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50 Product Management Case Studies

We often wonder what kind of process other product teams have created, planned, and most importantly, how they have implemented it. That is why we at Producter have compiled 50 different case studies for you.

a year ago   •   4 min read

We often wonder what kind of process other product teams have created, planned, and most importantly, how they have implemented it.

That is why we at Producter have compiled 50 different case studies for you.

Brought to you by Roadmape

1- Rules of Flow for Product Management: an AirBnB Case Study

“Engagement” is a term that is so overused in product management that it has almost lost its meaning. So often I’ve heard from teams, “We’ll measure the success of this test with engagement,” which could mean anything from feature click-through to bounce to we-aren’t-really-sure-this-will-drive-conversion-so-we’re-hedging-our-bet. Underneath, the reason this term has been co-opted and jargonized is that genuine, productive engagement can be ramped toward long-term customer loyalty. And loyalty pays off: a loyalty increase of 7% can boost lifetime profits per customer by as much as 85%, and a loyalty increase of 3% can correlate to a 10% cost reduction ( Brand Keys ).

2- The Psychology of Clubhouse’s User Retention (...and churn)

3- Netflix Q1 ’21 Subscriber Growth Miss: Can We Avoid Another One?

As a data analyst supporting a mobile subscription business , Netflix’s Q1 ’21 subscriber growth miss is a classic example of when I would get called for recommendations to prevent a miss in the future. I thought this would make an interesting case study to discuss my approach to finding insights to drive subscriber growth. Sadly I’m not a Netflix employee and will be limited to publicly available data but the wealth of information on the Internet about Netflix is sufficient to generate insights for this case study.

4- Amazon Go Green

As part of the Design Challenge from productdesign.tips, our team came together to find ways for Amazon to encourage more sustainability on their e-commerce platform. As with any unsolicited design project, the challenge comes with a lack of access to application analytics and technical feasibilities. Nonetheless, the question remains: How might we design checkout screens for an e-commerce app to help people recycle the goods they buy?

5- Quora Case Study – The Wonderful World of Quora

Quora has become a substantive resource for millions of entrepreneurs and one of the best sources for Business to Business market. Majorly used by writers, scholars, bloggers, investors, consultants, students this Q/A site has much to offer in terms of knowledge sharing, connection building and information gathering.

6- Building a product without any full-time product managers

Jambb is an emerging social platform where creators grow their communities by recognizing and rewarding fans for their support. Currently, creators monetize fan engagement through advertisements, merchandise, and subscriptions, to name a few. However, this only represents 1% of fans, leaving the other 99% (who contribute in non-monetary ways) without the same content, access, and recognition that they deserve.

8- What if you can create Listening Sessions on Spotify

Summary: The project was done as a part of a user experience design challenge given to me by a company. I was given the brief by them to work on a feature of Spotify and I spent around 25–30 hours on the challenge in which I went through the entire process, from the research to testing.

9- Redesigned Apple Maps and replicated an Apple product launch for it

Quick-fire question; what is the single most important and widely used feature in a phone — asides from texting and instant messaging friends, coworkers and family? Maybe you guessed right, perhaps this feature is so integrated into your life that you didn’t even think about it — either way, it is your phone’s GPS. It is reasonable to say that GPS technology has changed society’s lives in ways we never could’ve imagined. Gone are the days of using physically printed maps and almanacks, when we now have smartphones with navigation apps. Since the launch of the iPhone and the App Store, consumers have been able to use different apps for their personal navigation needs. Everyone has a preference, and apps have come out to try and address every need.

10- Intuitive design and product-led growth

In 2018, Miro was hardly a blip on the radar in the Design world. Fast forward two years, and suddenly Miro is solidly the number one tool for brainstorming and ideation.

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7 Product Management Case Studies To Live and Learn By

Product strategy case study

Product manager interview case study examples, bonus: two more resources you didn’t know you needed.

You will have some successes and make some mistakes. That is ok. The point is to learn from your mistakes, adapt and continuously improve.

For any product manager working in an Agile environment, this philosophy works pretty well with the iterative approach that Scrum and its related methodologies encourage. But, it is also worth learning from others who have been ‘doing’ in environments similar to yours. 

Why make avoidable mistakes when you can learn from what’s worked well for other product managers?

To help out with that, we’ve put together a collection of product management case studies. 

Want to learn from other product managers with remote teams? Looking for tips on the best way to prioritize ? Then we have you covered.

Get started with product management templates

.css-uphcpb{position:absolute;left:0;top:-87px;} 7 product management case studies and examples of product management in action

Roadmaps and prioritization case studies.

Where better place to start than the holy grail of product management excellence, roadmaps and prioritization techniques?

Prioritization and roadmapping may be interdependent, but they still serve very different functions. Your roadmap is ‘when you will build’ and your prioritization list tends to be ‘what you will build’ within that time frame. These two product management case studies focus on how teams used airfocus to improve their processes and productivity.

Aligning your roadmap and agreeing to your prioritizations is a mission-critical component of successful product teams. Our client, Mirrorweb , is an archiving solution provider that assists its clients with compliance requirements — and is a fantastic case study of how roadmapping and prioritization can make a product team more effective. 

Jamie Hoyle, the VP of Product needed to achieve two key objectives:

Visualize project management trade-offs and effort.

Make quantitative product decisions collectively and collaboratively.

Jamie chose airfocus based on a few stand-out features:

Easy to update and share roadmaps . This was an improvement from their previous situation, where their roadmap was updated monthly. 

Scoring matrix. This ranks features by relative effort and customer value. Bonus: It works in real-time, and you can customize your settings based on feedback loops.

New features, technical debt and client requests can be attributed to the roadmap to easily measure impact.

With airfocus, the Mirrorweb team was able to work with greater clarity and communication, despite moving into a fully remote set-up.

Then there’s NAMOA Digital , an end-to-end process management software solutions provider. NAMOA Digital’s team faced similar challenges related to roadmaps and prioritization. André Cardoso and the rest of his business solutions team knew that they had to solve a few key issues, including:

Lack of a strategically structured and prioritized request list.

No process for deciding where to invest the team’s resources. 

Missing an efficient and collaborative prioritization process.

No easy method to share roadmap decisions or align the whole organization with an agreed product strategy .

Andre was using excel formulas to create his prioritization criteria and kanban boards for workflows. By switching to airfocus , he was able to simplify and optimize the product management process with these key features:

Consolidated roadmap and prioritization list in an easy-to-access tool.

Customizable prioritization. Set your own total priority calculation with adjustable criteria, making deciding what to build next a breeze. Teams can contribute to the business goals or criteria.

Ask any world-class PM , and they’ll tell you that product strategies are a framework , not a ‘vision’. Frameworks are more useful when they are tangible and that’s why your product strategy should work to inform your roadmap, objectives, key results ( OKR ) and ultimately your backlog too.

Tech travel company, Almundo, transformed into a product-driven company with product-led growth by defining its strategy first. Their Head of Product, Franco Fagioli, approached setting the product strategy in a pragmatic way by asking the right questions: 

What is our organization’s purpose?

Where is our playground? Think segment, vertical, and channels.

How will we succeed? Define your approach by picking your Porter strategy . Will lower cost, differentiation, or focus be more valuable for your product, for example?

What capabilities do we need now? What skills will be required to deliver against the strategy and who do you know you can provide them?

What systems do we need? Are you going with Slack or Teams? What will be your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?

An insight for Almundo’s team was to recognize that the answers to these questions existed at different levels within their organization. Almundo's three levels needed to be merged into one framework. 

