product management assignment examples

Product Management Take Home Assignment Example

· 13 min read ·

🔥 This blog is long. Answering a take home assignment well will bring you one step closer to your dream job. This blog is detailed to help you in every step of the assignment. So read on! But only if you have some time 🤣

Product Management Interviews can be long and arduous with a lot of stages. Each stage has a specific focus. If you are interviewing for a product manager role you will come across the product management Take Home Assignment. It is unique to product management roles and is used to surface specific skillsets. Over the years I have submitted so many of these that honestly I have lost count. As I progressed in my career and started hiring product managers I also created a few of my own to gauge the skills of prospective hires. In this blog we will look at the different aspects of the product manager take home assignment. We will also walkthrough a product management take home assignment example.

What is the Take Home Assignment

This is an exercise that the product manager needs to do on their own. The assignment is generally sent to you after the initial screen round or conversation with the hiring manager. The email contains:

Every company will tweak the format to meet their specific needs. Some might provide context and information that they’d like the candidate to use. Others might decide to keep it open ended and let the candidate make all the decisions.

What is the Goal of the Take Home Assignment

Through this exercise the hiring team wants to find out how you tackle different problems that you will most likely face on the job. The goal is to find out the following:

The Two Types of Product Management Take Home Assignment Questions

New product or service.

The question will be presented to you in the following format:

“You are a product manager at XYZ Corp and tasked with evaluating and launching a new product. What product will you choose? How will you go about evaluating the opportunity and launching the first iteration of the product.”

Update to Existing Product or Service

“You are the product manager for “X” product. Tell us one feature that you would like to implement to improve it.”

As we said earlier some teams like to keep it open ended to see where the candidate ends up with them. The example above is an open ended questions. Others might be more structured and ask you to include specific information.

Example of How to Structure Your Take Home Assignment

Every take home assignment should touch on the following

Start with Questions

Don’t start with brainstorming ideas! When you read the assignment there will be questions that come to your mind. Jot them down. Frame them in a concise and easy to understand manner and then send them back to the hiring team. You can choose to skip this step and make assumptions as you see fit. But let me ask you this - “Would you do that in the real world? At your current job, if you are not sure about something, what do you do? Do you make assumptions and start solving the problem? The answer is NO! You will talk to your manager or peers to understand more about the problem. So why not ask questions about your assignment! Once your basic questions have been answered you can move to the next step.

Define the Problem

Explain the problem you are going to solve with the new product or update to the existing product. Keep your description short and crisp.

Who is facing this problem?

Is everyone facing these issues? Or is it limited to a subset of users? Define the user persona that is facing this problem.

Why does it need to be solved ?

No product is perfect or solves all problems. Why do you think it is IMPORTANT to solve this problem over EVERYTHING else? Why would you prioritize spending time and resources on this versus other things?

How does it align to the organisational goals?

What is the vision of the company? Does the product team have goals that they want to achieve in the next 12-18 months? Does this align with those goals? You can gauge the organisation goals by looking at their public roadmap , website, releases or while talking to your interviewers. (In case the assignment is about a fictitious company, this may be included in the questions)

Learn 7 Ways to Do Market Research

What is your proposed solution?

How will you solve the problem you have described above? First describe the actions that will solve the problem. Then give a short description of the key aspects of the feature or product that will enable users to take those actions. I would encourage you to put in a wireframe along with the description. This does not mean that you spend hours and hours building high fidelity mockups. Create simple wireframes. You can either use a piece of paper and draw a rough sketch with your hand or use a tool like balsamiq which is simple and easy to use.

What are the risks associated with these changes?

Can your solution cause any unwanted issues for the users or the team? Is it going to make anyone unhappy 🤣 . Think about all the different stakeholders that your update will impact. Once you have identified the risks, try and outline what steps you will take to mitigate them. This section doesn’t need to be crazy long. As long as the hiring team knows that you’ve thought about it you’re good!

How will you measure success?

This is the place where you list out the metrics you will follow in order to gauge the success or failure of the release. It is one of the most critical sections of your assignment and carries a lot of weight. Don’t go overboard here. More is not always better. Think through which metrics truly reflect the performance of the product or feature. Stay away from vanity metrics 🤣 . With each metric add the following information:

30 Metrics Product Managers Should Know

Find out How Product Teams Use Data

The assumptions you have made

While working on the assignment you will have questions that will need to be answered. You will have some data but then it might not be enough to get you all the answers. You will need to make some assumptions in order to come to your conclusions. But that’s ok. In fact that is going to be the case every single time you launch a product or feature. So remember to state all your key assumptions clearly in your assignment. You can do it as a separate section or highlight them wherever they are relevant.

6 Key Stakeholders for Product Managers

You have cleared the screening round for your dream product management role in Amazon. You get an email from the recruiter on a take home assignment you need to complete. It looks something like this:

“You are the product manager for the Amazon app. What new feature will you add to improve the product?”

On the face of it this is an open ended question. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they want you to just pitch them whatever idea you might have 😀 . So don’t jump the gun yet and start brainstorming on the coolest idea already 🤣 .

“You are the product manager for reviews on Amazon. Recent feedback from customers has shown that they are not happy with how reviews on the site work? How will you go about solving this issue?”

This one requires you to look at a particular section of the platform.

Solution For Take Home Assignment

For the purpose of this blog we will use the open-ended question example.

First things first  let’s think about what questions come to mind after you have read the assignment?

Send over these questions to the hiring team to see if there is any additional information that the team can provide you. They might send you hard data or insight on which you can base your assignment. Or they can come back and tell you to make your own inferences.

Let’s assume that that the team comes back and tells you the following:

“Our data shows that reviews are an important part of customer conversion. In fact listings with more reviews are 5% more likely to sell than ones with less. However recent surveys have surfaced frustration among users with how reviews work. We don’t have any other information to share regarding the assignment.”

Alright, so this information answers some of your questions. For the remainder we will make and state our assumptions clearly. So let’s start building our assignment step by step as discussed in the last questions:

Users find it difficult to browse through reviews on Amazon.

Who is facing this Problem

All users are facing this problem. We are assuming that this problem is not limited to a particular category.

Why does it need to be solved?

Reviews play an important role in the buying decision of users. Recent feedback has shown that people are frustrated with how reviews work.

What is the proposed solution?

Empower users to search faster and find the right review.  This can be done by adding a search bar to reviews that let’s user type in a specific query. The reviews would filter in real time based on what the user types out.

Assumptions

Minimum Viable Product(MVP)

Will this cannibalise an existing feature?

This update will cannibalize the usage of smart tags in our search results. Overtime we can analyze if one or both features are needed by the users.

What are the risks associated with the update?

Reviews have a high impact on conversion. An update that doesn’t work can negatively impact GMV

How will we mitigate the risk highlighted?

The release will be A/B tested first to validate its effectiveness before making it available to everyone.

A Practical Approach to A/B Testing

Additionally it would be useful to analyse if the user is using the search bar when the same search terms is present in the smart tag

What organizational factors do we need to consider before the release?

Before we start work on the update we need to align different stakeholders on proposed changes. And consider the following during these conversations:

Scheduling the A/B test at the right time across the right category is important for this update.

Disclaimers on the Take Home Assignment Example!!!

Common mistakes to avoid in take home assignments.

Not Asking Questions

Sometimes we are in a hurry to get started. Sometimes we are lazy. Sometimes we are so burnt out with all the interviewing that we decide to skip this step. Sometimes we just want to get it over with. Please ask questions 🙏

Overshooting the length

We can get a bit too excited and try to cram in too much information into our submission. It’s quite understandable. You have done all the hardwork and want to make sure that the hiring team sees that. But please stick to the length. Generally it’s 2 pages with font size 12. Being succinct and presenting information in a concise manner is an important skill that product managers need to posses. So when you turn in an assignment that’s too long it sends the wrong signal to the hiring team.

Not Using Appendices

This is true for any work that you present. Cramming in too many graphs or designs in the middle of your documents makes it difficult to read. Use the limited space you have to highlight the important findings and conclusions you have drawn. Leave all the grunt work out of the main submission and attach them as appendices.

Finishing in one sitting

Don’t try to hash out the entire assignment in one sitting on a Friday night 😆 . Take breaks! Come back and have a look at your assignment with a fresh set of eyes often.

Not citing references

It’s ok to search on the internet. You do that in the real world too. If you are using certain frameworks or citing data make sure to add the references as part of your submission.

Spending too much time to find the most kick*** innovative idea

We don’t want to discount the fact that outstanding ideas will get you brownie points. But your idea is only one of the factors in your submission. I’d rather see a mediocre idea that’s built on a structured approach rather than what sounds like a great idea but ends there and is not backed by logical reasoning, thinking and research.

Not balancing Quantitative and Qualitative data

Product Management isn’t binary, I wish it was 😀 . You can’t focus on only data or only qualitative feedback. You have to use both. You have to look at the hard data but also look at the organizational impact of the updates you propose. In order for any update to be successful it requires a cross-functional effort. So make sure that your assignment is balanced. It shows your ability to think analytically while leading pragmatically.

We hope that you have found the information we shared useful. If you are reading this blog you are probably starting to write your take home assignment.

Download The Take Home Assignment Example Template

Hopefully it will help you structure your assignment.

Remember - there are no bad ideas! So pick one and ask the right questions. Break a leg!

Checkout some of our other blogs that will help you prepare for your product Management Interviews

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Take-home assignments for product management candidates

Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

13 March 2022 ‧ 7 min read

I've recently gone through the process of designing a product management interview process for RevenueCat. This is not the first interview process I've set up from scratch, but one of the questions that comes up every single time is whether a written take-home assignment should be a part of the process.

RevenueCat uses written assignments in most interview processes. However, they are not without criticism . Therefore, I wanted to be deliberate about the whether and how to ask for this kind of homework. In this article, I will walk through some of the pros, cons, and ways to mitigate the cons. At the end, I will also share what I ended up doing (spoiler alert: I did ask for a homework assignment, but it was a little bit different than the usual "design a solution" homework).

The drawbacks of take-home assignments

Let's start with all the reasons that speak against giving candidates written assignments.

