Product Manager Interview Questions and Answers Agile Management

A product manager deals with various teams and products and plays different roles, so they need a diversified skillset, from personal, to technical to managerial. Apart from these core skills, a product manager should be updated with the new technologies and what is new in the market. A product manager should, however, possess the following skills: 

1. Strategic Thinking: Strategic thinking is a bundle of skills that need critical, rational, and logical thinking, inductive and deductive skill, and, most importantly, the ability to set realistic goals and achieve them. Strategic thinking is needed to make a product roadmap to predict the timeline of a product lifecycle. This skill helps to create strategies to manage the risks and costs that came along the way of creating a product. 
2. Leadership Skills: Every successful product is a result of a team working towards a common goal, and the product manager is the one who leads the team with good conviction and compassion. 
3. Communication Skills: A product manager needs good communication skills to keep up with cross-functional teams. A product manager must interpret the goals, product requirements, user stories, customer needs, and market timelines of each team working on a product, from executive to developer to marketing. 
4. Research Skills: A good product manager knows their customer and market. It is important to explain and consolidate all the research into documents like business models and competitor analysis for team references. 
5. Technical Skills: Though the product manager does not write the code, he has to be aware of the technology, methodologies, and tools the developer team uses in product development. It helps in defining requirements and announcing a release plan. 
6. Excellent Negotiation Skills: A product manager faces various challenges along their journey from product development to launch. Having good negotiation skills is best to make better and faster decisions and build a healthy workplace relationship. 

If a company wants to launch a sustainable product in the market, it is essential to work with a plan of prospects rather than playing a blind game. Product management is a process with significant benefits; 

• You get good knowledge about the target audience and can set your product goals accordingly. 
• Product management helps in framing the future product. 
• A proper product roadmap helps map all stages of product development in one place and increases the chances of success. 
• Product management helps to validate various solutions. 

The decision-making for a product differs from project to project. However, there are some basic steps that one should follow: 

• Idea Generation: The primary step is to invest some time in idea generation, and it can be achieved by researching new trends, or high-invested products, that help to understand the market. After collecting the required information, it is essential to brainstorm with the cross-functional team to come up with all possible ideas. 
• Idea Screening: After brainstorming, you have a list of ideas; it is time to check the best feasible idea. SWOT analysis is best for idea screening; it helps to choose excellent and realistic ideas. 
• Market and User Research: The most critical step in product management is gaining a good insight into the market and users. For market research, one should evaluate the strength and weaknesses of competitors, the size of the target market, and the scope for improvement. The second point of research is to know the user needs, and one can achieve this by simply conducting surveys or interviews.
• Planning and Developing Strategy: After getting the product's vision, the product manager needs to prepare an excellent step-by-step plan to meet the product vision in time. The best way to execute your plan is to make a roadmap that includes business goals, product features, KPIs, and priorities. 
• Product Creation: At the product creation stage, keep in mind the value, like adding user-friendly features that lead to higher customer engagement. Use MVP to test the value of the product in the initial stage. 
• Testing and Feedback: After the MVP release, it is time to gather all the feedback to find the possible improvements. Work on feedback and improvement implement simultaneously. 

Product management is full of challenges, and most project managers thrive on the challenges. I like the challenges and switching roles in a day; the project manager went through from communicator to researcher, innovator, and organizer. Bringing a positive impact to the user's life by shaping innovative ideas is the most exciting part for me. And coming to the least exciting part, when I have to work on the maintenance of the product, I feel that it limits my working area, planning and development side.

Launching a new product in the market can be risky; however, there is some preventive measure a product manager should keep in mind before bringing the product into the market; 

• Knowing your competitor is the first step to saving the product failure. It is essential to know who all are in the market with the same product and how your product differs from theirs. 
• Always try your product on a sample audience, and take all positive and negative feedback. Then, identify the loose points of the product and implement the solutions accordingly. 
• Analyze your market critically; apart from the competition, you should be aware of the change in the market and how it impacts the product. 
• Define your product vision clearly and powerfully, do not only explain the product characteristics but keep the statements about the product's value in the user's life. 

It is essential to communicate the strategy clearly and effectively to the team so they can work efficiently on the same page. Here is the five-step framework for communication:

• Explain your vision aiming to the problem for which you are making a solution, how this problem impacts the users, and what human emotions are associated with it. 
• Set realistic and measurable objectives, like; 

1. Financial Objectives: Revenue growth, sales targets, and profit. 

2. Business Objective: product launch, team growth 

3. Technical Objective: implementing new technology 

4. Quality Objectives: NPS score 

5. Marketing Objectives: social media engagement, sale leads, or brand awareness 

• Break down your strategy into leading and lagging inputs that will make the team better understand everyday goals. 
• Set concrete timeline for the product development with deadlines for the deliverables 
• Define each role to each person or team, like who and why they owe a particular area. A bit of miscommunication can lead to a roadblock in productivity. 

Product management roles vary with different aspects, like company size. One important factor that differentiates the role of the product manager is in what category product came from B2B or B2C. The main differences between B2B and B2C product management are business model and customers.

• Business Model: In B2B, revenue is generated from some enterprise contracts, and in B2C, revenue is generated from direct consumer interaction by making millions of small transactions through purchases or subscriptions.
• Customers: Understanding customer and their needs are the core of product management. In B2B products, like the software, users use the product daily to achieve their goals. While, in B2C products, like mobile apps, customers directly buy or use them. Hence, the product objectives differ, and the product manager should build strategies differently by identifying the pain point in both product management. 