Corporate level

Strategic Group level

Individual Business level

Your team can tweak this approach according to the complexity of your set-up. In Almundo’s case, the team chose an iterative approach that combined the inputs into one roadmap. The roadmap covered their objectives, key results (OKR) and backlog.

So what does this product management case study teach us about product strategy?

Define your North Star . Start at the top and go through each level.

Prioritize and define . Keep OKRs minimal. A good guide is to stick to three objectives for the next quarter. Don’t add any KRs that you don't really need. Think like Mari Kondo.

Quarterly planning meetings . To start, these will cover future plans. Once you have the first quarter behind you, you can include learnings and results.

When you have a clear strategy in place, take a look at the elements related to delivering on that strategy . As you probably noticed, having good tools can make or break the creation and implementation of your strategic goals.

Cut through the clutter of PM Content with our bi-weekly digest

Remote product management case study.

Oriflame is a long-standing airfocus client . They are a remote-working beauty brand with a presence in 60 countries. Although this global spread can add value in some ways, Product Managing Director, Joakim Wissing, was struggling to communicate his product strategy across a business that was divided into silos.

By implementing airfocus, he solved his two key issues:

A lack of cohesion and inconsistent understanding of the product strategy .

A reactive approach to project prioritization.

airfocus offered Joakim and his team solutions they couldn't get from their existing software.

Setting business values. Leaders can compare the value and costs of projects.

Strategic remote collaboration. Teams can think ahead by planning the year’s priorities with remote games of Priority Poker . The results are integrated into one system that makes them easy to share, access and update.

Integration. airfocus has two-way Azure DevOps integration. This means that features, epics and stories are continuously synced and remotely accessible.

Increased transparency. Agile methodologies tend to function best in organizations that have a culture of transparency and good communication. Great tools will help your organization increase these critical components.

Product prototyping case study

Whether you are doing your first prototype to test market fit or using prototypes to test out new features, it is worth checking in on how other teams approach this phase.

For Agile teams, one of the best product management case studies is the prototyping method used by the team working on a prototype for the Barbican, a highly-regarded arts and culture center in London.

The team worked over one sprint of two weeks to produce a prototype that combined the Barbican’s scattered ecosystem of various event advertising apps and a booking website . Their objective was to solve existing problems by creating one native app/website with all event information and ticket booking.

While the team had no distinct role definitions, Emily Peta, a UX designer , managed the workflow and the process stages. With one sprint to work with, the team still made sure to follow a comprehensive process that covered a number of crucial stages:

Competitor analysis

First, Emily’s team explored existing solutions that they could adapt for quick wins.

Keep your product strategy in mind, however, and remember what your brand stands for.

Remember Instagram trying to be TikTok? That was not a good look (and it wasn’t well received).

Product and user definition

The team then conducted ten user interviews and screening surveys to get an understanding of what people wanted from an exhibition app. Their affinity diagram highlighted three distinct phases:

Before: Users want to look for interesting exhibitions and book to see them.

During: Everything users want to do once they arrive at the exhibition.

After: Users want to share photos and leave reviews.

Considering their time constraints, they wisely focused on the ‘during’ phase and chose to answer one question: ‘How can we improve the experience of the user during an exhibition?’

To start finding solutions to this question, Emily and her team created:

One user persona (and while this is a good start, depending on your audience, you will likely need more than one).

Outcome statement. A good outcome statement should provide answers to these loose categories:

Next up, the team mapped out the user flow for the persona. This is an important high-level flow, so don’t skip it out. This user flow was used to plan the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) features along with a few other inputs and prioritization games like Crazy Eights. The outcome here was a focused list of features to start prototyping.

Technical requirements

Before moving into prototyping, it helps to consider the technical requirements that might affect your product. In this case, to meet the Barbican’s ‘during’ requirements, the solution needed to use Bluetooth and GPS for people on the go, so the decision was made to build an app and not a website.

Speeding through this stage — or worse, not doing it at all — can quickly send the development process off course.

Prototyping and testing

Finally, Emily and her team were ready to create low-fidelity mockups, testing them with users and then iterating based on the feedback. This is not a purely linear process, so look at it as a feedback loop: iterate, iterate, iterate but know when to stop.

Once the team was satisfied that the lo-fi prototype was good to go as an MVP, they mocked it up in InVision as a high-fidelity, interactive prototype that could be used for further testing and briefing build teams.

This is probably one of the best times to embrace the ‘fail fast’ philosophy. Being precious about prototypes defeats the purpose. Be ready to make mistakes and improve based on your learnings.

Customer/user feedback case study

It’s never too early to start listening to customers and/or users, and there are a whole bunch of ways to do this at different stages. For any team that has a product in the market already, real-time user analytics is super important to feedback into your decision-making processes.

Gumtree, an established trading website, has a wide range of products and customers. They needed a robust, real-time reporting tool to help them understand the requirements of so many different user types.

Sax Cucvara, Gumtree’s analytics manager chose Qualaroo based on the tool's ability to provide:

Segmentation . Gumtree was able to segment users by category, location and interest.

Easy implementation. The team could set up granular surveys in no time, getting real-time results to feedback back into feature iterations.

Customer feedback is important, so make sure you are getting quality feedback regularly. Tools like airfocus Portal and AI Assist , can make collecting and analyzing feedback much easier and less time-consuming.

Backlog prioritization case study

Rounding off our list of product management case studies, we’re back to the story of an airfocus client and what other teams can learn from them.

As any product manager knows, prioritizing your backlog is just as important as prioritizing your roadmap. Getting these aligned and in an easy-to-share format can save your team time and effort.

Our client, Flowe, is a digital bank subsidiary of Italy’s Banca Mediolanum. Marco Santoni is the data product manager on their Data Platform team and manages the internal product from features to analytics.

One of Flowe’s key challenges came from the Azure DevOps system's inability to prioritize their backlog. They frequently had over 150 ‘new’ items at any given time and no objective way to prioritize the tickets. After looking into a few tools, Marco went with airfocus because it offered:

Seamless integration with Azure DevOps. You can import existing roadmaps.

Priority Poker . Teams and stakeholders can collaboratively prioritize their backlog against three KPIs: development effort, business value, and productivity.

Real-Time results for ‘quick wins’ and ‘don't dos’ are based on prioritized scoring.

By implementing airfocus, the Flowe team can present their roadmap to the entire company weekly. This aligns everyone against a common goal and ensures increased transparency.

Product management is a team game. Having a transparent and collaborative approach is even more important in the current remote working era. airfocus facilitates easy and open collaboration across teams and geographies.

Interested in streamlining your processes and turning objective prioritization into a company-wide goal? Chat to our team for a demo.

When interviewing for a product manager position , you'll often be asked about various case studies you were involved in. Of course, it's good to have a few stories on hand and to know what kinds of questions to anticipate during these interviews. 

Here are a few product manager interview case study questions you might get.

How would you prioritize these features for this product?

You may be asked how you would prioritize certain features for an imagined or real product. For example, say a new smartphone is coming out, and the goal is to launch with three new features. 

How do you determine which feature to complete first, second, and third, and which can be sacrificed to finish the others? 

If you run into this sort of question, it's important to ensure you have all of the relevant information, such as the target demographic, what has made the product successful in the past, etc. So ask questions, or imply that you would collect the answers to these questions and then work from there. 

How would you suggest we launch this product in a new region?

Another question you might be asked during a product management case study for PM interview is how you would launch a product in a new region . Again, this question pertains to a real-world example, so it's important to have a solid answer prepared. 