Firstly and perhaps most obviously, take-home assignments require time , and often the response will be better the more time the candidate was able to invest. This biases against anyone who has less free time at their disposal – candidates with children, for example. Therefore, take-home assignments could be considered non-inclusive.

These assignments can also feel like free work . I am personally of the opinion that they never actually are free work , because the responses are unlikely to contain truly novel ideas and even if they do, the hard work is not the idea but fleshing it out and implementing it. However, the candidate might feel differently and therefore you might put off some good candidates by giving an assignment.

Assignments can also feel like an uneven burden . In interviews, the candidate and the interviewer spend the same amount of time on the interview. In assignments, the candidate spends much more time writing than the recipient will spend reviewing.

There is also the risk of cheating on an assignment by soliciting help, which might reduce the validity of the signal you get from an assignment.

There are also some specific points that make the responses to a written assignment not comparable with how a product manager would work in real life. Firstly, the candidate will have much less context than any real life product manager would have. Perhaps most importantly, they will not have access to customers to discover actual problems and solutions to those problems, which is arguably more important than having good-sounding ideas in isolation.

In addition, the more domain knowledge is required for (or helpful in) responding to the assignment, the more you might inadvertently filter out candidates who are great product managers (or have high potential for it) in favor of domain experts with poor product management skills.

Written assignments also completely disregard the fact that product management is a team sport . Asking a product manager to design a solution in the absence of a product designer is something that wouldn't happen in any but the smallest teams. You want to hire a product manager who can effectively collaborate with a designer to discover and design a solution, not someone who believes they have to know all the answers themselves.

The benefits of take-home assignments

Let's now look at what speaks for giving out take-home assignments.

Firstly, written assignment give better signal about how candidates think and deliberate . Interviews only give you signal on how well candidates can think on their feet. Most actual product management work, however, is done with the ability to research, reflect and form an opinion, not having to come up with solutions on the spot. In most circumstances, you would rather hire someone who comes up with great solutions with a bit of time than someone who comes up with just good ones on the spot.

Written assignments also test structuring problems and written communication . These skills are always important for product managers, but particularly so in today's remote and asynchronous work environment.

The assignment also acts as a filtering function for the candidate's interest . While this is to be taken with a grain of salt (because of the fact that different candidates may have different levels of free time available), you can say that candidates who are more interested in the domain will be naturally more diligent and thoughtful about their responses.

An interesting corollary to the previous point is that for candidates who are more interested in the domain and the problem you are solving (the “missionaries”), the assignment can actually generate additional excitement about the opportunity. These candidates will likely find working on the problem so intrinsically motivating that it gives them energy rather than draining it.

Lastly, take-home assignments can be a great way for candidates who are not currently in a product management position to show off their potential and their product sense. The best way to ask interview questions is often behavioral (“tell me about a time you…”), which can be tricky for candidates that aren't currently in a role where they can showcase a lot of product sense.

Alternatives and mitigation

Some of these drawbacks can me avoided or mitigated depending on how the take-home assignment is designed. Here are some options to consider.

If you just want to test written communication, you could just ask candidates for a writing sample , which allows them to reuse a work product they've already produced and therefore reduces the time investment that's required. Of course, this approach limits some of the benefits of the take-home assignment.

In a similar vein, you could ask candidates to give a presentation about one of their previous projects instead. This is often done in interview processes for designers ( portfolio review ). The biggest challenges with this approach are that product management can differ widely between different companies, and it also biases against candidates who haven't been in product management before.

Several of the drawbacks can be addressed by assigning a problem that isn't related to the company's own product, but rather a third party product . This makes it clear that the assignment isn't “free work”, and it also levels the playing field in terms of domain knowledge. However, it makes it harder to filter for candidates with enthusiasm for the space.

To reduce bias against candidates with less free time, it generally makes sense to time-box and/or length-box the assignment (i.e., “spend no more than 2 hours on this” or “submit no more than 2 pages”). Of course, you can't enforce a time-box, and a length-box is an imperfect substitute (in general, short documents are harder to write than long ones, so the more time you invest, the better a short document will get).

To make the assignment more alike real product management work, you can provide contextual information as part of the assignment that candidates have to analyze, for example, customer quotes or data points. On the flip side, the more information you include, the more time it will require from candidates to process that information before even starting to write.

More generally, it is often a good idea to limit the amount of domain knowledge required in the assignment (unless you absolutely need to hire a domain expert). Even if the assignment is about your own product, there are surely some product questions that are easier to answer without deep domain knowledge than others.

To avoid asking for activities that a product manager would never do without collaborating with their team members, consider not asking them to design a solution . Instead, you could ask for researching an opportunity, drafting a strategy, or writing up a one-pager for a mission or initiative.

Lastly, let's talk about some ideas to avoid the assignment feeling like “free work” or an uneven burden where the candidate invests a lot of time without receiving anything in return. Placing the assignment step late in the process (i.e., after panel interviews) is one way to achieve this. It does, however, reduce the leverage it provides for the process.

You can also make sure to provide detailed feedback or ensure to always have one face-to-face discussion after the assignment, even in the case that the assignment wasn't strong.

Finally, as an even more extreme measure, you could monetarily compensate people for their time spent on the assignment.

What we ended up deciding at RevenueCat

As with any tradeoff decision, there isn't a perfect solution for product manager take-home assignments. You can optimize for one aspect or another and give different weight to the various pros and cons. Here's what we ended up deciding for our recent product management role at RevenueCat.

Firstly, we did ask candidates to complete an assignment. Being a fully remote, globally distributed company, the ability to communicate well in writing was too critical a skill to not test for. We did not go for one of the alternative ways to test written communication (writing sample, portfolio review), because it makes different candidates harder to compare and it also biases against candidates who may not have something as impressive to show for reasons unrelated to their own performance.

We also chose to make the assignment about our own product, mostly for the reason of filtering for as well as spurring additional excitement for our domain. We did, however, push the assignment back in the process past the panel interview, so that it would feel more like a conclusion of the process instead of free work. Interestingly, the filtering function worked quite well in the sense that one candidate withdrew his application after seeing the assignment, stating that he didn't have as much interest in the space as he initially thought. I consider this a feature, not a bug – better to have found that out by means of the assignment than after joining the company!

In terms of the actual content of the assignment, we moved away from the typical "design a solution" prompt, because that's not something a product manager should ever do in isolation. Instead, we asked the candidates to come up with a 1-2 page proposal for how to break down and start operationalizing one of our strategic focus areas. The candidates had been given some context for the focus area in the interviews, and the assignment itself provided additional context as well. In addition to that overall prompt, we also included some guiding questions that we expected the candidates to cover (for example, “What information would you collect and how?” or “What risks do you see and how would you mitigate them?”).

The advantage of this kind of assignment, from my perspective, is that this is precisely the kind of work that I would expect product managers to do independently when tackling a new area. In real life, they would of course have more time and access to more information, but they would still have to start somewhere. This kind of assignment gives the candidates the ability to show how they would break down such an ambiguous and big problem into pieces that are small enough to handle.

Asking this kind of assignment question was a bit of an experiment, but one that turned out well so far. We will probably keep experimenting with this approach and further refine it.

Before wrapping up, I want to share one last aspect about written assignments that I have found absolutely crucial. Before looking at the first completed assignment, develop a list of questions to grade the assignment by. I don't just mean the general assessment rubric (e.g.,”clarity of communication”), but concrete and specific questions (e.g., “does the candidate identify trade-offs and do they make reasonable trade-off decisions?”). This allows a more objective assessment and comparison between different candidates' responses. It also ensures that compelling writing doesn't paper over the fact that a candidate hasn't covered all crucial aspects of the assignment.

I hope you found this article useful. If you did, feel free to follow me on Twitter where I share thoughts and articles on product management and leadership.

About Jens-Fabian Goetzmann

I am currently Head of Product at RevenueCat . Previously, I worked at 8fit , Microsoft , BCG , and co-founded two now-defunct startups. More information on my social media channels .

How to answer Product manager assignments?

More companies are turning to take-home assignments as a way to evaluate candidates during the interview process. These assignments are effective in assessing a candidate's problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Interviewers gain a more in-depth understanding of a candidate's abilities, as they can see how they approach and solve a problem over an extended period. Take-home assignments are also a good way to simulate the day-to-day responsibilities of the role, making them a valuable tool for evaluating a candidate's fit for the position. Since there is very little written about it, here's a guide on how to excel on your next take-home assignment.

What skills do these assignments look to test?

• - Writing and presentation skills
• - Creativity
• - Market research
• - Design sense
• - Prioritization

Which format should you use to submit your assignment?

Companies sometimes do offer a choice between a written document(pdf) or a PowerPoint presentation as a format for submission.

Here are tips on how can choose what would be the most suitable:

Create a presentation when you are comfortable presenting your ideas visually and  have a strong design sense . While presenting this, make sure you are succinct in your communication. It gives stakeholders a good sense of how you would perform in the role and may also help you get brownie points.

Writing is better when you are better at verbal communication and for ideas that require elaboration. It's an excellent opportunity to showcase your understanding in-depth.

There is no definite answer, choose the format that showcases your strengths better .

One common question asked during interviews for product management roles is how a candidate would design a new product or improve an existing one. To assist you in preparing for such questions, we will take a closer look at one such question, outlining the critical elements of structure and the important considerations to keep in mind while answering it.

Sample question - Build a new restaurant reservation app for urban areas to increase the number of bookings.

• - Make sure you think about a list of clarifying questions and ask the HR or the interviewer directly before you attempt the problem.
• - Listing out the assumptions that answer potential questions the interviewer may have is a good way to demonstrate a meticulous approach.
• - Adding design principles like supporting multiple languages, accessibility requirements, etc. can help impress and distinguish you from others.
• - Clearly outline the goals and target user demographic, taking into account any unique factors of the urban environment.
• - List all the functional, social, and emotional needs of the users.
• - Generate a list of features that solve those needs. Don’t forget to add a few   moonshot ideas to showcase creative thinking.
• - Consider the tradeoffs, and risks, and prioritize the solutions. You can also call out features that are differentiators or provide a competitive advantage. ‍
• - Define the success metrics. ‍
• - Show how the proposed product will look and feel through visual aids such as simple wireframes.
• - Talk about the GTM strategy including pre and post-launch activities.

