities in the future. I enjoy being part of product and technology strategy and helping the company grow and simultaneously grow with the company. It's very rewarding.
7. What is the biggest advantage of having a technical background?
Answer: Having a technical background allows you to better determine what can realistically be accomplished by your team. You can dig deep into various ways of approaching a product or industry, emerge with some best practices, and sit down to build a product. A technical background creates better communication between managers and engineers while still letting each group apply their individual expertise.
8: What is the biggest disadvantage?
Answer: It's possible to geek out too much. The latest technologies, optimizations, and rewriting code bases from the ground up might sound great and exciting, but do they really help the bottom line? Will the average user notice the difference?
9. What was the biggest lesson you learned when you moved from engineering to product management?
Answer: I respected sales and marketing channels a lot more. I realized that building a great product is not enough, people need to learn why it's great and actually use the tool. Most releases won't be perfect right away, and I learned to adapt and change with the right inputs from my user base to create a better product.
# 10. What aspects of product management do you find the least interesting and why?
Answer: Politics and clamoring for resources is not too fun, but is present in most work environments. Ideally I would have infinite time and money with the best designers, engineers, sales, and business development people the world as to offer, but most often you're left cutting features and sacrificing ideals for reality.
#11. What is the difference between a BRD and a PRD?
Answer: The business requirement document is sometimes referred as the marketing requirement document (MRD). It discusses the requirements at a very high level from a business perspective. It describes the problem that need to be resolved, the market opportunity, and sometimes the competitor offerings. It justifies if a development project should be initiated. The business requirement document is not tie to any given development release and should avoid using the product specific terms. Sometimes the requirements are described in a such neutral way that you cannot tell which module or applications will be impacted. Actually, the business requirements are more like a RFP from some prospects. It is a user view of the solution.
The product requirement document is sometime referred as the product requirement specification or functional specification. It describes the expected functionality from a product. It is an outcome from the requirement analysis process. It interprets the business requirements by mapping and describing them using the product terminology. It is the document to communicate the business requirement to the product stakeholders. A product requirement document should be written with a product release in mind although not all features identified need to be scoped in. The key point is that the detail scoping decision can be made based on the product requirement document. It is the product requirement document identifies the scope of a development project. In the PMBOK, the product requirement document can be regarded as the scope statement for initiating a development project. It defines the features and is the product view of the solution.
At some stage, the product requirement should be baselined for functional design. It should be subject to the change control process for scope control. Scope creeping can thus be avoid. However, it worth mentioning that the requirement analysis is a iteration process. You should not be too rigid on changing the product requirement during design phase. You should not feel hesitate to contact customers to clarify the requirement.
#12. What are the steps and process when we want to design a new process.
eBay Product Management
#1 : What is the Global Product Planning process?
Answer: The Global Product Planning Process is the collection of steps required to move an initiative from concept through to scheduling on the roadmap. These steps or "phases" are: Concept> BRD> Scoping> NPV> Approval> Committed> Launched.
In the Concept phase, Product Management and the Business Units work together to vet the good ideas. The goal of this phase is to do the up-front work necessary to determine if a feature is a solid business idea with feasible implementation options. Once an idea is vetted and preliminarily approved, the Business Partner submits a Business Requirements Document (BRD) to the Product Manager. In the Scoping Phase, the Product Manager uses the BRD to craft a scope request. The scoping team then estimates the resources required to support the initiative. The Business Partner for the initiative then drives it though NPV process - a set of calculations (done in cooperation with the Finance Rep.) to determine the NPV and Fit score of the initiative in preparation for the presentation to the Product Evaluation Subcommittee. The Product Evaluation Subcommittee reviews all initiatives and gives them either an approved ("Green/Green") status or a not approved status. Any Product Evaluation Subcommittee-approved projects go into the queue for an overall ranking and scheduling. Any projects that are not approved are sent back through the process or eliminated. Once all the approved initiatives are ranked, Product Management and Design Labs resources are assigned, PRD dates are established, and Product Development resources are booked. The completed Product Roadmap, including LTS dates, is then presented to Product Council and to Executive Staff for approval
#2: My feature has been scoped. What are the next steps?
The PM is responsible for communicating the scope back to the BU. Assuming that the BU decides to move forward with this initiative as defined and scoped, they would take this through the NPV process. Often the BU decides that they would like to try a different approach and will resubmit this initiative, slightly modified, for rescope.