It can be helpful to start by collecting more information from the interviewer or explaining what information you would collect. Then, formulate a strategy . That strategy could include specific features you would introduce, marketing campaigns you would engage in, and more. 

How would you improve our in-app messenger?

Sometimes, you may be asked something very specific, like how you would improve an in-app feature that already exists. As you may have guessed, you want to glean as much information from the interviewer as possible or state which information you would collect. 

Then, list some potential strategies based on your experience. What kinds of features would you launch or remove ? Would you prioritize performance, response times, etc.? How would you manage a budget? Lean on your past knowledge and experience to help you answer the specific question at hand.

Want to know about solutions to future problems that you didn’t even know exist yet? We can help you out with even more product management case studies for that. Dig in here.

Starting a new product management job and wondering how to approach your first few months?

Then check out our 30-60-90 day guide today.

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Case Studies

ClassPass - Finding Product Market Fit

Morning Brew - User Retention

Slack - Initial Launch Strategy

Superhuman - Finding PMF

Trulia - Marketplace Launch Problem

Thrive - Content Marketing

Survermonkey - Global Expansion

Strava - Solving For Motivation

Patreon - Doubling Onboarding

Medium - The 'Highlights' Story

Lumosity - The Power of Complexity

Ipsy - Leveraging Influencer Growth

Utilizing Engineering Talent

Tinder - Customer Conversion

StichFix - Customer Personalisation

Radical Product Upgrades

Pinterest - Boosting Retention

Dropbox - Product Development

Behind Every Great Product

AirBnB - Reducing Customer Churn

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Table of Contents

Product manager case study interview prep: 4 things to prepare for.

• January 13, 2022

The case study round carries more and more weight in the Product Manager interview process. Your case study interview is your opportunity to show the hiring team how you solve problems and how you will respond to the company’s needs. To make sure you knock this round out of the park, you need to set yourself up with the right case study interview prep .

This piece will cover the different ways you can prepare for the case study interview round. There are four things you need to handle to ace your case study interview prep:

• Understand the case study you are getting
• Know who will be ingesting your case study
• Set barriers and clarify assumptions
• Apply the open-ended or narrow strategy

Follow along with our four-step case study preparation guide in this video by Product Gym co-founder Cody Chang:

Case Study Interview Prep: Step 1

Understand the case study you are getting.

The very first thing you need to figure out is what kind of case study you’ve been presented with. The best way of doing so? Ask questions. What are you being asked to solve? What are the main goals and values to consider? Is there a set timeline for when you need to complete the case study?

More commonly, case studies come up in the third round of interviews. But, there are some companies that will utilize these exercises in the preliminary interview.

One great misconception regarding case study interview questions is that the case study will always be a take-home assignment. Although this is common, it’s not always a guarantee that this will be the case. In some case study interviews, you’ll have to complete the assignment in a given amount of time and on the day.

Understand Your Case Study — Ask Questions

The best way to know what you’re getting into — regardless of how the case study assignment is presented to you — is by asking questions. Never start by going head-first into a case study. First, make sure you have all the information about the problem you’re trying to solve.

Here are some examples of questions to ask:

• How did the company create this feature?
• What stakeholder group suggested this product/product change? 
• What is the goal of this new feature? 
• Is the assumption that leadership has already signed on board to this feature? 
• Are we assuming that this is just a small product that we have been given to test? 

By asking these questions, you’re figuring out the bounds and the constraints of the case study question and evaluating the need for your case study solution and presentation. Therefore, to understand the needs of the company, you’re validating the need of the case study. This is the moment that you’re able to state assumptions and beliefs (something we’ll discuss later in this article). 

Another incredibly important point to consider is the method in which you’re presenting the case study. Will it be presented on the spot, or is it a report that you’re going to submit later? You’ll want to ask questions that clarify the expectations surrounding how you’ll submit your solution.

Having this information is important for when you present the case study, whether it be in a written report or in person, but it needs to be the focal point of consideration as soon as you start preparation. If it is a whiteboard case study , you’ll be meant to present and solve on the spot.

Case Study Interview Preparation: Step 2

Know who will be ingesting your case study (who will read it/attend the presentation).

Whenever you’re preparing for any kind of presentation, knowing your audience is a large determinator in its success. So when you present your case study , you need to think about who is going to be at the receiving end. Remember: what you discuss in your presentation should address the concerns of whichever stakeholders are present at your interview. This way, they’re more likely to feel involved, pay attention, and expand the discussion with engaging questions. 

When we discuss stakeholders, who do we mean? And what does it mean you’ll need to include? You may encounter UX Designers and Researchers, Product Owners, and Engineering Leads.

As mentioned, the stakeholders present will be more drawn to your case study if you’re mentioning factors that concern them: this is called optimization. A lot of people will only pay attention to the parts of your presentation that they care most about, or that directly apply to them.

So, you have to be sure to cover all the pieces that are relevant to the people present. If you know that there’s going to be a UX Designer in the room, then you should think about including product design elements. You can’t always depend on people to listen to your entire presentation, especially if it’s expected to be 20 to 25 minutes. Quite honestly, the hiring committee is likely going through a lot of candidates: there’s a lot they need to try and remember.

To help make your case study as memorable as possible, here is a comprehensive list of the Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to preparing and executing the case study interview:

Do’s  

• Act as if you are an employee. Granted, you’re just interviewing and you’re not officially an employee yet, but nothing is preventing you from acting like one. The best way you’re able to demonstrate your desire to work for the organization is by using company logos, colours, and designs when presenting.
• Use the right amount of content. It’s easier said than done, but you need to make sure that you’re including enough content to ensure people know about the product but are also curious to learn more about the finer details. Your presentation is only as strong as the ideas you include.
• Include visuals and media to spark audience interest. High-quality graphics help convey your point by not presenting too much information for the audience to be overwhelmed . Most people are visual, meaning the inclusion of graphics and media is a really easy way to portray your point, while also ensuring that you’re captivating those watching.
• Make sure you can explain your pitch to anyone of any age and education level.  Although not everyone is going to understand the finer points of your pitch, everyone should be able to understand the basics of what you’re trying to pitch. So, start off simple. This way you’re ensuring that everyone starts off on the same page, regardless of their individual knowledge and experience levels.
• Assume that you’ll be able to take it home. While it is common for case studies to be set as take-home assignments, it’s not always a given. Make sure that you’re prepared to create and present your case study on the day that it is set.
• Forget to set a goal for the feature. The goal that you set for your case study tends to be based on profitability. However, there are a variety of metrics that could be used to determine its success and suitability. Here is a key guide to the different and important metrics you can use when presenting and preparing for your case study.
• Avoid asking questions. The best way to ensure that you’re providing your audience with the most comprehensive and engaging case study is to ask what the audience wants and expects from you beforehand.

How to Prep for the Product Manager Case Study: Step 3

Set barriers and clarify assumptions..

There are many points that you can cover when it comes to the case study, but to make sure that you’re giving a comprehensive and relevant pitch, you need to set barriers and set assumptions. 

A key part of this is to understand the time constraints and make decisions about how you’re going to handle them. At Product Gym, where we see a lot of people stumble is when they don’t know when to stop: they don’t know when to create the guardrails, barriers, and assumptions that stop their case study from going in 12 different directions.

When given a case study, the best thing you can do is to come up with assumptions and state them beforehand so you can create the guardrails and connect with the interviewer. Don’t be afraid to ask them about a specific time limit or to suggest a timeline that they want the candidates to spend. Ultimately, the time that you spend will dictate the quality of work that you’re going to put in.

