The one question you’ll be asked in every Product Operations interview

Last week, a friend of mine received her long-awaited job offer for a Product Operations role at a growing startup. Two weeks ago, another friend didn’t get through their Prod Ops interview. What’s interesting is that they were both asked the same question during their interview. 

As I often say, Prod Ops is the PM's partner in crime, and I’m always happy to mentor product-oriented professionals on advancing their career.  In this post I’ll share an example of a Prod Ops interview question that pops up quite frequently, and the framework to answer it. Let’s jump right into it!

Interview question

“Create a list of metrics to track during the product feature implementation process that would be useful for product and engineering leadership”. 

Framework for answering

Consider these guiding questions to craft your answer: 

• Who is the target audience for these metrics and what do they care about? E.g. Product would likely be interested in users' value we’re delivering and what is the business impact, Engineering should have a view on delivery speed and maintenance costs. Understanding the audience’s questions will shape the themes or categories of metrics you’ll include in your answer. 

• What are the lagging indicators of success? What do we really care about at the end of the day? These metrics are the ultimate measures of product delivery success and provide a clear picture of outcomes the team wants to drive. 

• What are the day to day measures that influence lagging indicators, i.e. what are the leading indicators? Product development is a journey. Just as with any journey, you need to understand both where you've been (lagging indicators) and where you're headed (leading indicators) to monitor progress and make adjustments.

Answering just these three questions will help you to create a barebone of your metrics framework. 

Example

Let’s take a hypothetical example of a B2C mobile app and map the metrics list to track during and post (monitoring is important!) feature launch. Please note that the exact list of metrics you’ll need to track will differ depending on your goals, business model, and product type.

So what?

Metrics-related questions are common across all product-related roles, including Product Operations, Product Management, and Technical Program Management. To answer these effectively, focus on three key components: structured thinking, guiding questions (like those we discussed earlier), and a foundational understanding of analytics and math. The good news is that all of these skills can be learned! 

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Dina’s 2 cents:

My experience working with Product Ops is very limited and I interviewed a person for the Prod Ops role only once (was responsible for a specific behavioural part of the interview) . This post highlights to me a reality for smaller companies.  Without a dedicated Product Ops role, these vital responsibilities naturally distribute across the product trio – Product Manager (myself), Engineering Lead, and Design Lead. We've woven operational excellence into our daily workflow, from ensuring we outline success metrics in our PRDs to aligning on reliability standards during technical assessments. This collaborative approach works, but I can certainly appreciate the value a dedicated Product Ops partner could bring.