Occasionally, when a scoping estimate is returned, the BU decides to try a different approach to the project and will request PM to resubmit this initiative, slightly modified, for rescope. If a project team does not go with the first official scoping estimate for a feature, it is critical that the rescope data is captured to accurately reflect the scope that the team decides to use. For example, any requests for rescopes or notes from offline conversations with the original scoper must be officially submitted to the scoping alias. Or if a team decides to select a subset of the scoped features, the data must also be submitted to the scoping alias so that, when the time comes, the feature can be scheduled accordingly.
#3: What is the NPV process and how do I get my project through it?
The Net Present Value (NPV) process is driven by the Business Unit with the goal of identifying the costs and benefits of a given feature. The Business Partner is responsible for collecting the data that feeds into the NPV calculations and working with their Finance Rep to come up with both NPV for a given project as well as a Fit score.
Product Managers are expected to work with their Business Partners to help provide some of the data needed to run the NPV numbers. Once a project has been scoped, a Product Manager should make sure to communicate scope estimates to the sponsoring BU and to keep track of whether the BU plans to do NPV and what the status is.
#4: What is a Fit score?
A Fit score attempts to capture the more qualitative aspects of an initiative; fit from a Strategic, Community, Product Principle, User Experience, and Technical Complexity perspective
#5: How are projects booked?
Once features have been scoped, through the NPV process and approved, they are eligible for booking resources.
New Initiatives
We typically book PD resources based on the information provided in the scope document. We will get as detailed as we can (in terms of PD components, for example, XSL, Isapi, Search, Batch, etc.) based upon the information available to us in this document. The scope document is (by design) high level, so we may not have all the project details at this point in the process. (Based upon past projects, Project Managers may often have much more detail on what is required than Global Product Planning does when booking.)
In addition to PD scoping, we collect "high", "medium" & "low" impact estimates from DataWarehouse and Ops, and a Yes/No on whether JAD is required from Architecture. Once PD resources have been booked we circle back with these groups to ensure that they know when PD plans to deliver their components. As each group moves forward with planning their own upcoming roadmap they will have pertinent data such as PRD dates, development dates, and LTS dates for each initiative and will take this all into consideration while solidifying their own plans.
Once a project is approved, it's also booked by Deisgn Labs. DL works with Product Management and GPP to identify what the priority, possible dependancies and target dates are. The project is then allocated to resources on User Interface, Usability and Creative resource maps and a target PRD date is established.
Existing Projects For existing (meaning previously booked) projects requiring new or additional resources, the project manager should work directly with the development managers for resource allocation. If trade offs are required on one manager's resource map in order to book this initiative, the project manager can take a list of trade offs and impacts back to the product management group & Lynn as applicable. If this initiative cannot be booked without impacting multiple resource maps the project manager will then need to raise this issue as an agenda item for the Thursday planning meetings.
Within the Thursday planning meeting such issues are discussed that cannot be resolved offline as well as new initiatives, escalations, etc. Development managers are present and decisions regarding booking, tradeoffs, etc can be made during the meeting. Often times decisions regarding VP or BU input are listed as action items to be resolved shortly after each meeting. The results of each meeting are published and the Tracker tool updated to reflect the decisions made.
When components aren't complete for an initiative, Project Managers should work with Global Product Planning to get the remaining components added. Once we know what we need and how many train seats we can work on booking.
#6. How eBay makes money:
When you sell an item on the site, eBay takes a cut of the profits you make
eBay fees:
Insertion Fees
Final value fees
Reserver fees
Buy it now fees
Listing upgrade fees
eBay Picture service fees
Seller Tool fees
Ad Format Fees
eBay Motors Fees
eBay Stores Fees
Real Estate Fees
PayPal Fees
Paying your eBay Seller's Fees
Invoicing Procedures and Payments
eBay’s Info
• Confirmed Registered Users — eBay cumulative confirmed registered users at the end of Q1-06 totaled 192.9 million, representing a 31% increase over the 147.1 million users reported at the end of Q1-05.
• Active Users — eBay active users, the number of users on the eBay platform who bid, bought, or listed an item within the previous 12-month period, increased to a record 75.4 million in Q1-06, a 25% increase over the 60.5 million active users reported in Q1-05.
• Listings — eBay new listings totaled a record 575.4 million in Q1-06, 33% higher than the 431.8 million new listings reported in Q1-05.
• Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) — eBay GMV, the total value of all successfully closed items on eBay’s trading platforms, was $12.5 billion in Q1-06, representing an 18% year-over-year increase from the $10.6 billion reported in Q1-05. Excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, Q1-06 GMV increased 22% year over year.
• Fixed Price Trading — eBay’s fixed price trading contributed approximately $4.3 billion or 34% of total GMV during Q1-06, primarily from eBay’s “Buy It Now” feature.