So what do you do if the company doesn’t have given guardrails that they can communicate with you? Don’t be shy — suggest some and see what they prefer.

Case Study Prep: Step 4

Consider your strategy..

We’ll cover the two main approaches you can take to solve a case study: Open-Ended VS Narrow.

Remember that when it comes to case study interview prep, either route is suitable. But once you pick open-ended or narrow, stick with it. We see many candidates make the mistake of panicking because they think there’s too much to cover. make sure you’re keeping a consistent view so that you can convey all the information and reasoning that you’re wanting to get across.

We get it — you want to go as broad and in-depth as possible. But covering absolutely everything in full detail is never an option. The best thing you can do to help your chances is to stick to one strategy and have a clear opinion. Whichever strategy you pick should include: 

• The product development life cycle
• Your stated assumptions
• Your drafted vision and strategic direction
• User stories

All these components make a successful case study, but make sure that you always include your opinion and make sure that it’s extremely clear.

Now that you know the “why” behind choosing a consistent strategy for your case study preparation, let’s unpack the Narrow vs Open-ended strategy.

Narrow Strategy

The narrow strategy is somewhat explained through the name: A narrow approach prevents you from going through the entire product lifestyle. Instead, you’re focusing on the area that you feel most comfortable and knowledgeable talking about. Thus, you’ll come across as more affirming and confident. 

If you’re trying to showcase your specific product management skills, you should pick a particular area or skill set that you feel most confident about and focus on that in the case study solution and presentation.

So when is the narrow strategy suitable? When the case study asks you to pick a product that you’re familiar with, really iterate on it. Create some suggestions or build a product roadmap. Some Product Gym candidates will pick very specific products that only they, or very few people in the industry, know. The advantage to that is that they can really robustly use data and insights to inform their roadmap that many interviewers may not be familiar with.

The downside to that is not a lot of people know about the product. This results in more effort on your end to create the context and really explain a lot of things about the industry. Ultimately, you want the interviewers to be able to ask questions and participate so that you can show a side of you as the interviewee: that you’re collaborative and thinking together in your brainstorming. If you pick something so specific that they’re not able to interact with it, that’s a failure on your part. You need to create that space where they can ask questions and really pick your brain.

Open-Ended Strategy

The open-ended strategy is the opposite of the narrow strategy. It involves covering all areas of the product lifecycle in broad strokes. It is a more general and wide-reaching approach.

Many avoid the open-ended approach because they don’t want a list of questions when they present their case study. However, if this is an environment that you thrive in, then it’s a fantastic opportunity to prove your ability to think on the spot. If you have experience in a Product Manager role, this is a great opportunity to present an open-ended case study. With this strategy, you need to think multiple steps ahead.

Which Strategy Should I Choose? 

The strategy you choose is dependent on many different factors: the case study itself, your experience, and the level of confidence with what the case study is asking. Ultimately, you should pick the strategy that you’re most comfortable with based on your knowledge of the product and how you plan to answer the case study question itself. 

BONUS Step 5: Get Your Solution and Presentation Reviewed by a Professional

You’ve worked through the case study and put your solution into a slide deck to present to a panel of interviewers: congratulations! But if you want to go above and beyond to impress the hiring team, take some time to get your case study solution reviewed by a professional.

A fresh set of eyes may catch typos and grammar errors, but will also be able to point out the areas where you can improve the solution overall. A Product Manager who’s gone through multiple case study interview rounds is going to be able to assess your solution from the perspective of the interviewer and use their experience to help you polish it.

At Product Gym, our interview coaches routinely check over members’ case study presentations, offering insight, constructive criticism, and tips on how to make their technical interview round a success. Solving case studies isn’t just a good practice for acing your interview — it’s also an excellent way to develop applicable Product Manager skills. That’s why we include classes on case studies in our program. Our case study curriculum was developed and continues to be taught by Senior Product Manager for Atlassian,  Roman Kolosovskiy .

Because we’ve been working with Product Manager job hunters for the past five years, we’ve had ample opportunity to test and perfect the case study strategy we teach our members. We’ve even compiled a bank of case study prompts that aspiring Product Managers have received in their interviews so that members can exclusively access to hone their problem-solving and storytelling skills.

Nail Your Case Study Interview Prep

You got this. Bring your confidence , your passion for the role (and the company), and your enthusiasm to solve a problem. That, combined with our case study interview prep, can take you from underwhelming to impressive as a Product Manager candidate .

Do you still have questions about case study interviews and how to prep for the Product Manager interview process? Schedule a call with our in-house team of career coaches and learn how Product Gym can help you prepare for case study interviews and land the offer of your dreams.

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• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

Using case studies as a catalyst for product adoption

Most customers won’t use a product without knowing that someone is benefiting from it. I often receive questions like:

• Which success cases do you have?
• Who’s using your product?
• How long do your clients stick with your product?
• What did your product improve for someone like me?

I dare to say that without solid use cases, the B2B business model will only have mediocre product adoption, but when it does, sales will skyrocket.

In this article, you’ll learn what a case study is, what it can do for you, and how to create one.

Table of contents

What is a case study, what can a case study do for your product team, how can you create valuable case studies, personio: 8 years, $8 billion valuation, stripe: the top-of-mind payment platform.

A case study isn’t a 500-slide deck pitch nor a 100-page comprehensive document. Doing that will just bore your prospects to death. A simple and concise case study shows what your product or service did for your audience. In other words, how your product improved someone’s life.

A study case format can vary. It can be a blog on your company’s website, available for everyone, or it can be a brief slide deck with multiple cases. The best option is being available on the company website.

A bad study case will confuse people and leave them with more questions than answers.

A good study case demonstrates the value created in simple ways. It’s generally a one-pager with enough substance to build trust.

When working for B2B companies, the struggle is always the same. Acquiring customers requires trust, and you build trust by determining who you serve and how well you do that.

Getting the case studies right enables customers to open doors to you. It’s proof that you can deliver value for them. Without case studies, you may need to “buy” the customers to get a case study available for potential customers.

Let’s understand what valuable case studies should have. Then, we will evaluate two highly successful companies and review how case studies help them get customers.

In one of the B2B companies I worked with, the salespeople complained about how hard it was to persuade clients to listen to them. I learned that the company hadn’t pursued any case studies. That was a surprise to me. Then, I talked to the leadership team, and they flipped when I mentioned it.

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Sometimes, companies perceive study cases as arduous and cumbersome to create. I wouldn’t say it’s the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not that hard. You have to cover:

• Challenge description — What was the situation before your solution, and how did the customers deal with it
• Results achieved — What has your product enabled the customers to achieve
• Who — Your customer description, including market segment
• How — The product is the guide to the story, not the hero. A common mistake is positioning the product as the centerpiece, which is the customer and the challenge
• Social proof — A good study case will have quotes from customers. An excellent study case will have videos from the customers

That’s all you need. Five steps to thrive. No more, no less. Sometimes, the challenge is getting the first done and finding a suitable format.

Personio is a German scale-up, positioning itself as an all-in HR system. They were founded in 2015 and, since then, grew steadily. Now, spread over Europe with over ten thousand customers, they have a valuation of eight billion EUR.

What Personio does well is using its customers’ satisfaction to boost sales. Looking at their use cases , the first thing I stumbled upon was the following:

Personio shares many use cases in a simple and engaging way. The headline of each case gives an idea of what the customer achieved, and the blurbs show the industry and its size:

Each case follows a simple structure:

• Customer description
• Challenge faced
• What Personio enabled them to achieve
• Quotes from customers
• Working together

The cases take no more than four minutes to read, and understanding the value created happens in the first minute.