Once you are done, get feedback from a couple of other people, only if your assignment allows it. It can reveal any missed pain points or alternative solutions. However, it's important not to seek feedback from too many people, as this can lead to confusion.

Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

• - Spending too much on wireframing as opposed to establishing a clear vision
• - Focusing more on presentation format than content
• - Not thinking critically about user pain points
• - Not defining clear success metrics
• - Not getting feedback on ideas
• - Not considering trade-offs about product decisions
• - Not providing a clear structure for the report/presentation

This is similar to a live interview, but since you are given a few days to answer this, interviewers expect a more in-depth response, much like launching a real product. To succeed, aim to be as comprehensive as possible.

Here is an example of a sample case:

Case: There is a 30% attrition of employees with less than a year of experience. The research shows that there are two reasons for that. 1) They lack career trajectory 2) They are not aware of the opportunities inside the company. There are people in the company with 6-8 years of experience willing to help them. How would you design a product to solve this problem?

There are a few assumptions I would like to make:

• - This attrition is across all departments of the organization
• - The experienced people can devote approx 5-7 hours a week for mentoring people
• - The recruitment process is standard.
• - The mentors to new employees ratio 1:2 which means they have enough time to help new employees.

The goal is to reduce the attrition rate of new employees. I will go about discussing the users and some potential features that can solve the root-causes listed above for the attrition. Then I will move on to prioritize the features on how they help in achieving the goal. Then we can look at metrics and some wireframes.

The users for this portal are:

• - The new employees - People who just joined in, with less than a year of experience.
• - The experienced people (mentors) - They can advise new employees on their career paths, show them examples, recommend them fields they can go into or skills to learn.
• - The HR managers - These people overlook the entire hiring and human resource management and should be able to see the skills, roles, backgrounds of all employees.
• - The executives

I would like to prioritize the top 3 users for this product as they are the heavy users.

The executives probably only want to see end results which can easily be shown in a dashboard

Let’s discuss the pain points by understanding the user journey:

• - When the right roles open internal employees don’t get to know about it.
• - There is no clarity on the career path, especially new employees who have no idea what skills to learn, which path to take.
• - The old employees have no other avenue to showcase their skills other than their role. There is no additional responsibility/activity.
• Skill matching with roles: The employees enter their skills and the feature recommends positions that match their skill and level of experience. They also get push notifications when a team matching their skill is hiring.
• The HR managers add new job roles and descriptions to the portal and send notifications to all employees (internal).
• Explore Mentors: The new employees can search for mentors, filter them by name, skills, teams and roles. They can then view their profile which gives them an idea of their career path.
• Set up one-on-one: The new employees can then inbox and block a one on one time from mentors’ calendars which shows open spaces or recommended times(like office hours). The mentor receives the invite which he can accept or decline with a message and the event gets added to both of their calendars.

Prioritizing Features: To numerically prioritize the features, I will use a scoring system, from 1 to 5, to rate a feature across these attributes. The total is calculated by adding and subtracting the positive attributes.

The features explore mentors, job notifications and skill matching with roles are the most important. This will truly solve the two main reasons for employees leaving and reduce attrition. The new employees would be able to learn trajectories from people who have taken that road before and make informed decisions. The skill matching would help them find opportunities within the organization and hence love what they do.

The other tasks can be achieved through slack, emails etc and hence have a lower priority.

Some other things that can be done to reduce the attrition rate are:

• - The new trainees can be assigned to a rotational program where they get to work in several teams and features. For example APM programs that not only improve the skill of people but also help them identify how they want to progress in their careers.
• - Seminars for career growth.
• - Most millennials value contribution to a vision more than just collecting paychecks. So teams can have their own visions which employees resonate with.

To measure success I would use the following metrics:

• - Reduction in attrition - 10% in 3 quarters
• - Portal Usage per week
• - Number of arranged one-on-one with mentors in a week

Please see the attached wireframes below for the web pages.

Building products that scale for Cult.fit. Bringing the silicon valley mindset while building products for Healthcare, E-commerce and Fintech

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How to win the product manager case study presentation.

• November 11, 2020

Richard Chen

You have worked hard and finally finished your Product Manager case study assignment . Now it’s time for you to kick back and relax until your interview. If that was your thought process, let’s stop you right there, as you are about to make a fatal mistake! Your case study presentation is as vital as designing the product itself. You have to be well-prepared and look effortlessly confident to show your interviewers that you believe in the product you just created.

Remember seeing that requirement about “excellent communication skills” on the Product Manager job posting? Well, this is the time to prove to your potential employer that you have that requirement! In this post, we’ll break down the steps you need to give a winning case study presentation. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Design and Brand Your Presentation Materials
• Have the Right Amount of Content
• Include Visuals and Media to Spark Feedback from the Audience
• Make Sure You Can Explain Your Product to a Five-Year-Old and a Ph.D. Simultaneously

1. Design and Brand Your Presentation Materials

The fact you are not a current employee of the company shouldn’t prevent you from acting like you are one of them.

The best way to prove that you are a big fan of the company and have the spirit to join the team is to use company colors, logos, and any media related to them. A good design always draws attention, and you want to grab as much attention as you can.

Many of our members who are just beginning to interview feel apprehensive about their design skills. Because of this, they try to avoid any creative thinking by going with a generic design. This is a significant mistake: your design should be impressive enough to attract the audience but not too ornate to distract them from the content.

So how do you find the right balance?

To get started, choose a generic theme. Then, change the color scheme to your company’s theme colors. The same recommendation goes for the font you use. You should go beyond the good old “Times New Roman” or “Calibri” and choose a font that’s both sleek and legible. If you can find the company’s branded fonts, even better.

Last but not least, make sure you include the company logo at the beginning of your presentation. This is perhaps the most direct way of branding your case study presentation.

2. Have the Right Amount of Content

Now that you have grabbed your audience’s attention with your sleek design, it’s time to focus on the actual material.

When it comes to a Product Manager case study presentation, you should always have just enough content to ensure that people know just enough about your product to be convinced that it has potential but still curious about the finer details, which will keep them engaged throughout the presentation.

That being said, you should include all the relevant details about the fundamental aspects of the product. Your presentation is only as strong as the ideas you have. Before you focus on the presentation, make sure you’ve solved the case study as effectively as possible. To make sure you’re going into the case study interview round prepared, check out this video:

The case study presentation should reiterate the problem statement, including the product’s objective, target user personas, key features for the MVP, wireframes for the design, and success metrics. It should be an attractive visual summary of a Requirements Document that you would create for your internal teams.

3. Include Visuals and Media to Spark Feedback from the Audience

The rule of thumb for any successful presentation is to have as little text as possible but still clearly communicate your message. This is where high-quality graphics come to your aid.

Pictures do speak louder than words, and as a Product Manager, your designs should do the same. The best way to ensure that everybody understands your product is to include wireframes and preliminary designs in your presentation. You should allocate a considerable amount of time to go over your designs and ask the interviewer for feedback.

Most people are more visual than literal, and activating the brain’s visual cortex will ensure that your interviewers remain engaged throughout your presentation. When going over your designs, ask them questions, see what they think, and learn about the things they would have done differently.

Wireframing can be intimidating for the novice Product Manager. If you are struggling with figuring out how to sketch and what to sketch, make sure you sign up for the Product Gym Case Study course to learn everything you need to know about UX/UI design as a Product Manager. Not only do we talk about wireframing, but we also provide you with the frameworks you need to create, document, and present your product (including slide deck templates!)

4. Make Sure You Can Explain Your Product to a Five-Year-Old and a Ph.D. Simultaneously

As humans, we think everyone has the same mental capacity when learning about something that we know very well. We all unconsciously believe that everyone has the same amount of information about the things we know.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it’s perhaps the number one reason why so many presentations fail.

Your audience will consist of different kinds of stakeholders who come from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. Some of them might be completely unaware of the product you are discussing, while others might have spent days thinking about the product you just presented.

Regardless of the audience’s average knowledge level, it’s always best to start simple. This way, you’ll ensure that everyone is on the same page with the basics. As you progress further, let your audience engage and ask more detailed questions. Your answers to those questions will display your proficiency in the product and prove to your interviewers that your thought process was beyond the basics.

By focusing on the knowledge base of your audience, you’re making sure everyone will have a positive experience with your presentation. You’re also demonstrating your strength as a communicator.

With the Case Study Presentation

Need more advice on how to solve and present case studies? These tricky interview rounds can be the most intimidating part of the Product Manager job hunt. That’s why the Product Gym curriculum includes case study breakdowns, and why our coaches are always available to respond to your questions.

Our community of aspiring Product Managers have been there, and we’ve encountered every case study struggle you could imagine. Want to benefit from community support and courses around winning the Product Manager case study? Schedule a free consultation with our career coaches to see if Product Gym is the right choice for your PM career path. We’d love to answer any questions you still have.

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Product Manager Case Study Questions Explained

Product management case studies are an integral part of the interview process for aspiring product managers. They evaluate analytical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and strategic decision-making skills.

Understanding the Role of Case Studies in Product Management

Case studies assess how well a candidate can understand ambiguous business situations and provide data-driven recommendations. They test competencies like:

• Market analysis
• Competitive benchmarking
• Product positioning
• Go-to-market strategy

Recruiters use case studies to gauge if a product manager can structure nebulous problems and drive product direction strategically.

Product manager case study questions typically present real-world scenarios like new product development, feature prioritization, pricing strategy, etc.

The Goals of Product Management Case Studies

The goals behind case study evaluations are:

• Evaluate analytical abilities
• Assess problem-solving approach
• Test strategic thinking
• Benchmark communications skills
• Gauge leadership principles

The case study framework is designed to simulate the responsibilities and challenges faced by product managers daily.