• eBay Stores — At the end of Q1-06, eBay hosted approximately 486,000 stores worldwide, with approximately 247,000 stores hosted on the US site.
EBay reported record consolidated net revenues of $1.390 billion in Q1-06, representing a growth rate of 35% year over year which is primarily due to continued Marketplaces and PayPal growth. Net revenues were negatively impacted by foreign currency translation of approximately $50.2 million in Q1-06 as compared to Q1-05. On a sequential basis, consolidated net revenues were positively impacted by foreign currency translation in Q1-06 by approximately $8.3 million.
#7: What is eBay affiliate program?
Answer: eBay affiliate program drive ACRU's (ACRU – Active Confirmed Registered Users (bid, list, or buy within 12 months). The eBay Affiliate Program pays Internet publishers, Web masters, and other online partners to drive new users to eBay. Affiliates promote eBay with banners, text links, and other innovative tools, such as the Editor Kit and the Flexible Destination Tool. In return, they receive commissions for driving new users as well as bids and "Buy It Now" purchases. Affiliates earn from $5.00 to $13.00 for each new active user and from $0.05 to $0.09 for each bid or "Buy It Now" transaction. Currently, the top 25 affiliates in the program average above $100,000 in monthly commissions.
Joining the eBay Affiliate Program is free.
General Product Management:
1. Why do you want to move to Product Management?
Answer #1: I wanted to see the products I develop succeed. As a software engineer, and later a lead developer, I was deeply involved with how the product worked, but I was spending more time implementing than understanding the how and why of certain features appearing in Python on the screen in front of me. I was working as lead engineer at a startup company named Personal Spider when we missed the mark with a few product releases. I decided to move upstream and gather better requirements before sitting down to code with my team in a "measure twice, cut once" type of mentality. It led to better product, and I was hooked.
1 a. What is the role a Product Manager.
Answer: Product Managers will not be closely supervised. Little to no authority will be handed to PM. PM will not have direct managerial oversight for the people who work on your stuff. PM will be highly accountable for success or failure. As a PM it's very important to remember: a) Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. b) Communicate to different people in their own language and find out what motivates them.
1 b. How to get respect from engineers.
Answer: Clear obstacles, Always take the blame, Explain the why, Update engineers with the information about how the product is bringing money and business in the company.
1 c. How to get respect from sales?
Answer: Know their numbers, get on phone with customers, Make promises so don't have to.
1 d. How to get respect from executives?
Answer: Have a vision, Be patient, know your competition, make your commitments.
1 e. How do you estimate the work?
Answer: Rule of thumb for estimates:
- Likely estimate (L) "How long do you think it will take"
- Pessimistic estimate (P) "Ok, but what's the longest it could take, accounting for unforseen roadblocks?"
- Optimistic estimate (O) "What's the least amount of time required is everything goes well?"
[ O + (Lx4) + P ] / 6
2. What are the gretest skills of a Product Manager?
3. What are the draw backs of a Product Manager?
4. What are the Pros and Cons of eBay web site?
5. What metrics you will be using to monitor the features of the site.
6. Where do you want to see yourself in 2 years
Answer: Well ultimately that will depend on my performance on the job and on the growth opportunities offered to me. I have already demonstrated leadership characteristics in all of the jobs I've held, so I'm very confident that I will take on progressively greater responsibilities in the future. I enjoy being part of product and technology strategy and helping the company grow and simultaneously grow with the company. It's very rewarding.
7. What is the biggest advantage of having a technical background?
Answer: Having a technical background allows you to better determine what can realistically be accomplished by your team. You can dig deep into various ways of approaching a product or industry, emerge with some best practices, and sit down to build a product. A technical background creates better communication between managers and engineers while still letting each group apply their individual expertise.
8: What is the biggest disadvantage?
Answer: It's possible to geek out too much. The latest technologies, optimizations, and rewriting code bases from the ground up might sound great and exciting, but do they really help the bottom line? Will the average user notice the difference?
9. What was the biggest lesson you learned when you moved from engineering to product management?
Answer: I respected sales and marketing channels a lot more. I realized that building a great product is not enough, people need to learn why it's great and actually use the tool. Most releases won't be perfect right away, and I learned to adapt and change with the right inputs from my user base to create a better product.
# 10. What aspects of product management do you find the least interesting and why?
Answer: Politics and clamoring for resources is not too fun, but is present in most work environments. Ideally I would have infinite time and money with the best designers, engineers, sales, and business development people the world as to offer, but most often you're left cutting features and sacrificing ideals for reality.
#11. What is the difference between a BRD and a PRD?