Have you ever heard about Stripe? Maybe you don’t know them, but chances are high that you use them indirectly when paying for something.

Stripe is a major payment platform used by many companies like Amazon, Google, Airbnb, Booking.com, Slack, Zoom, and many others.

Success stories are something Stripe masters. When you look at their customers , they first present results, which creates authority:

Stripe understands the value of case studies so well that it organizes them beautifully. Potential customers can search for various cases related to company size, use case, solution, and region. This way, customers can find relatable stories.

Let’s take e-commerce as an example. The first visualization puts the customer as the hero with a short result description:

When you go to the case study itself, you find a simple and solid structure to understand the value created. First, you learn about the customer, and then the challenge is presented with the achieved results by its side. After that, you can read how the solution was implemented and, finally, the achieved results.

Each case is well written in simple language, easy to read, and straightforward with the results. The cases have customer quotes emphasizing the partnership and what Stripe enabled the customer to achieve.

Stripe keeps the study cases consistent in format, size, style, and readability. That facilitates grasping the essence and deciding whether they are the ideal partner or not.

Key takeaways

Without study cases, acquiring customers will be more complex than you can estimate. Case studies can be simple and yet remain highly valuable. All you need to present is what the challenge was, how your product helped the customer overcome it, and which results it created

Great study cases have a reading time no longer than a few minutes, and understanding the value created should take a maximum of one minute. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create beautiful cases. Visit brands you identify with and understand how they craft their study cases. Create case studies now and thrive next. You will see a massive sales improvement once your case studies are convincing and valuable.

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6 Product Management Case Studies You Can't Miss

Product management case studies are detailed analyses of how a product was conceptualized, developed, and marketed. A typical product management case study contains the following:

• The pain points and expectations of the user
• Competing products in the market
• Development , delivery, and iteration methods
• Marketing strategies implemented to relay the product’s value proposition
• How the product was received
• Lessons for the product team

So, why should you learn about the development of a product in so much detail? The answer lies in the sixth bullet.

Let’s look at how reading case studies related to product management can help you.

How product management case studies help you

Here’s why reading product management case studies is a worthwhile investment of your time. A well-written case study:

• Gives you an in-depth understanding of real product problems : Meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers is always challenging. Whether it is technical complexities, budget limitations, or organizational miscommunication, a case study helps you recognize the source of the problem which led to the development of a less-desirable product.
• Contains practical insights outside of the theory : Even a layman can learn the steps of SaaS product management . However, seasoned product managers know that developing a successful product takes more than learning the development steps. These case studies contain tons of real-life scenarios and the lessons that come with them.
• Educates you and makes you a better product manager: Product management case study examples take you through the journey of developing a product, which helps you improve your existing approach toward product development. You will also learn better ways to manage your team and resources.

In simple terms, a product management case study helps teams learn lessons that they can emulate to develop a more profitable product.

In this article, let’s look at six product management case studies that are a must-read for every product manager.

1. Slack: Initial product launch strategy

Stewart Butterfield started a gaming company called Tiny Speck to change the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). Him and his team created Glitch which was quite different from other games in that genre such as World of Warcraft.

Glitch was a 2D game that did not have the violent aspects that typical MMORPG games had at the time. It allowed extensive character personalization and Butterfield described it as “Monty Python crossed with Dr. Seuss on acid”.

While building Glitch, Butterfield and his team used the Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an online chat tool popular in the 80s and 90s. However, it fell short as the team found it difficult to keep track of past conversations, which motivated them to build their own communication tool.

As they developed Glitch, their internal chat tool gained more features based on their needs.

Despite lots of support from investors, Glitch was unable to attract enough players to keep running profitably and Butterfield eventually shut it down in 2012 .

After six months, in early 2013, Butterfield renamed their internal communication tool Slack - acronym for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge and requested his friends and colleagues to try it out and give feedback — they all loved it.

By May 2013, Slack was ready for the big reveal which posed a new challenge — executing the perfect launch strategy to drive demand.

Slack’s Challenge: Nailing the initial product launch

While launching an app that can have such an impact on how organizations work, it is crucial to get it right. At the time, there weren’t many team messaging apps and most teams had conversations via email.

Slack needed a significant number of early adopters to validate their hypotheses about team collaboration and collect data that will help them improve its services further. Consequently, this increased the stakes for the first launch.

How did Slack do it

CEO Stewart Butterfield revealed that on the first day of the launch, Slack welcomed 8000 new users which rose to 15000 at the end of the second week. The credit for this initial success, he explains, went primarily to social media.

Social media helped Slack deliver its PR pieces through its genuine users. This led to a snowballing effect because people interacted with people.

Slack recorded over 18 million active users in 2020.

Although the impact of social media-based word-of-mouth marketing will have different levels of success as it depends on factors such as the type of product and its use cases, you should have a social media marketing strategy to spread the word.

2. Superhuman: Finding product-market fit

‍ Superhuman is a premium email service for busy teams and professionals who need more of everything; speed, usability, and personalization. Apart from superb design, Superhuman processes and executes any request within 100ms.

Rahul Vohra built Rapportive in 2010 — a plugin that adds social profiles to Gmail which was later acquired by LinkedIn . This gave Vohra an intimate view of email and quickly realized that things will progressively get worse.

In his words, “I could see Gmail getting worse every single year, becoming more cluttered, using more memory, consuming more CPU, slowing down your machine, and still not working properly offline.” 

He also brought attention to the number of plugins people used, “And on top of that, people were installing plugins like ours, Rapportive, but also Boomerang, Mixmax, Clearbit, you name it, they had it. And each plugin took those problems of clutter, memory, CPU, performance offline, and made all of them dramatically worse.”

Vohra had one question in his mind — how different would the email experience be if it was designed today instead of 12 years ago?

‍ Superhuman was born to give professionals the email experience that they have been long waiting for. Smooth, easy on the eyes, and most importantly, blazingly fast.

But, there was one elephant in the room.

The idea of building a better email service than the existing players sounded great. However, going against some of the biggest brands of Silicon Valley required more than a bad personal experience with Gmail. 

The Superhuman team needed evidence that such a product is actually desirable.

Superhuman’s Challenge: Establishing product-market fit

The team at Superhuman was competing against the email services of Apple, Google, and Microsoft which made the product-market fit quite crucial.

But how do you know whether you have achieved product-market fit?

How did Superhuman do it

Vohra and his team came up with an innovative idea to measure product-market fit by testing crucial hypotheses and focusing on the right target audience.

Superhuman had two hypotheses :

• People are dissatisfied with Gmail and how slow it is.
• People are also dissatisfied with third-party email clients and how buggy they were.

In a product management case study , Vohra explained how to find the right audience — the users who would be ‘very disappointed’ if they could no longer use your product. After identifying them, all you have to do is build the product as they want it.

3. Medium: “Highlights” feature

Evan Williams co-founded Blogger and Twitter which has helped millions of people share their thoughts with the world. Although both platforms became quite popular, they still couldn’t deliver the best reading experience to their users. Blogger allowed readers to browse topics by authors only and Twitter made it difficult for authors to aptly describe themselves.

He quickly recognized the need for a publishing platform that delivers a diverse experience for the readers and allows the authors to speak their hearts.

That’s how Medium was born. It enabled readers to browse articles by topics and authors, helping them to gain different perspectives on any particular subject. It also allowed everyone from professional programmers to amateur chefs to share their insights with the world as they wanted it.