Overview of the Product Management Case Study Framework

The standard product management case study framework follows this structure:

• Company background
• Product background
• Business challenge or opportunity
• Market dynamics
• Competitor benchmarking
• Questions on product strategy

The questions asked aim to assess the thought process and problem-solving skills of candidates. There are no definitively right or wrong answers.

Product Manager Case Study Presentation Essentials

An effective Product Manager case study presentation should clearly communicate:

• Findings from quantitative and qualitative analyses
• Fact-based recommendations
• Data-driven strategic plan
• Proposed success metrics

Focus on showcasing the analytical approach over final recommendations. Demonstrate how you structured the problem and aligned solutions to company goals.

How do you answer a case study question for a product manager?

When answering a case study question as a product manager candidate, it's important to demonstrate both your strategic thinking and your ability to execute tactically. Here are some tips:

Focus on achieving tangible outcomes

• Clearly define the goal or objective you are trying to achieve from the case study
• Outline 2-3 key metrics that would indicate success in meeting that goal
• Provide specific examples of tangible outcomes you would aim to deliver

Describe your step-by-step process

• Product management case study framework: Outline the framework or methodology you would follow to approach the problem
• Explain the step-by-step process you would take to understand the users, analyze data, ideate solutions, prioritize, etc.
• Product manager case study templates: You may reference or adapt standard PM frameworks like Opportunity Solution Tree or PRD templates

Demonstrate your PM skills

• Explain how you would apply essential PM skills like user research, market analysis, prioritization, roadmapping, etc.
• Provide examples of qualitative or quantitative analysis you might conduct
• Describe how you would collaborate with various functions like design, engineering, etc.

Structure your response

• Organize your answer clearly around goals, process, and skills/expertise
• Product Manager case study presentation: Use a simple structure of defining the objective, outlining your approach, and stating your deliverables

Following this kind of framework can demonstrate both strategic alignment and tactical planning abilities needed in product management. Referencing PM methodologies and showing your core competencies can further strengthen your case study performance.

What questions should I ask for a case study?

When preparing a case study as a product manager , it's important to ask the right questions to fully understand the client's needs and challenges. Here are some key questions to ask:

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS TO ASK THE CLIENT

• Can you give a brief description of your company? This provides context on the client's industry, size, goals, etc.
• How did you first hear about our service? This gives insight into what piqued their interest.
• What challenges/problems necessitated a change? This reveals the pain points they aimed to solve.
• What trends in your industry drove the need to use our product? This highlights external factors influencing their decision.
• What were you looking for in a solution? This clarifies the must-have capabilities they required.

Additional questions could cover budget constraints, decision makers involved, specific features needed, and measurable goals hoped to be achieved.

Asking thoughtful questions lays the groundwork for crafting a compelling case study showcasing how your product uniquely solved the client's problems. It also enables tailoring the content to resonate with prospects in similar situations.

What does a product manager case study look like?

A product management case study typically examines a specific product and analyzes how it was developed, launched, and iterated on over time. Case studies aim to uncover key learnings that can be applied to other products.

Here are some common elements of a PM case study:

Problem Definition

• Identifies the specific user need or business goal the product aimed to address
• Provides context on the target market, competition, and other environmental factors

Solution Approach

• Explains the product's core features and functionality
• Details the technology stack and architecture
• Describes the overall product strategy and positioning

Execution and Iteration

• Traces the product development timeline and process
• Analyzes how the product changed over time based on user feedback and data
• Examines pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies

Outcomes and Metrics

• Reviews usage metrics, conversion rates, revenue, etc.
• Discusses qualitative feedback from users and customers
• Determines if business and user goals were achieved

Key Takeaways

• Summarizes the main lessons learned and best practices
• Provides advice for other PMs working on similar products

By studying these elements, product managers can better understand what works well and what doesn't for a given product category or business model. Case studies are a valuable resource for continuous PM learning and improvement.

What is the best questions to ask a product manager?

When interviewing a product manager or trying to understand their role better, asking strategic questions can provide useful insights. Here are some recommended questions:

What is the strategic vision for this product?

This open-ended question allows the product manager to explain the long-term vision and goals for the product they manage. It gives insight into the product's purpose and intended value.

How do you develop your product roadmap?

By understanding their process for building product roadmaps, you learn how they prioritize features and initiatives. This sheds light on how they balance business goals, customer needs, and technical constraints.

How does product management work with executive leadership?

Learning about the relationship between product management and company executives shows how aligned product strategy is with broader business objectives. It also demonstrates the level of executive support and autonomy product has.

Product manager case study questions like these help assess strengths in strategic thinking, customer orientation, and cross-functional collaboration. Tailor additional questions to understand the context of their role and products better. The more you can learn about their real-world experiences, the better sense you have of their competencies.

Dissecting Product Management Case Study Questions

This section delves into the types of questions that surface in product management case studies, with a focus on product design and strategy.

Probing into Product Design Questions

Product design questions aim to assess a candidate's ability to design user-centric products while considering various constraints. Some examples include:

• How would you design an app for grocery delivery that provides the best user experience? Consider factors like ease of use, personalization, and order tracking.
• Design a ride sharing app while optimizing for driver supply, customer demand prediction, pricing strategy, and minimizing wait times.
• Suggest ways to improve the user onboarding flow for a food delivery app to drive higher user retention.

These questions evaluate how well you can empathize with users, identify pain points in existing solutions, and devise elegant yet practical product enhancements. Strong answers demonstrate user-centric thinking balanced with business objectives.

Strategizing with Product Strategy Questions

Product strategy questions test your ability to make decisions from a broader business context. Some examples:

• As a PM for an e-commerce company, would you build a mobile app or focus on improving the mobile web experience? Consider factors like development costs, user engagement, and revenue goals.
• A music streaming startup is struggling with customer churn. How would you identify reasons for churn and formulate strategies to improve retention?
• A grocery delivery provider is looking to expand into a new city. Outline your market entry strategy while considering competition, operational costs, targeting customer segments etc.

These questions expect you to flex your analytical and strategic thinking muscles. Great answers weigh tradeoffs between multiple factors and craft a sound overarching strategy.

Navigating Product Roadmap Challenges

You may also encounter questions that deal with prioritizing features and planning effective roadmaps:

• As a PM for a budgeting app, outline how you would prioritize building features like transaction tagging, debt management, investing tools etc. Consider factors like customer requests, development effort, and business impact.
• A software company wants to expand from only web-based products to also building mobile apps. How would you structure the product roadmap to support this transition?
• Construct an 18 month roadmap for a media subscription service, outlining key initiatives across content licensing, personalization, payments etc. How would you sequence priorities?

Strong responses demonstrate the ability to make tough product tradeoffs, sequence priorities, and craft realistic roadmaps to achieve business goals.

Mastering Product Launch Scenario Questions

Finally, some case studies present scenarios around planning and executing a successful product launch:

• You are launching a new crypto exchange product. Outline the launch strategy and post-launch metrics you would track to measure success.
• A startup is preparing to unveil a smart assistant device for the home. Construct a pre-launch plan covering marketing campaigns, partnerships, distribution channels and launch events.
• An insurer is introducing an app to allow customers to manage policies and file claims. Design a rollout plan highlighting early access users, press outreach, and customer onboarding flows.

Expect questions probing your understanding of launch best practices across marketing, partnerships, tech readiness and adoption measurement.

Exploring Product Manager Case Study Templates

Product management case studies are an integral part of the interview process for product manager roles. They assess a candidate's ability to analyze data, prioritize features, and develop product strategies. Having a structured framework when approaching case studies can help candidates demonstrate their skills more effectively.

This section introduces templates that can guide product managers through various types of case studies.

Market Analysis and Entry Strategy Template

When entering a new market, it's critical to deeply understand customer needs, competitive landscape, market trends and dynamics. This template provides a methodical approach:

• Customer analysis: Map target customer segments and develop buyer personas. Identify their needs, pain points and jobs-to-be-done. Quantify market size of each segment.
• Competitive analysis: Identify direct and indirect competitors. Analyze their product offerings, business models and go-to-market strategies. Pinpoint competitive advantages and disadvantages.
• Market analysis: Evaluate market trends, growth drivers, industry lifecycle stage, regulations and other dynamics. Determine market accessibility and expansion potential.
• Entry strategy: Define market entry plan based on above analyses - ideal customer segment(s) to target initially, product positioning and MVP feature set, pricing models, distribution channels and partnership opportunities. Outline expansion strategy.

Following this standardized template ensures thorough evaluation of the market opportunity and development of a tailored entry approach.

Product manager case study questions around new market entry often focus on quantifying the market, analyzing the competitive landscape, identifying the beachhead segment, and formulating the initial go-to-market strategy.

Product Roadmap Prioritization Framework

Determining what initiatives and features to build next is crucial for product success. This framework helps structure the prioritization process:

• Gather inputs: Compile inputs from customer research, user interviews, support tickets, sales requests, market analysis and internal stakeholders.
• Define evaluation criteria: Identify criteria like business value, user value, level of effort, dependencies and risks. Assign weights to each.
• Score roadmap items: Tally scores for each initiative based on the defined criteria to allow comparison.
• High-level sequencing: Group scored items into broader themes and high-level releases. Order these releases based on overarching priorities.
• Granular prioritization: Prioritize individual features within each release based on scores. Consider dependencies.

This data-driven approach brings rigor to product manager case study questions around roadmap prioritization. It's more defensible than gut feel and can facilitate alignment across the organization.

Comprehensive Product Launch Plan Template

Successfully launching a new product requires coordinating many complex, interdependent activities across teams. This template can help structure an effective, detailed launch plan:

• Pre-launch: Finalize positioning and messaging, create launch assets, drive buzz through influencer campaigns, optimize conversion funnels.
• Launch: Unveil product on launch date, drive traffic to website/app through advertising and PR, activate referral programs.
• Post-launch: Closely monitor KPIs like activations, retention, engagement, satisfaction. Address issues immediately through rapid iteration. Develop customer success processes.
• Expansion: Plan for incremental feature releases to expand value proposition. Pursue additional customer segments, partnerships and geographies. Ramp up marketing and sales.

Thoughtfully outlining all launch activities makes product introduction smooth and impactful. Product Manager case study presentation questions on new product launches evaluate this level of planning rigor.