Answer: The business requirement document is sometimes referred as the marketing requirement document (MRD). It discusses the requirements at a very high level from a business perspective. It describes the problem that need to be resolved, the market opportunity, and sometimes the competitor offerings. It justifies if a development project should be initiated. The business requirement document is not tie to any given development release and should avoid using the product specific terms. Sometimes the requirements are described in a such neutral way that you cannot tell which module or applications will be impacted. Actually, the business requirements are more like a RFP from some prospects. It is a user view of the solution.
The product requirement document is sometime referred as the product requirement specification or functional specification. It describes the expected functionality from a product. It is an outcome from the requirement analysis process. It interprets the business requirements by mapping and describing them using the product terminology. It is the document to communicate the business requirement to the product stakeholders. A product requirement document should be written with a product release in mind although not all features identified need to be scoped in. The key point is that the detail scoping decision can be made based on the product requirement document. It is the product requirement document identifies the scope of a development project. In the PMBOK, the product requirement document can be regarded as the scope statement for initiating a development project. It defines the features and is the product view of the solution.
At some stage, the product requirement should be baselined for functional design. It should be subject to the change control process for scope control. Scope creeping can thus be avoid. However, it worth mentioning that the requirement analysis is a iteration process. You should not be too rigid on changing the product requirement during design phase. You should not feel hesitate to contact customers to clarify the requirement.
#12. What are the steps and process when we want to design a new process.
eBay Product Management
#1 : What is the Global Product Planning process?
Answer: The Global Product Planning Process is the collection of steps required to move an initiative from concept through to scheduling on the roadmap. These steps or "phases" are: Concept> BRD> Scoping> NPV> Approval> Committed> Launched.
In the Concept phase, Product Management and the Business Units work together to vet the good ideas. The goal of this phase is to do the up-front work necessary to determine if a feature is a solid business idea with feasible implementation options. Once an idea is vetted and preliminarily approved, the Business Partner submits a Business Requirements Document (BRD) to the Product Manager. In the Scoping Phase, the Product Manager uses the BRD to craft a scope request. The scoping team then estimates the resources required to support the initiative. The Business Partner for the initiative then drives it though NPV process - a set of calculations (done in cooperation with the Finance Rep.) to determine the NPV and Fit score of the initiative in preparation for the presentation to the Product Evaluation Subcommittee. The Product Evaluation Subcommittee reviews all initiatives and gives them either an approved ("Green/Green") status or a not approved status. Any Product Evaluation Subcommittee-approved projects go into the queue for an overall ranking and scheduling. Any projects that are not approved are sent back through the process or eliminated. Once all the approved initiatives are ranked, Product Management and Design Labs resources are assigned, PRD dates are established, and Product Development resources are booked. The completed Product Roadmap, including LTS dates, is then presented to Product Council and to Executive Staff for approval
#2: My feature has been scoped. What are the next steps?
The PM is responsible for communicating the scope back to the BU. Assuming that the BU decides to move forward with this initiative as defined and scoped, they would take this through the NPV process. Often the BU decides that they would like to try a different approach and will resubmit this initiative, slightly modified, for rescope.
Occasionally, when a scoping estimate is returned, the BU decides to try a different approach to the project and will request PM to resubmit this initiative, slightly modified, for rescope. If a project team does not go with the first official scoping estimate for a feature, it is critical that the rescope data is captured to accurately reflect the scope that the team decides to use. For example, any requests for rescopes or notes from offline conversations with the original scoper must be officially submitted to the scoping alias. Or if a team decides to select a subset of the scoped features, the data must also be submitted to the scoping alias so that, when the time comes, the feature can be scheduled accordingly.
#3: What is the NPV process and how do I get my project through it?
The Net Present Value (NPV) process is driven by the Business Unit with the goal of identifying the costs and benefits of a given feature. The Business Partner is responsible for collecting the data that feeds into the NPV calculations and working with their Finance Rep to come up with both NPV for a given project as well as a Fit score.
Product Managers are expected to work with their Business Partners to help provide some of the data needed to run the NPV numbers. Once a project has been scoped, a Product Manager should make sure to communicate scope estimates to the sponsoring BU and to keep track of whether the BU plans to do NPV and what the status is.
#4: What is a Fit score?
A Fit score attempts to capture the more qualitative aspects of an initiative; fit from a Strategic, Community, Product Principle, User Experience, and Technical Complexity perspective
#5: How are projects booked?
Once features have been scoped, through the NPV process and approved, they are eligible for booking resources.