The developers slowly added more features to Medium such as tags, linked images, social cards, and sharing drafts as it evolved through the years.

One of the many notable features of the platform is the “Highlight” feature — where you can select any particular post section and treat it as a mini-post. You can comment on the Highlight or tweet it, which is handy for both personal revision and sharing interesting snippets with others.

Suggested Read: Want to become a Product Coach?

Medium’s Challenge: Determining whether “Highlights” added value

Medium faced a challenge while determining a metric that can give them an accurate assessment of the desirability of this feature. In other words, they needed a metric that would tell them whether the “Highlights” feature made user interactions better and more rewarding.

How did Medium do it

The team at Medium solved the challenge by shifting their focus to one crucial metric rather than multiple vanity metrics such as organic visits and retention time which signifies how much value your users are getting out of your product based on retention rate. 

For Medium, it was Total Time Reading (TTR) . It is calculated by estimating the average read time which is the number of words divided by the average reading speed (about 265 WPM) and adding the time spent by the reader lingering over good paragraphs by tracking scrolling speed.

4. Ipsy: Managing distribution 

Michelle Phan started her journey as a YouTuber who recognized the importance of makeup in someone’s self-expression. She has been sharing beauty tips and makeup tutorials with her audience since 2007. 

While on a trip to Thailand, she observed how little girls scrambled to pay for makeup samples in front of vending machines. Five years later, she launched a subscription-based Glam Bag program — where the customers will receive 4-5 deluxe-sized samples of makeup products.

MyGlam, as it was known back then, quickly gained over half-a-million monthly subscribers which created one of the biggest online beauty communities.

Phan quickly realized what she wanted to do — to build a brand for women who wanted to share their perspectives on beauty and meet like-minded people with similar interests and styles.

Ipsy , which comes from the Latin root “ipse” meaning “self”, was created by Phan, Marcelo Camberos, Jennifer Goldfarb, and Richard Frias to expand the user experience.

Although Phan knew how to convert viewers into paying customers, executing a marketing strategy by scaling it up was challenging.

Ipsy’s Challenge: Managing a content distribution strategy

The first makeup tutorial by Michelle Phan has now over 12 million views. Videos like that helped Phan get her first subscribers on her MyGlam program.

This shows the importance and impact of influencer-led content on revenue for businesses in the beauty industry.

However, running an influencer content distribution strategy involves collaborating with multiple passionate influencers. It was challenging to find like-minded influencers who will promote only one brand.

Phan and her team had a simple solution for this.

How did Ipsy do it

Phan and Spencer McClung, EVP of Media and Partnerships at Ipsy, partnered with beauty influencers like Bethany Mota, Promise Phan, Jessica Harlow, and Andrea Brooks who were already subscribed to MyGlam to create content exclusively for Ipsy.

In a case study analysis, McClung revealed that it put Ipsy on a content-based growth loop where the content was created by both the influencers and customers for the beauty community.

Sponsored content for products by influencers helped them increase their reach and helped Ipsy get more loyal customers. This growth loop gained Ipsy over 3 million monthly subscribers .

5. Stitch Fix: Mastering personalization

Katrina Lake, the founder of Stitch Fix , realized back in 2011 that apparel shopping needed an upgrade. eCommerce failed to meet the expectations of the shoppers and retail shops were falling short in terms of options.

In an interview with The Cut , she revealed "Searching online for jeans is a ridiculously bad experience. And I realized that if I imagined a different future, I could create it."

After realizing that no one has merged data and fashion shopping, she set out to make a difference. She started a personal styling service out of her apartment in 2011 when she was pursuing her MBA from Harvard.

Lake relied on SurveyMonkey to keep track of her customer’s preferences and charged $20 as a styling fee. In late 2012 Eric Colson, then the VP of data science and engineering at Netflix, joined Lake on her journey of crafting the future of retail.

Lake and Colson wanted to give their customers much more than just personalized recommendations.

Stitch Fix’s Challenge: Building a personalized store

Stitch Fix wanted to give their customers more than just personalized recommendations — they wanted to build a personalized store for them where everything they look at, from clothes to accessories, matches their flavor.

But everyone’s body dimensions, preferences, budgets, and past choices are unique which can make building a personalized store difficult.

The team at Stitch Fix found a simple yet effective solution for this challenge.

How did Stitch Fix do it

Katrina Lake, CEO of Stitch Fix, revealed in a case study that personalization is crucial for the onboarding, retention, and monetization of customers.

When signing up, Stitch Fix asks you a few questions about your fashion choices and picks clothes that look the best on you. Furthermore, the collections in your personal store will keep improving as it continuously learns more about your personal preferences.

Also, there is no subscription fee which makes Stitch Fix a great option for occasional shoppers. Suggested Read: Canva’s Success Tale in the World of Design

6. Pinterest: User retention

Ben Silbermann started his tech career at Google’s customer support department. Although he loved the company and believed in its vision, he quickly became frustrated as he wasn’t allowed to build products.

With support from his girlfriend (now wife) Divya and a college friend Paul Sciarra (co-founder), Ben created an app called “Tote” in 2009 which was described as a “catalog for the phone”. Tote allowed users to catalog their favorite items and will be alerted whenever they were on sale so they can make a purchase.

However, the users used it to share their collections with each other instead. Ben recalled how he collected insects as a kid and loved sharing his collection with others. He recognized how people, in general, love to do that.

And, just like that, Pinterest was born where users can “pin” whatever they are interested in and add it to their personal collections.

Pinterest quickly became a hit and entered the global market.

Despite huge success within the US, Pinterest struggled to retain users globally. The team realized that the primary reason users churned is that something stopped them from getting the product’s core value — building personal collections.

Pinterest’s Challenge: Helping customers quickly realize the core value

There are many things that can prevent a user from accessing a product’s core value and one of them is internal friction within the product.

Pinterest’s product folks zeroed in on the one feature that was the gateway to the product’s core value — the “Pin It” feature.

Users outside the US simply couldn’t relate to the term, even though all it did was save the item they like to their personal collection.

How did Pinterest do it

The “Pin It” feature of Pinterest is linked directly to its brand identity. Casey Winters, former growth product lead at Pinterest, suggested changing it to “Save”, particularly in areas outside of the US.

As of the third quarter of 2022, it has over 445 million monthly users all over the world exploring various “ideas” to build collections for sharing with their friends.

Casey concludes in the product management case study that checking whether the users are getting your product’s core value is pivotal in solving most of your growth challenges.

Key Takeaways

Case studies for product management contain in-depth insights that help product teams improve their approach toward their product’s ideation, analysis , development, and commercialization.

The six product management case study examples we reviewed above give these crucial insights:

• Slack : Don’t forget to use social media for marketing your product before its launch.
• Superhuman : Focus on the users that will be “very disappointed” if they can’t use your product anymore to achieve product-market fit.
• Medium : Track the one metric that tells you whether your users are getting value from your product rather than vanity metrics such as organic traffic.
• Ipsy : Partner with influencers to educate your target audience on how to get the most out of your product.
• Stitch Fix : Learn about what your users want and recommend them just that.
• Pinterest : Continuously experiment by changing multiple variables to uncover new growth opportunities.

To put these lessons into practice, you need to provide your team with the right tools that help them interact with your users, learn about their preferences, monitor their usage data, plan the next steps, and manage product development effectively.

Zeda.io is a product management super-app that allows you to do just that. You can run your entire product management process , from ideation to delivery, in one place. Zeda.io comes with over 5000 integrations with Zapier, enabling you to hit the ground running in no time.