Innovation and Pivot Strategy Framework

When products fail to achieve product-market fit, product managers may need to rethink strategy. This framework can help determine next steps:

• Diagnosis: Thoroughly analyze customer segments, their engagement, feedback and market success indicators. Identify issues.
• Ideate solutions: Brainstorm innovative ideas and pivots to address problems through new technologies, business models or market approaches.
• Market analysis: Gauge market demand for proposed solutions. Evaluate technical and business feasibility.
• Decision: Determine whether to persevere with small tweaks, make minor pivots in current product or business model, or perform major reworks or re-launches.

This structure brings strategic clarity to questions on Product Strategy and innovation during Product Management Case Studies.

Following standardized frameworks and templates allows showcasing analytical abilities and structured thinking - critical skills assessed in product manager case study interviews through open-ended Sample Questions. With practice, these templates can be adapted to various case contexts.

Real-World Product Management Case Studies with Sample Questions

Product management case studies aim to simulate real-world scenarios a PM may face. Reviewing examples helps prepare for interviews and day-to-day work. Here are some common case study prompts with analysis.

Sample Question: Entering the Rideshare Market

A case study may present a scenario like:

"A startup called DriveFast wants to enter the competitive rideshare market with a differentiated offering. As the PM, put together a strategic plan, including challenges, solutions, key metrics, and a rollout timeline."

This requires developing a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. Considerations may include:

• Understanding rider and driver needs to identify gaps in existing offerings
• Brainstorming features like scheduling, vehicle types, loyalty programs
• Analyzing market data to forecast demand and growth
• Evaluating operational costs and pricing models
• Setting targets for key metrics like ride volume, customer acquisition cost
• Building marketing and incentive campaigns to attract early adopters

The response should showcase analytical thinking and strategic planning skills relevant for product leadership roles.

Sample Question: Prioritizing a Social Media Platform's Features

A sample case could be:

"A new social media site for teens is gaining traction but has limited engineering bandwidth. As the PM, prioritize these potential features: stories, events, profiles, messaging, analytics."

This tests the ability to make data-driven decisions about feature development and sequencing. The PM would likely:

• Consider metrics showing current site usage and growth trends
• Weigh differentiators compared to competitive sites teenagers use
• Map out user workflows and identify friction points
• Talk to teen users directly to validate needs
• Develop evaluation criteria like engagement, retention, and sharing
• Use techniques like weighted scoring to prioritize feature roadmap

The process demonstrates user empathy, analytical thinking, and product strategy skills.

Sample Question: Launching a Wearable Tech Product

A wearable tech case study may ask:

"Your startup is preparing to launch a new fitness wearable called FitNow. Develop a go-to-market strategy including positioning, pricing, promotion and distribution."

This evaluates bringing an early-stage hardware product to market. The strategy may cover:

• Conducting user studies to validate product-market fit
• Identifying customer segments and use cases to focus positioning
• Competitive analysis against similar wearables
• Developing pricing tiers and discounts for early buyers
• Securing retail partnerships for distribution
• Creating a targeted launch campaign with influencers

Success depends on understanding user needs, evaluating market dynamics, and planning effective commercialization.

Sample Question: Developing a Product Innovation Strategy

Some cases challenge developing new solutions, like:

"Your building products company wants to rapidly innovate and stay ahead of commoditization trends in the market. How would you maintain differentiation?"

This aims to assess strategic thinking and creativity. The PM may propose ideas like:

• Exploring adjacent spaces like IoT-connected buildings
• Launching industry or region specific product lines
• Leveraging data and analytics to offer insights as a service
• Building a modular platform for rapid customization
• Creating sustainable construction products
• Implementing an innovation lab for ongoing R&D

Top candidates can connect innovation to business impact and articulate a compelling vision.

These examples illustrate common scenarios and considerations evaluated in PM case studies, helping prepare for interviews. Tailoring responses using actual product experience can showcase leadership potential.

Preparing for the Product Manager Case Study Interview

Adopting a product management case study framework.

When preparing for a product manager case study interview, it is important to have a structured framework to approach the business case or product design challenge. A framework provides guidance on the key areas to cover and helps ensure a comprehensive analysis.

Some popular frameworks include:

• Opportunity Assessment : Evaluates market size, competition, customer needs and product positioning.
• MECE (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive) : Breaks down a problem into distinct components that cover all aspects.
• RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) : Prioritizes potential solutions based on key factors.
• AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) : Focuses on core funnel metrics.

I would recommend developing experience with 2-3 frameworks so you have different lenses to evaluate product problems. Practice applying the frameworks to sample case studies to get comfortable. Having a reliable framework reduces anxiety and builds structure into your analysis.

Effective Communication of Your Strategic Approach

How you present your case study analysis is as important as the substance itself. Interviewers want to understand your thought process and strategic rationale.

• Verbalize your framework out loud so the interviewer follows your thinking
• Use whiteboarding to map out key factors and relationships
• Present 2-3 options with pros/cons instead of just one solution
• Tailor communication to audience - emphasize business impact
• Practice explaining analysis clearly and concisely

The goal is to showcase your structured problem-solving approach and ability to translate analysis into compelling recommendations.

Time Management Techniques for Case Study Success

With case study interviews often lasting 45 minutes or less, time management is critical. Avoid getting bogged down analyzing market research or financials.

Some strategies:

• Agree on problem framing upfront
• Set a timer on your phone to pace yourself
• Spend more time on strategy and solutions vs. data analysis
• Practice case studies with a timer to improve efficiency

If you have extra time, highlight additional analyses you would conduct given more time or propose experiments to validate assumptions. Proactively managing pace demonstrates preparedness.

Practice with Realistic Product Manager Case Study Templates

The best preparation for case study interviews is to practice with examples that resemble real PM case studies. Overly simplistic or unrealistic cases have limited training value.

Look for practice cases that provide:

• Relevant customer and market context
• Data on adoption, usage, churn
• Competitor profiles and benchmarking
• Open-ended strategic questions

Practice presenting analyses and recommendations out loud. Refine based on feedback. Quality practice with realistic templates builds muscle memory for the actual case study interview.

Conclusion: Mastering Product Management Case Studies

Recap of product manager case study essentials.

Preparing for product management case study interviews requires understanding the fundamentals. Here are some key things to keep in mind:

• Know the product manager frameworks : Frameworks like Opportunity Assessment, PRD, and others provide structure for analyzing case studies systematically. Familiarize yourself with a few core frameworks.
• Practice case studies extensively : Solving diverse case studies is the best preparation. Look for case studies online or get help building a library to practice with. Review solutions to refine your approach.
• Structure your thinking : Outline the key issues, product goals, user needs - before diving into solutions. Structured thinking clarifies the problem space.
• Show your working : Explain your step-by-step thought process while solving the case. The interviewer wants insights into your analytical abilities.
• Back up ideas with data : Use market research, user data, or financial projections to validate ideas. Concrete data lends credibility.

With practice, these core strategies will help tackle case study questions confidently.

Final Thoughts on Utilizing Product Management Case Study Frameworks

Frameworks provide the scaffolding to methodically break down and solve case study problems. They enable structured thinking about product opportunities, tradeoffs, and decisions.

While no framework fits every case, having a few committed to memory - like Opportunity Assessment, PRD, and Growth - equips you with analytical tools for common product scenarios.

Rather than relying on generic frameworks, adapt them to the case context for optimal relevance. Customize frameworks to the product stage, user needs, and goals highlighted in the case prompt.

As important as frameworks are, avoid plugging in ideas mechanically without explaining the underlying reasoning. Illustrate your thought process with the frameworks as guides, not rigid templates.

With an adaptable, customized approach, product management case study frameworks unlock strategic thinking to drive impactful solutions.

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This article will explore how product management side projects can catalyze professional development by allowing you to experiment with new methodologies and enhance your skillset.

This comprehensive guide promises to equip you with a structured approach to tackling product case studies. You'll gain frameworks to methodically analyze prompts and craft insightful solutions.

Through real-world application, valuable feedback, and community engagement with groups like The Product Folks, PMs can significantly accelerate their skill development and expertise in the dynamic field of product management.

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Product Manager: The role and best practices for beginners

Get a clear picture of the product manager’s role and responsibilities, tips to rocking the job, and more.

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First, a confession: Ten years ago, when I was invited to apply for a product manager position at Atlassian, I didn’t know what product management  was. This wasn’t unusual. While product management has existed in one form or another for a number of decades, the “product manager” title only started picking up steam less than 20 years ago. And still, I encounter talks at conferences called “What Does a Product Manager Do?” (Actually, I sort of gave  one of these talks .)

What is a product manager?

A product manager is the person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfill, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality. After 10 years of studying the craft of product management, I’ve developed a deep understanding of what it means to be a product manager.

The confusion about what a product manager is likely stems from the recency of the role. Where practitioners of more established crafts, like design and engineering, have been able to segment themselves by their specialization, product managers are still defining what the role should be.

Martin Eriksson, product leader extraordinaire and founder of ProductTank, initially summed up product management in a simple Venn diagram that sits the product manager at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience. Fifteen years ago, Ben Horowitz, CEO of Opsware, called the product manager the “ CEO of the product .” 

I agree with both Eriksson and Horowitz, but not always with how their definitions are interpreted. People see Eriksson’s diagram and think that product managers manage the product between all three disciplines (UX, technology, and business). Really, though, he's saying product managers need to balance all three needs and make hard decisions and trade-offs. People hear Horowitz’s analogy and think product managers have some kind of special authority. They don’t. But, like a CEO, product managers set the goals, define success, help motivate teams, and are responsible for the outcome.

Product manager responsibilities

Specific responsibilities vary depending on the size of the organization. In larger organizations, for instance, product managers are embedded within teams of specialists. Researchers, analysts, and marketers help gather input, while developers and designers manage the day-to-day execution, draw up designs, test prototypes, and find bugs. These product managers have more help, but they also spend more time aligning these stakeholders behind a specific vision.

On the flip side, product managers at smaller organizations spend less time getting everyone to agree, but more time doing the hands-on work that comes with defining a vision and seeing it through.