New Initiatives
We typically book PD resources based on the information provided in the scope document. We will get as detailed as we can (in terms of PD components, for example, XSL, Isapi, Search, Batch, etc.) based upon the information available to us in this document. The scope document is (by design) high level, so we may not have all the project details at this point in the process. (Based upon past projects, Project Managers may often have much more detail on what is required than Global Product Planning does when booking.)
In addition to PD scoping, we collect "high", "medium" & "low" impact estimates from DataWarehouse and Ops, and a Yes/No on whether JAD is required from Architecture. Once PD resources have been booked we circle back with these groups to ensure that they know when PD plans to deliver their components. As each group moves forward with planning their own upcoming roadmap they will have pertinent data such as PRD dates, development dates, and LTS dates for each initiative and will take this all into consideration while solidifying their own plans.
Once a project is approved, it's also booked by Deisgn Labs. DL works with Product Management and GPP to identify what the priority, possible dependancies and target dates are. The project is then allocated to resources on User Interface, Usability and Creative resource maps and a target PRD date is established.
Existing Projects For existing (meaning previously booked) projects requiring new or additional resources, the project manager should work directly with the development managers for resource allocation. If trade offs are required on one manager's resource map in order to book this initiative, the project manager can take a list of trade offs and impacts back to the product management group & Lynn as applicable. If this initiative cannot be booked without impacting multiple resource maps the project manager will then need to raise this issue as an agenda item for the Thursday planning meetings.
Within the Thursday planning meeting such issues are discussed that cannot be resolved offline as well as new initiatives, escalations, etc. Development managers are present and decisions regarding booking, tradeoffs, etc can be made during the meeting. Often times decisions regarding VP or BU input are listed as action items to be resolved shortly after each meeting. The results of each meeting are published and the Tracker tool updated to reflect the decisions made.
When components aren't complete for an initiative, Project Managers should work with Global Product Planning to get the remaining components added. Once we know what we need and how many train seats we can work on booking.
#6. How eBay makes money:
When you sell an item on the site, eBay takes a cut of the profits you make
eBay fees:
Insertion Fees
Final value fees
Reserver fees
Buy it now fees
Listing upgrade fees
eBay Picture service fees
Seller Tool fees
Ad Format Fees
eBay Motors Fees
eBay Stores Fees
Real Estate Fees
PayPal Fees
Paying your eBay Seller's Fees
Invoicing Procedures and Payments
eBay’s Info
• Confirmed Registered Users — eBay cumulative confirmed registered users at the end of Q1-06 totaled 192.9 million, representing a 31% increase over the 147.1 million users reported at the end of Q1-05.
• Active Users — eBay active users, the number of users on the eBay platform who bid, bought, or listed an item within the previous 12-month period, increased to a record 75.4 million in Q1-06, a 25% increase over the 60.5 million active users reported in Q1-05.
• Listings — eBay new listings totaled a record 575.4 million in Q1-06, 33% higher than the 431.8 million new listings reported in Q1-05.
• Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) — eBay GMV, the total value of all successfully closed items on eBay’s trading platforms, was $12.5 billion in Q1-06, representing an 18% year-over-year increase from the $10.6 billion reported in Q1-05. Excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, Q1-06 GMV increased 22% year over year.
• Fixed Price Trading — eBay’s fixed price trading contributed approximately $4.3 billion or 34% of total GMV during Q1-06, primarily from eBay’s “Buy It Now” feature.
• eBay Stores — At the end of Q1-06, eBay hosted approximately 486,000 stores worldwide, with approximately 247,000 stores hosted on the US site.
EBay reported record consolidated net revenues of $1.390 billion in Q1-06, representing a growth rate of 35% year over year which is primarily due to continued Marketplaces and PayPal growth. Net revenues were negatively impacted by foreign currency translation of approximately $50.2 million in Q1-06 as compared to Q1-05. On a sequential basis, consolidated net revenues were positively impacted by foreign currency translation in Q1-06 by approximately $8.3 million.
#7: What is eBay affiliate program?
Answer: eBay affiliate program drive ACRU's (ACRU – Active Confirmed Registered Users (bid, list, or buy within 12 months). The eBay Affiliate Program pays Internet publishers, Web masters, and other online partners to drive new users to eBay. Affiliates promote eBay with banners, text links, and other innovative tools, such as the Editor Kit and the Flexible Destination Tool. In return, they receive commissions for driving new users as well as bids and "Buy It Now" purchases. Affiliates earn from $5.00 to $13.00 for each new active user and from $0.05 to $0.09 for each bid or "Buy It Now" transaction. Currently, the top 25 affiliates in the program average above $100,000 in monthly commissions.
Joining the eBay Affiliate Program is free.
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