Start your free trial today . Also, looking for the latest trends in AI, UX, product management, and startups? Join our biweekly newsletter now! We distill complex topics into actionable insights just for you. Hit the 'Subscribe' button and never miss out on these valuable updates. Act now – because in the fast-paced world of tech, staying ahead matters! Subscribe here.

• What is a product management case study?

Answer: A product management case study is a detailed analysis of how a product was developed and iterated over time for maximum success. These studies help product managers learn from others and improve their own approach toward product management.

• How do you prepare a product management case?

Answer: You can prepare a product management case study in four steps — understand customer needs, monitor the stages of development, identify the factors that affected the course of product development, and extract takeaways.

• What are the 3 major areas of product management?

Answer: Discovery — recognizing the need for a product, planning — creating a roadmap to plan the product’s development, and development — the various sprints through which a product is developed are three major areas of product management.

• What are the 7 steps of product planning?

Answer: Concept development, competitive analysis, market research, MVP development, introduction, product lifecycle, and sunset are the seven steps of product planning.

• What are the 5 dimensions of product management?

Answer: Reliability, usability, functionality, maintainability, and efficiency are the five dimensions of product management.

• What are the 4 P's of product management?

Answer: Product, price, place, and promotion are the 4Ps of product management which represent four crucial aspects product teams should simultaneously focus on while developing a product. 

• What are the 5 phases of the product management process?

Answer: Idea generation, screening, concept development, product development, and commercialization are the five phases of the product management process .

Table of content

Related articles, suhas motwani’s journey into product management and community building, what are the roles & responsibilities of product managers, top 10 product influencers you should follow on twitter, mahima arora.

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Product Case Ebook 1

We have added all our winning case study solutions in an ebook. Please feel free to go through the case problem statements and respective solutions as a reference for your product management Interview prep.

A bunch of companies share a take home case study assignment to filter candidates for their face to face interviews. Hence, these product manager case studies will be markers for you to prepare the structure and how to approach product assignment questions.

Solve PM School weekly challenges and get recognised by Industry leaders. For participation, check out PM School Live challenges .

Founder of PM School and Hamster Comedy. 10+ years of work experience having led Product growth challenges in Foodtech, Insurtech, and Gaming.

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What Are Product Management Case Study Interviews?

Author: Product School

Updated: August 2, 2023 - 10 min read

What is a product management case study interview?

A case study interview, also known as a case interview, is a tool used by many companies to assess a candidate’s analytical, creative, and problem-solving skills. Similar to coding interviews for engineers, they allow the interviewers to simulate a situation that allows your skills to be put into practice.

Quite simply, you’ll be given a situation, and asked to make suggestions or come up with a hypothetical solution or improvement.

In product management, this can be about any number of things. The realm of product managers is vast, and covers many different aspects of product development. As product managers sit at the intersection of business, technology, and design, you could be asked case questions under these umbrellas.

This means that you could be given a case question based on product design, monetization, market research, user segmentation, trends, data, technical development, go-to-market , prioritization…pretty much anything product managers are into!

Example case study interview questions

What’s your favorite product? How would you improve its design?

Which company do you think we should acquire next?

How would you go about launching our product in an emerging market, say, India?

What new feature would you build for Instagram?

How to ace a case study interview

The product design case interview

No, the interview isn't going to hand you a Wacom tablet and ask you to mock up an entire product on the spot! Instead, you’ll be asked to think through some solutions to pretty common design problems. Things like:

How would you improve our in-app messenger?

If we tasked you with making our user interface more inclusive of those with disabilities, how would you approach that?

How would you redesign our homepage to make it more appealing for X demographic?

We’re finding that X number of users don’t make it through the entire onboarding process. What would you do/design to fix that?

The key when being asked a question about how you’d improve the company’s product is not to insult it too heavily. Remember, the people who built it are in the room with you, so if you come in hot with “well, for starters, your homescreen is absolutely hideous and needs a complete do-over”, you’re not going to endear yourself to them. A product manager is a diplomat, so be as diplomatic as possible.

Instead of focusing on how you’d fix what you see as glaring problems, try to come up with something that adds to the product. “I think a chatbot in your user onboarding process would help people to navigate through the process. Here’s where I’d implement it…”

How to ace it

Give your hypothesis: Because everything in product starts with why .

Lay out your approach : Briefly summarize what your approach would be, given your hypothesis. Include things like the research you would need to do, and the preparation the team would need to make.

Identify the user: Companies want user-driven product managers, so definitely make sure you know which user you’re building for.

Describe the solution : How would you actually build the solution? No need to get too technical if that’s not where your skills lie. If that’s the case, talk about how you’d lead the engineering teams to build the solution.

Suggest testing: If you’ve got 2 ideas and you’re not sure which one is better, describe both and talk about the test you’d run to discover which one to roll with.

Prioritize features : Show off your prioritization skills if you’re suggesting more than one feature.

Suggest features for an MVP and plans for a V1 launch:

Finish off by helping the interviewers to visualize what the finished MVP would be like, as well as the plans you’d have for a full release later down the line.

The business-thinking case interview

Business thinking is vital for product managers, as you’re the person that ties what’s being built to the needs of the business. This is why you may be presented with a business problem, so that the interviewer can assess your thought process, and how you approach product strategy.

Business case questions may include things like:

Management wants to build X because a competitor has launched something similar. How would you respond?

If we wanted to move more into the B2B market by launching X, what would you do first?

How would you increase customer adoption for the feature we released last month?

We want to become more product-led in our growth strategy. What recommendations would you make in terms of pricing structure/increasing customer adoption?

Establish market characteristics : This is especially important if your case question is a go-to-market question. If you’re not sure what the market characteristics are, talk about what you would find out before starting the work.

Layout your approach: Briefly summarize what your approach would be.

Prioritize your actions: If you’ve been asked for a step-by-step approach, talk about why you’re doing things in that order.

Provide analysis : Business decisions require a heavy amount of analysis, so be sure to include some competitor/customer/market analysis.

Make recommendations: Talk about the end result in a business sense. Instead of getting into the weeds of feature building etc, give a step-by-step approach of how you’d take a new feature to market, or make business-oriented improvements to a product.

Remember that a business-thinking case question requires an answer that would make C-suite happy. Try to think through your answer for the eyes of management. Think about what brings most business value, and tailor your answer around that.

The technical interview

Here, by technical interview, we don’t necessarily mean the tech interviews that engineers can expect to go through. It’s very rare for product managers to be asked technical questions in an interview, unless they’re specifically applying for a technical product manager role. You’ll usually get some warning in advance that your technical prowess will be tested, either by the recruiter or a hiring manager.

The chances of being given an in-depth technical case interview (aka, a coding interview) are rare, so you’re more likely to be asked a few general questions to gauge your technical ability.

Things like:

What’s your experience with X or Y technology?

Do you feel comfortable managing a team of engineers?

Can you explain the most technical project you’ve worked on?

These are questions that you should be able to answer in the room, because they’re based on your direct experience. So you don’t need to put any special level of preparation into their answers.

You may also be asked some technical questions that allow you to show off your technical knowledge, but are open-ended enough that you can still answer even if you’re not very techy. The goal is to gauge how much technical know-how you already have, not to embarrass you and put you on the spot for not having a computer science degree.

These questions might include:

What feature do you think we should build next? How should we approach building it?

Would you build X solution in-house, or would you outsource development elsewhere?

What partners do you think we should integrate with next? (eg. Slack, Trello)

These are questions that you can approach in your own way, from a technical perspective if you come from that background, or from a people-management/design/business perspective if you don’t.