Broadly speaking, though, a good product manager will spend his or her time on a handful of tasks. 

Understanding and representing user needs.

Monitoring the market and developing competitive analyses.

Defining a vision for a product.

Aligning stakeholders around the vision for the product. 

Prioritizing product features and capabilities.

Creating a shared brain across larger teams to empower independent decision-making.

Product manager vs. product owner

Whether or not a team is adhering to a certain agile practice (and which one), can further muddy the waters when it comes to what a product manager does. For instance, if a team is practicing scrum , then they also need to have a product owner.

While a product manager defines the direction of the product through research, vision-setting, alignment, and prioritization, the product owner should work more closely with the development team to execute against the goals that the product manager helps to define.

Here’s how that tends to break out:

Involved in day-to-day activities

But responsibilities can shift a bit when team makeups and practices shift. For instance, if the team isn’t doing Scrum (say, they’re doing kanban  or something else), the product manager might end up doing the prioritization for the development team and play a larger role in making sure everyone is on the same page. On the other hand, if the team is doing Scrum, but doesn’t have a product manager, then the product owner often ends up taking on some of the product manager’s responsibilities.

All of this can get really murky really quickly, which is why teams have to be careful to clearly define responsibilities, or they can risk falling into the old ways of building software, where one group writes the requirements and throws it over the fence for another group to build. When this happens expectations get misaligned, time gets wasted, and teams run the risk of creating products or features that don’t satisfy customer needs.

Best practices and tips for being a great product manager

Just as there isn’t only one kind of team, one of the most exciting aspects of the product manager role is that there isn’t only one way to do it. During the last two decades, the craft has exploded both in popularity and approach. Unlike designers who have successfully segmented themselves into interaction designers, graphic designers, motion designers, and so on, product managers, as a whole, are still wrestling with how to label their different strengths.

To complicate matters, people are only beginning to pursue product management as their intended discipline. Where older generations “fell into product management” from engineering, design, finance, or marketing, younger generations are starting their careers with product management in mind.

That said, there are a handful of skills and practices that any good product manager will need to develop.

Prioritize ruthlessly

A colleague recently likened product management to being a politician. It’s not far off. The product manager and the politician both get an allotted amount of resources. Each role requires the practitioner to make the best use of those resources to achieve a larger goal, knowing that he or she will never be able to satisfy everyone’s needs.

At any one time, the product manager might have to decide between a feature that might make one big customer happy but upset 100 smaller customers; maintaining a product’s status quo or steering it in a new direction to expand its reach and align with larger business goals; or whether to focus on the bright and shiny or the boring and important.

Clearly understanding the costs and benefits of each choice guides the product manager toward the right decision.

Know the lay of the land

Product managers need to know the lay of the land better than anyone else. They very rarely start with a clean slate. More than likely, product managers are dropped into something that already has momentum. If they start executing without taking the time to get their bearings, they’ll make bad decisions.

Good product managers pump the brakes and start by asking questions. If you’re just starting a product management job, take the first couple of months to talk to as many customers as you can. Talk to as many internal stakeholders as you can. Understand the business model. Understand the history. Understand how different people are influenced. Understand how decisions are made. Only then, can you start making a few decisions of your own.

Empower your team to make their own decisions

Product managers can’t make every decision. Believe me. I’ve tried. At the end of the day, I nearly always have unread messages. I’m often double and triple booked. And I could spend all day answering questions and never finish.

But touching every decision isn’t the product manager's job—at least it shouldn’t be. One of the keys to great product management is empowering your team to make their own decisions by creating a shared brain—or a way of making decisions and a set of criteria for escalating them. When someone asks a product manager a question about a decision they could have made themselves, nine times out of 10 it’s because that person doesn’t have enough context to make the decision themselves. Great product managers build that context.

Learn to influence without authority

I know a junior product manager that is nearly universally respected by her team even though initially many of its members would have traded her in for a more seasoned leader given the choice. How did she change their minds? She took each person on the 30-person team out for coffee and listened to them.

Influence comes in many forms. Listening to people and understanding how they’re influenced is the first part. Figuring out how to get them on board with your point of view is the second. Becoming a great storyteller—even when you don’t have any data to back up your point—will take you a long way. Some people won’t be convinced until they see you do the work. Understanding which levers to pull with which person is the key to leading without any direct authority.

Develop a thick skin

Making tradeoffs will inevitably make people unhappy. The trick is to first make the right tradeoffs, and then be able to explain why you made the decision you did. If you’re good at explaining your decision, someone can still not like it, but more often than not, they’ll respect the way you made it. And even if they don’t, great product managers figure out a way to deal with it.

Great product managers

For me, the really great product managers are one in a million. They’re the people who can do all of the above and set incredible product visions. It’s the rare breed that’s forward-thinking, highly influential, and can walk people through the rationale behind a decision and convince them—even without data. People like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk come to mind.

We idolize these people, in part, because it’s satisfying to put a face and a name on a big accomplishment. But 99 percent of the time, great products aren’t made by a single great thinker. They’re made by teams of good people doing really good work. The job of the product manager is to develop his or her unique way of guiding that work.

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Sherif Mansour has been in software development for over 20 years. He is currently a Distinguished Product Manager for Atlassian. As a long-tenured Atlassian, he has responsible for Confluence, trying to solve problems across all of Atlassian’s cloud products and establishing a new product incubator inside Atlassian. Sherif also played a key role in developing new products at Atlassian such as Stride, Team Calendars and Confluence Questions. Today, he leads product strategy for Atlassian’s newest product, Team Central. Sherif thinks building simple products is hard and so is writing a simple, short bio.

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Browse Course Material

Course info, instructors.

• Prof. Matthew Kressy
• Prof. Steven Eppinger
• Prof. Thomas Roemer
• Prof. Warren Seering

Departments

• Sloan School of Management
• Mechanical Engineering

As Taught In

• Operations Management
• Systems Design

Learning Resource Types

Product design and development, assignments.

This page contains both a set of sample assignments from the class as well as the assignment guidelines. These assignments culminate in a final project, examples of which can be seen in the projects section.

Sample Assignments

Sample assignments from previous semesters.

All sample assignments are courtesy of the students named and used with permission.

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal I ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal II ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal III ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 1 - Design Project Proposal IV ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 2 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 3 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF - 1.2MB )

Sample Assignment 4 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 5 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Sample Assignment 6 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF - 3.3MB )

Sample Assignment 7 - Lane Ballard, Tom Burns, John Celmins, Paul Glomski, Amber Mazooji, Minja Penttila, Chris Piscitelli, Tomer Posner ( PDF )

Assignment Guidelines

Assignment 1: project proposal.

Assignment 1 is the only individual assignment for this class. Only students that complete this assignment will be allowed to stay enrolled in this class. Please refer also to the Guidelines for Projects in the projects section, to assist you with both, identifying appropriate project proposals and selecting among the proposed projects. Exercises 2 and 3 in chapter 4 of the textbook can also serve as a starting point for project proposals.

Assignment 1a: Proposal Handout

Prepare a project proposal in any format that fits on one 8.5x11 page (one side only). Sample proposals from previous classes are available above. We will photocopy the proposals and distribute them in Ses #3. Proposals should include:

• A brief, descriptive project title (2-4 words). This is critical!
• The 3 nearest competitors (existing solutions) and price.
• Your name, phone number, email, department/degree program, and year.
• A description of the product opportunity you have identified. Your description may include any of the following: Documentation of the market need, shortcomings of existing competitive products, and definition of the target market and its size.
• Please do not present any of your own product ideas or solutions at this point; our strict focus in this phase of the course is on the market opportunity and not on solution concepts.

Assignment 1b: Proposal Presentation

Prepare a 50-second presentation to be delivered in class. Your presentation should include:

• A verbal or visual demonstration of the product opportunity you have described in your proposal. Given that the audience will be able to read your proposal at their leisure, you might spend your time explaining the richness of the market opportunity and demonstrating the existing competitive products.
• Convincing arguments why your classmates should vote for your product proposal.
• Any special skills or assets you have (marketing expertise, access to a shop, materials, electronics wizardry, etc.)

Showing one or two overhead slides is recommended. You may also use video. However, note that the 50-second time constraint will be ruthlessly enforced. A low tech approach is therefore typically more efficient.

Assignment 1c: Project Preferences

Submit your project preferences on a project selection card. List the ten projects you would most like to work on, in order of preference. If you would like to work with a particular group of classmates (up to 4), you should all list the exact same project preferences and clip your cards together. We will assign the rest of the team. Team and project assignments will be sent by email to the class no later than the next week. You are not required to select your own project proposal. However, if your proposal is selected, you will only be assigned to it if you have listed it with a high enough preference.

Team Assignments

With the exception of Assignment 8, all team assignments must be handed in at the beginning of the class session in which they are due. Assignment 8 does not require the submission of any written material; instead the teams will show their α-prototype to their advisors. The assignments are intended to pace the development process for your product. Since there is virtually no slack in this schedule the assignments must be completed on or before the scheduled due date in order to maintain the project schedule. All, but the first assignment, are to be completed as a team.

Guidelines for Team Assignments

Please adhere to the following guidelines for your team assignments:

• Be concise. Most assignments can be completed in very few pages. One exception to this guideline is concept sketches, which should be formatted with one concept per page.
• Please provide a short (less than one page) description of the process your group adopted in completing the assignment. However, there is no need to repeat a summary of the textbook if you adopt the exact approach in the text. In particular, please comment on what worked well and what did not.
• Combine all your work in one Microsoft® PowerPoint® file. (Occasionally, we will ask teams to give ad hoc presentations of their homework to exhibit best practices and pitfalls).
• Hand in three copies for your team so that the course faculty can provide comments. Keep a copy for your records.

Assignment 2: Mission Statement and Customer Needs List

• Describe your team’s processes for getting organized and for identifying customer needs. Comment on this process and on your results.
• Write a mission statement for your project team as described in chapter 3. From now on, please include your mission statement on all remaining assignments . If you have decided to change your mission statement, please indicate so and explain your reasoning.
• Develop an organized list of customer needs for your product as described in chapter 4.
• Also hand in a copy of the original project proposal from Ses #3, even if you have already modified the description of this opportunity in your team’s mission.
• You do not need to have completed an importance survey by this time, although if you feel the need to further understand preferences and tradeoffs, you should do this soon and turn it in for review.

Assignment 3: Concept Sketches, Target Specifications and Patent Review

• Describe some of the steps of your concept generation and target specifications processes. Comment on the process and the results.
• Hand in sketches and bullet-point descriptions of 10 to 20 alternative concepts for your product. For each sketch, note which of the important customer needs it addresses and which it does not.
• Choose a few (perhaps 3 or 4) critical customer needs from your list. For these critical few, prepare a list of the target specifications and provide documentation to support these decisions.
• Perform a preliminary patent review searching on United States Patent and Trademark Office for any prior art and related ideas. Briefly describe the 3 closest matches and attach appropriate material from the Web site.

Assignment 4: Preliminary Concept Selection and Schedule

• Hand in sketches of the two or three concepts you believe are most promising.
• Show the concept selection matrix (screening or scoring) that you used to make these choices. Include a simple description or sketch of each of the concept alternatives considered.
• Prepare a list of the key uncertainties or questions you still need to address to determine the viability of your product. For each one, specify an associated plan of action (such as analysis, mock ups, interviews, experiments, etc.).
• Draft a schedule in Gantt-chart form (see p. 335 of the text) showing the plan of work to complete the project over the next two months. Include at least the following activities: detail design, materials and components selection, vendor selection, procurement of materials and components, testing, and completion of assignments.
• Describe your team’s process. Comment on the process and the results.

Assignment 5: Review: Final Concept and Model

• For the Faculty Project Consulting in Ses #13, bring in and discuss some form of proof of concept to demonstrate that you will be able to overcome your key challenges.
• Prepare a 15-minute presentation of your (single) selected product concept. The presentation should include a review of your mission statement, customer needs, selected concept, and your key target specifications.
• As part of your presentation, demonstrate some form of “proof-of-concept” prototype model.
• Hand in a one-page description and sketch of your selected concept.

Assignment 6: Drawings, Plans, and Revised Schedule

• Prepare an assembly drawing of the alpha prototype you intend to build. An assembly drawing shows all the parts in their assembled positions.
• Prepare dimensioned sketches of each piece part for your planned prototype. Include documentation showing how you arrived at critical dimensions (a stress calculation may be needed, for example).
• Include a bill of materials indicating whether the prototype parts will be purchased or fabricated, and a description of the assembly process. Indicate the material and fabrication process you have selected for each prototype part.
• Provide photocopies of the vendor specification sheets for the purchased materials and components. On catalog pages, identify which items you have selected for purchase.
• List the Web resources and vendors you have found to be helpful.
• Make a drawing or sketch of the production version of the product. Describe the differences between the prototype you will build and the production product. Briefly explain how the production product would be manufactured.
• Summarize the important decisions you have made since the previous assignment. Describe your prototyping plans. By this time, you should have price quotes and should be ready to place orders for any parts to be fabricated or purchased.
• Revise the schedule of your project work for the remaining weeks. Include your planned design work, vendor interactions, prototyping, testing, redesign, photography, and preparation of the presentation.

Assignment 7: Financial Model

• Prepare a financial model. Explain the scenario you are analyzing (startup activity, established manufacturer, etc.). Document the assumptions you have made in the analysis. Note that you will require estimates for the production tooling and variable costs.
• Perform a sensitivity analysis of the key financial uncertainties you face.
• Describe your team’s process, including a brief status report on your prototyping and testing progress.

Assignment 8: Alpha Prototype

• You should be testing your product prototype by this time. Show your prototype hardware to your team advisor and faculty during the Faculty Project Consulting. No report is to be turned in this week.

Assignment 9: Final Presentation and Demonstration

• Prepare a 20-minute presentation describing and demonstrating your product. Your presentation should concentrate on the product itself, although you may wish to emphasize any particularly impressive portions of your development process. An effective presentation includes color photographs or video presentation along with a live display of the hardware. This presentation should be of the quality you would make to convince a top management group to purchase the rights to your product or to fund its final development and launch. A panel of experts will observe your presentations and evaluate the products. Be prepared to answer questions about all aspects of your project.
• Create and demonstrate a Web page designed to promote your product (optional).
• Turn in a copy of the (slide) presentation (and files for the optional Web page).
• Turn in several high-quality digital photos of the prototype hardware. Be sure to include photos of the product in use.

Team Surveys

In the middle and at the end of the semester, each student must fill out a survey of his or her team and its members. The purpose of the evaluations is threefold. First, they help teams spot unbefitting team dynamics early on and take corresponding corrective action. Second, they present an opportunity to provide and receive individual feedback and determine personal strength and growth opportunities. Third, they are part of a long term study on the effectiveness on product development teams.

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7 Product Management Lessons From Real Product Managers

With broad, sometimes ambiguous responsibilities and high expectations, the product manager role is constantly evolving. Product managers are continuously learning new things and need to improve themselves (not just the products they manage) on a daily basis.

So, we asked real product managers to share their most valuable tips, tricks, and best kept secrets. Here, 7 experts weigh in on the product management lessons they wish they learned earlier in their careers.

Lesson 1: Consider the Big Picture

When analyzing data, Chris Vasquez, Director of Product at AWeber, recommends balancing both quantitative and qualitative data to gain a holistic perspective.

“Early on, I would frequently find myself captivated by a single data point I found in FullStory or anecdote I heard from a customer,” Vasquez said. “Something that just had to be the key because of how obvious it was in that limited data.”

Fixating only on qualitative or quantitative inputs might lead to uninformed prioritization and compromise a product’s success. Instead, consider the big picture.

“I’ve found that using a variety of qualitative signals to understand the ‘what,’ and a variety of qualitative inputs to try to understand the ‘why’ leads to a much better hypothesis,” Vasquez said. “Ultimately, this results in better products for our email marketing customers.”

Lesson 2: Cut Down on Scope

Keeping your product on track can be difficult when requests continue to pile up. You promise an extra feature to the success team. You add a new commitment to the roadmap. Suddenly, your team is scrambling to meet the original release date.

David Roch, Head of Product at Marketgoo, has fallen into the trap of working on too many features under the pressure of deadlines. To combat this, he suggests reducing scope-creep throughout the product development process.

“In our experience, we have not negotiated scope for several reasons,” Roch shared. “And have ended up delivering something that is not so great and took too much time to be done, frustrating the entire team.”

Rather than negotiating quality or sacrificing time, focusing on scope enables you to stick to your strategic priorities. Even if you deliver a product that does not live up to the initial scope, it can be improved during each sprint.

“It is entirely possible to provide value to stakeholders and stay on track with deliverables and deadlines – without scope-creep, stretching your resources, or over-committing your team,” Roch said.

Lesson 3: Learn to Let Go

Product people often excel when the manager empowers them to make independent decisions and solve complex problems. A lack of autonomy will stunt your team’s growth and cause individual performance to suffer. Milena Toporek, Head of Product at Savings United, recommends learning when to let go early on in your career.

“Giving away responsibility is tough,” Toporek said. “But when the product grows, and the company scales up, it is necessary to build a strong team around yourself and the product to achieve the goals and support the growth.”

Developing a skilled team where each member owns their specialized area is one of the best things that can happen to a product manager, Toporek suggests. When your team can efficiently adjust and react to challenges, adopting agile methods becomes second nature. But that doesn’t mean you should neglect your team.

“You don’t need to do everything, but everything is your responsibility,” Ori Bendet, Director of Product Management at TimeToKnow, said.

Lesson 4: Product Managers Are People Managers

Product managers are natural team leaders, but it takes work to achieve organizational alignment. You need to establish trust with other departments, earn respect from stakeholders, and build credibility within your organization. Jonathan Reilly, Technical Product Manager at OneMain Financial, advises building your emotional intelligence.

A product can never be great if the product manager lacks a fundamental understanding of how the team operates, Reilly says.

“Knowing what makes your coworkers tick, how they respond to criticism, their demeanor under pressure, and even just what they are aspiring towards – makes all the difference in leading multiple teams,” Reilly said.

Cross-functional alignment is essential for creating innovative ideas and building successful products. According to Reilly, it requires not only seeing things through the eyes of your customer, but all of the stakeholders, design team, legal crew, and developers.

Lesson 5: Drive Shared Understanding

The product team develops a strategy that reflects the overarching goals of the organization. But the team can’t effectively execute that strategy while operating in a silo. Candis Grover, Product Specialist at Ready Rosie, suggests establishing a healthy communication channel with other departments.

Earlier in her career, Grover worked on a small content team that prioritized research, user feedback, and open communication. But when her team worked cross-functionally, they fell short.

“Unfortunately, when it came to turning this philosophy into product development, there was a disconnect.” Grover said. “We were attempting to dictate the how and those creating the product were left often wondering about the why .”

Investing in a more cohesive organizational process allowed all teams to more efficiently execute their goals, according to Grover.

“I was challenged to blur the lines of the content/tech divide and pull in other people from the customer-facing teams as well,” Grover said. “We were able to foster a shared understanding of the why and a healthier, more productive debate around the how .”

Lesson 6: Know Your Limits

Don’t over-promise, just to under-deliver. It is important, especially when dealing with stakeholders and executives, to set realistic expectations of outcomes. Phil Petree, CEO of TapToReport, warns against getting caught in this trap.

“On an earnings call, the CEO of a publicly traded company told the industry analysts that he was going to combine their products into a ‘suite’ which would open into the Fortune 100 market,” Petree said. “I was hired as the Senior Product Manager to create that suite.”

As he began to tackle the project, he realized that they could not deliver on their initial promise. The deal was worth nearly 50% less than they had projected.

“Needless to say, I ended up with a target on my back. Lesson: Never take a job where you’re hired to do the impossible,” Petree said.

Lesson 7: Start With the End in Mind

When communicating your strategy, prioritizing value over individual features will more closely align with business goals. Alison Andrews, Product Manager at AHRI, stresses the importance of connecting your decisions back to the product’s strategic value .