Product managers and tech skills…what’s the deal?

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to go through a technical interview, as product managers aren’t the ones who physically build the product. They provide the direction and the insights, and the engineers provide the solutions and the finished product. So what’s gained by seeing how well you can code?

Well, some roles are more technical than others, so obviously in these roles you’d need either a computer science degree or a proven record of technical work, like an engineering background.

But for a regular product manager, you’re less likely to be given a technical case interview, and more likely to just be asked a few very general questions to gauge your knowledge.

1. Give yourself time to think

The worst thing you can do is panic, and rush in with an answer. It’s OK to give yourself time to think. An interview is not a first date, and silences don’t have to be awkward! So pause, and give yourself time to consider your answer before you start.

That’s much better than giving a sub-standard answer that you can’t take back. The interviewer will expect you to need a moment to gather your thoughts, so don’t stress.

2. Hack: The McKinsey case study

Now, you’re bound to go off and do plenty more research on case study interviews, wanting to find out everything you can. So let us give you this secret hack: check out materials for McKinsey case interviews .

“But I want to work at Facebook/Google/Amazon!” we hear you say. “Why would I prep for McKinsey?”

McKinsey is one of the most difficult interviewers out there. Reviews by some previous interviewees makes it seem like the process was designed to help choose the next ruler of Westeros. Their standards are incredibly high, and their case interviews are something that people prep weeks, even months in advance for.

This has a double result for you. One, there are swathes of resources out there specifically to prep for this behemoth of a case interview. Two, if you can give a McKinsey-standard answer to a case interview, you’ll outshine the competition easily!

3. Practice ahead of time

While you can’t be totally sure what you’ll be asked in a case interview, you can still prepare.

The smart thing to do is to practice case interview questions ahead of time. The way to do this is to pick apart the job posting you’re interviewing for, and identify what the main responsibilities are.

Case interview preparation is absolutely essential for acing product manager interviews, as you’re bound to be asked a hypothetical question sooner or later in the interview process.

4. Don’t feel pressured to give a perfect answer

Companies know how much time, research, and information goes into making informed product decisions. So if they’ve asked you to propose a new feature for their product as part of your interview, they’re not looking for something they can actually implement from you. They just want to see how you think, and what your analytical and problem-solving skills are. It’s also a test of your communication skills, seeing how you present yourself and your ideas.

So don’t pressure yourself into giving an answer that’s on par with the work their existing product managers do. That’s like beating yourself up for not running as fast a Usain Bolt when you do your first ever 5K.

Prepping for product manager interviews?

We’ve got you covered! Check out these great resources:

Master The Product Manager Interview Playlist : We’ve collected together our best talks on acing the Product Management interview, from a look behind the scenes of recruitment, to how to break into the industry. Check out the entire playlist here , or enjoy this sample from Google’s Product Manager…

The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Prepare yourself for every kind of question you could ever hope to be asked in a product manager interview!

Product School resources: If you really want to deep-dive into the best interview techniques, and become the master of any interview you walk into, you should check out the resources we have in our community. We’ve got cheat sheets, templates, and more!

Hired — How to Get a Great Product Job: Tailored guide-to-go for product manager positions in top tech companies. As this book will show you,  some of the most successful product transitions originated from people in music production or finance, with full-time jobs or with no prior experience. The collection of stories of Product Management transition will show you how it’s done.

Updated: August 2, 2023

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• Case Studies

Swan Valley Medical Faces Audits With Confidence

Swan Valley Medical's paper-based quality management processes created compliance risk issues. Critical information was prone to being misplaced, damaged, or thrown away. They needed a centralized, single source for product and quality records.

• Medical Device Regulatory Compliance
• Document Management
• Item and BOM Management
• Engineering Change Management

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Swan Valley Medical, Inc. is a privately held medical device and data analytics company. The company provides customized evidence-based solutions to hospitals utilizing predictive analytics (Swan Informatics™) to enable the use of the company’s medical device technologies (T-SPeC®).

Merging these technologies creates a fundamental change to the historical clinical practice of bladder catheterization that has existed for more than 100 years. Swan’s clinical innovative solutions represent a unique opportunity to profoundly change how the world’s medical community has treated bladder dysfunction in the treatment of incontinence, retention, and fluid management.

AT A GLANCE

Mission Maintain an effective QMS to focus on developing new products and manufacturing

Best Thing About Arena All product and quality information can be linked together for easy retrieval

Bottom-Line Impact Resources can focus more on product development, manufacturing, and infrastructure rather than keeping up with paperwork

BUSINESS CHALLENGES

As an FDA-regulated company, Swan Valley Medical (SVM) is required to show objective evidence to support all processes from design and development through post-market evaluation. “Swan Valley Medical designs, manufactures, and distributes patented, single-use, urology instruments, and accessories to manage the symptoms of urinary retention or incontinence. We are regulated by the FDA and are certified to ISO 13485:2016. This requires us to maintain a system and detailed records to support our operations and exceptional quality standards,” said Swan Valley Medical’s Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs, Michelle Potvin. With design and manufacturing operations in Denver, CO, and suppliers across the U.S. and Taiwan, the challenge was—how to improve product information management synchronization across a globally dispersed supply chain and organize evidence of compliance to avoid costly penalties. Like many medical device companies, SVM was burdened with inefficient, manual, paper-based quality management processes that created compliance risk issues due to their inability to easily find critical documentation. Because information was typically in paper form it was prone to being misplaced, damaged, or inadvertently thrown away.

THE SOLUTION

To ensure operation efficiencies among global teams (internal/external) including engineers, operations, quality teams, supply chain partners, and contract manufacturers, SVM turned to Arena. Implementing Arena’s cloud-native QMS solution allowed SVM to eliminate multiple siloed systems for document control and centralize information for a single source of product and quality records. With automated workflows, bills of materials (BOMs) and files can be imported easily, and engineering

– Michelle Potvin, Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs, Swan Valley Medical

KEY BENEFITS

Arena helped SVM eliminate product development delays and quality issues that were caused by old manual-based engineering change processes. With a connected product lifecycle management and quality management system, SVM can quickly process ECOs—BOMs and files can be imported quickly and efficiently so products in design can meet go-live deadlines.

By allowing teams to simultaneously review change orders and gain visibility regarding bottlenecks and prior actions, they’ve been able to accelerate change review cycles. Arena QMS also makes audit preparation and responsiveness easy because everything is consolidated into one system. Auditors are happy to see a structured system where all information is easily retrievable. Users can access information at their fingertips, without deep dives to find what they need.

“When the system is set up to flow with your process, finding documents and records is fast and easy. Spending more time discussing opportunities for improvement instead of defending against nonconformance issues is more productive,” said Potvin. change orders (ECOs) are reviewed, rejected, or approved without unnecessary delays. This enables effective change release management and accurate revision control processes. Even CAPA resolutions are faster.

“We chose Arena’s cloud QMS solution because it allows us easy access to all our BOMs, changes, compliance logs, CAPA reports, SOPs—in one centralized location. Another important feature we like is it has an intuitive web interface that allows us to communicate the latest documentation updates with everyone in our supply chain. It also helps our teams on the manufacturing floor access the most current documentation—avoiding the use of downrev documents,” said Potvin.

• Streamlines audit processes
• Minimizes paperwork mistakes
• Reduces resources required to manage compliance
• Eliminates delays and time-consuming administrative work
• Improves visibility and traceability
• Accelerates change review cycles
• Reduces audit risk
• Improves ability to meet time-to-market targets

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