“Prior to product management, I had been in product ownership where I was constantly bombarded by cranky individuals demanding changes or new features,” Andrews said. “To please them and reduce my own stress levels, I was short-sighted and very reactive to emotions rather than considerate of product strategy and value.”

This mindset transformed the product team into a feature factory, according to Andrews. Her inability to demonstrate the value of each feature served as a bottleneck for receiving support from executive management. Eventually, she adjusted her approach.

“I engage my users in conversations with specific questions that help me define what that real value might be,” Andrews said. “I have found cases where I thought I knew the value in advance but, once engaging users in conversation, I learned something totally different or saw another opportunity that could be explored.”

Seeking to understand the pain point a feature solves to inform decision-making revealed her favorite product management lesson.

“Product management is as much about listening,” Andrews said. “Perhaps even more so, than it is directing.”

Whether you are just entering the field or are an industry expert, there will always be challenges. There is no perfect product, and no perfect product career. But to establish yourself as a great product manager, you must tackle each obstacle as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and grow.

What are the product management lessons you wish you learned earlier? Share in the comments below.

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Product Management

20 free product management templates.

Haillie Parker

April 18, 2024

Your product manager is a key figure in everything to do with the lifecycle of your product , and we mean everything .

Almost 80% of product managers assist in product design, but they also double-dip into other areas like development, management strategy, marketing, and user experience.

Still, it’s common for product managers to spend most of their time addressing unexpected problems. This is no easy feat! 😳

All of this is to say, your product manager could probably use a little help. And maybe a cocktail. 🍸

Luckily, that help is out there! There are tons of free and reliable product management tools and templates available to help product managers save time and be more efficient every step of the way.

1. ClickUp Product Brief Template

2. clickup product strategy template, 3. clickup product launch template, 4. buyer persona templates from hubspot, 5. excel product comparison template, 6. story template by intercom, 7. clickup roadmap whiteboard template, 8. clickup minimum viable product template, 9. product development template, 10. clickup sprints template, 11. weekly retrospective, 12. user flow template, 13. clickup release notes template, 14. google sheets product plan template, 15. product release ig template, 16. clickup bug & issue tracking template, 17. bug tracking template by airtable, 18. okr template from aha, 19. clickup okr & goals template, 20. clickup product requirements template, benefits of using a product management template.

20 product management templates

Before you hit the ground running on your product roadmap, make sure you have a clear product idea and that there is a market for it. Start with square one by asking yourself the most pressing immediate questions:

• What does this product look like?
• What solutions does it create?
• Who are the target customers?

This list is a top-to-bottom walk-through of product management templates that will pave the way on your product management journey.

Templates for solidifying your value proposition

This ClickUp Doc covers the basics of your product and is ideal for the early stages of planning and concept.

This is an excellent tool to have if you are in the research phase or pitching your idea to someone.

This product brief template is helpful to keep docs related to how you know this product will succeed, its purpose, and its value. It describes your product, the problem it’s solving, context, design notes, and more.

If you’re new to product management, this template is for you!

The Product Strategy Template from ClickUp provides structure to help you plan and visualize your product strategy . Visualize releases and build consensus across key decision makers with a unified, single source of product information and team accountability.

This ClickUp Product Launch Template is perfect for promoting a new product launch or re-launch your existing one. It consists of a Gantt chart, visual timeline and all activities required for your specific product launch.

This template is your answer to the question: who would use this product?

It is your stepping stool to research and identify the target audience for your product by creating the ideal fictional customer known as your buyer persona .

Your buyer persona provides a thorough look into the demographics, interests, lifestyle, location, and common story of the primary group you’re likely to succeed with. These templates help you build out those people and will help you prove the value of your product to similar customers when presenting to stakeholders.

This Excel template from Smartsheet is used to compare product features with other similar products.

You or your product manager would use this to see how the value of your product measures up to other products that solve similar issues.

Plus, you can use this template multiple times through different iterations of your product. So while you might find it helpful in the initial design and development stages, you can also refer back or use it again when considering updates to stay competitive.

If you’re feeling bogged down at the thought of creating your product roadmap or if sprints seem a little complicated, this template might be a better next step for you.

This template is short and sweet, but it will help you flesh out the necessary minor details to justify your product and start making it come to life.

Summarize your value proposition or the “story” related to the problem your product solves, and your design plan.

If you’re still finding it hard to summarize your UVP without handing over a near novel-length document, start by listing out the features and key releases of your product. This will help you prioritize the initial tasks and deadlines to make those features happen, and your roadmap to eventually take shape.

Templates for managing your product roadmaps

Ahh, now we’re getting to the good stuff, creating the product roadmap.

Your strategic roadmap is your North Star for product management. It will keep you steadily moving in a productive direction and help you define long-term and short-term goals.

You can now create a visually appealing road map for your new product, project, or plan. ClickUp’s Roadmap Whiteboard Template enables you to keep track of the life cycle of a new product along with the people involved to make it happen. A finished roadmap serves as guidance for future project management of new products.

ClickUp’s Minimum Viable Product Template helps you plan out your product’s roadmap. This minimum viable product template serves as a guide to determine whether the minimum product is viable or not. It contains a series of critical questions that can also help is developing the strategy for product validation.

This template from Miro helps cross-functional teams work together in the same space and manage big-picture goals.

Most Agile development teams are cross-functional, meaning that a group of individuals with different skill sets work together to create a working product. But while Agile frameworks are very popular, over two-thirds of surveyed product managers do not have cross-functional teams.

So if this method doesn’t sound like your jam yet or is entirely new to you, this template will be your agile product management bread and butter. 🙏🏻

And did we mention that Miro integrates with ClickUp ? 👀

Miro’s Product Development Template is also reminiscent of Gantt view in ClickUp and can be added alongside tasks in ClickUp with Embed view .

This is a more intermediate template, but it packs a lot of power. It includes eight statuses to track the progress of your tasks , one Custom Field , and three views . 😱

For big projects, developers use Sprints to break the timeline up into manageable time frames.

Tasks are linked to these Sprints, and by completing these tasks in the Sprint time frame, the project continues to move forward. Unfinished Sprint tasks will spill over to the next Sprint.

Pro tip: You can set up Sprint Automations to save time on repetitive actions each time you complete a task in ClickUp!

What’s more, with this template, you can…

• Set Sprint time estimates and points in Custom Fields
• Find step-by-step instructions on how to customize your tasks, Custom Fields, statuses, and views based on your team’s sprint needs

This beginner-friendly ClickUp Release Notes Template is a must-have for keeping your engineering teams up to date on updates to your product!

Add details and revisions to your value proposition for the new releases to come, and plan how to present the updates externally with this ClickUp Doc.

Even after its release, products continue to change and improve through customer feedback and innovation. It’s crucial to outline where your product is headed and get everyone on the same page about it, ASAP! So let this template do the heavy lifting for ya. 😌

Bonus: Press Release Templates !

Bug tracking  is important to keeping software effective, reliable, and running smoothly. This ClickUp bug tracking template  lets you report, track, and prioritize bugs in the same place you do the rest of your work.

ClickUp’s Bug & Issue Tracking Template also helps QA analysts, engineers, or any Agile team save time on issue tracking with pre-built views, Custom Statuses, Custom Fields, and more.

Objectives and key results, AKA OKRs, are a popular goal-setting framework that helps product managers measure the achievements of your product. Defining your OKRs also helps you define what success will look like for your product and therefore, tracking your OKRs is extremely important.

This OKR confidence tracker template in Excel will help your product managers determine how your product measures up to your initial value proposition. Use this table to put a little numerical confidence into the work you’ve done, or identify places to grow.

But no need to stop at OKRs! There are tons of valuable key performance indicators and metrics to help measure the overall health and prosperity of your product. 👀

Compare Jira Vs. Aha !

Bonus: Product price list templates!

Use ClickUp’s OKR and Goals Template to track your team’s goals. ClickUp’s flexible structure allows your company to build out company, department, and even team goals. All rolling up to the over-arching objective! With this template, the various views allow you to filter through areas within your company and team.

Bonus: AI tools for product managers

Even after product release, there is still work to be done! New features require just as much time, intention, and product management as the first iteration.

This Product Requirements Document Template by ClickUp is like a personal checklist for product managers to make sure what you’re doing will add value to your end goal.

Think of this as a mini product roadmap template to break down and solidify the description, design, story, audience, and details of your new features to ensure that you are making strategic decisions.

Related: How to Write a Project Proposal & Product Manager Interview Questions

Even if you aren’t a product manager but work closely with one, are developing a product, reevaluating your current processes, or just looking to save a little time—this list of templates is for you.

These product management templates weren’t created with the intention of providing a comprehensive work management solution, they’re here to help you store information on specific action items related to your product in ways that are easy to find and even easier to understand.

While pre-made templates can be extremely helpful for building out processes, constructing roadmaps, and ensuring that every little detail is covered, they lack support when it comes to assisting with the actual management part of a product manager’s role.

Your product manager will stay in the picture long after a successful product launch . New iterations, bugs, and customer feedback keep product managers continuously moving and they typically need more than prompting documents or spreadsheets to make serious progress.

So, what’s our ultimate time-saving tip for anything and everything related to product management? 🥁🥁🥁

Supplement this list of templates with powerful product management software that was built to consolidate, organize, and manage your assets in a single place.

Like ClickUp . 🚀

ClickUp offers hundreds of tools to streamline your product management processes and offers collaboration and customization at the core of every feature.

Use Product Management Templates for your Next Product Launch

It may feel like a product manager’s job is never done, but taking advantage of these templates from the tippity-top to the list to the tippity-bottom will help your product manager save time, energy, and several potential headaches.

And if you need a little more than what you see in this list or in ClickUp’s Templat e Center, no problem! Create your own custom templates in ClickUp too!

We’re here to help, and we know exactly what you need because ClickUp was quite literally built for this. 🥳

So let us work our productivity magic so you can focus on executing the product roadmap you’ve always dreamed of! Download ClickUp and get started for free ! ✨

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