Product lifecycle management is the period that moves with a product from designing, development, introduction to market, growth, and decline. Good knowledge of product lifecycle management is good as it leads to better decision-making and revenues. 

The proper understanding of PLM product managers can face any challenge with product development. The product management benefited the product management process in various ways; 

• Good quality and reliable product 
• Reduce the making cost 
• Enhance the optimization process for products 
• Better supply chain
• Quick identification of sales opportunities

So, in a nutshell, PLM simplifies, organizes, integrates, and allows an in-depth knowledge of product management and how to maximize product profit. 

ERP AND PLM are assets for an organization and benefits it in many ways, like getting real-time updates, increasing efficiency, cost reduction, and providing multiple deployment options. Though ERP and PLM systems complement each other and keep track of the data and product, the business needs and the type of industry differentiate them.  

PLM manages product development, from documentation, requirement gathering, technical development, and final product launch. However, ERP records the logistics, financials, and production resources, like inventory management, order processing, accounting, customer relationship management, and human resources.

Organizations use KPIs to measure performance, and the product is one of the vital factors to measure, as it is a dominant source of revenue generation. Product success gives an overview of how the product serves the users and its profitability. Various parameters help in measuring the product's success; the basic parameters are; 

• How many customers are aware of the product and engaging with them 
• Check the net promoter score to know how many new customers are added in 
• Evaluate technical product performance, like response time, or downtime 
• Evaluate customer satisfaction by measuring the customer service response time. 

Setting a product price is like balancing a check book; going too high will miss out on some variable sales, or going too low, you might miss the revenue. To set the best product price, a product manager considers multiple factors; 

• Evaluate various costings like production, packaging, marketing, etc. 
• Know your audience because they are the product user, and how much value they have associated with the product and how much they will use it.
• Study, and compare the past product pricing to know what does not work for the product. 
• Lastly, don't overlook the competitor's price, as it will help you set the product's value and price. 

I see a few key factors in the product to call it well-designed:

• A product should satisfy the user's needs through its functionality and psychological and subtle design. 
• A product should be self-explanatory, and the functions clearly expressed to users. 
• A product should have a fast response time.
• The product's features should fit in with the vision and design of the product. 
• The UI (user interface) should be eye-pleasing. 

(Note: This question is equally important for technical product manager interviews) 

There are fast-growing technology trends with time, and how product managers, engineers, or companies use these changing trends to bring innovative products to customers. Any business that wants to stay in a market for the long run should keep up with new technologies.  

There are various frictionless products in the market with new trends like APIs, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of things, quantum computing, machine learning, cyber security, and many more. These technologies enhance the user experiences of the product, like, effortless ordering by just a chatbot or tracking real-time processes. So, by adapting the new technologies, businesses improve the working process and save time and money.

A product manager works with a cross-functional team, and there will be a chance of disagreements, as every team has a set of goals. Hence, a few behavioral and communication changes can help you deal with the conflicts; I use a few simple strategies; 

• Be a good listener, listen to the issue without judgment, and analyze the situation. 
• Be generous and praise the team whenever goals are achieved as per expectations. 
• Keep your team in the loop whenever you make a roadmap and share qualitative insights like customer feedback, it will give a clear picture of the product to the team, and they will understand what is working or what has to be improved. 
• Stay calm in heated situations, listen, understand and share the outline of the action items to address the concerns. 

Product manager is the team's core; teams look to you for leadership and guidance for quality product development. As a product manager, you are responsible for giving proper tools and inspiring them. However, things are not always as planned, and the product fails, and again, you have to embrace the failure and learn from it to create a quality product. I take care of a few things while I deal with the failure: 

• When there is a product failure, I acknowledge the reason and who was responsible for it; however, blaming the individual is not the solution. Instead of than why and who, I try to find what went wrong, like a flawed hypothesis or appropriate market research. 
• The main reason for the product failure is over-ambitious and unrealistic goals, creating an unhealthy, toxic and stressful work environment. Therefore, always set realistic and achievable goals; it will give proper time to the team to execute the vision into a quality product. 
• Be proactive and communicate clearly with the team. 

Metrics is a measurement that gives an insight into the organization's success. It helps to detect problems, set goals and make concrete decisions. Evaluating the product metrics provides a good understanding of how the product is performing and increases the product's and company's success. The key metrics are; 

• User Engagement 
• Sale revenue generated 
• Traffic on site or product 
• Bounce rate 
• Retention means how many times users come back 
• Active usage, daily, monthly, or annually active users 
• NPS, customer satisfaction 

MVP (minimum viable product) is a product version that includes enough features to solve the core problem of a specific set of users to validate a product idea early in the product development cycle. MVP means: 

Minimum:  

This means developing a minimal first workable product version rather than an extensive end-product with various features. 

Viable:  

The product must be a viable solution to the problem with the minimum number of features. 

Product: 

As the name suggests, it does not mean it's always a product, it can be a business hypothesis and it's an experiment to deliver your idea to the market. 

Benefits of Building an MVP 

• Focus on core functionality, as it helps clarify the product functions and allows testing of the concept with minimum cost and time. 
• Developing a relationship with customers helps to engage new users at the early stage and helps to spread the word about the product. 
• A better understanding of customers' needs, as feedback from early users, are valuable and helps to analyze the product. 
• It helps in quick release. 

Competitive analysis is the starting point of differentiating your product or service from all your competitors- existing and potential competitors who might enter the market in the future. It requires you to understand your competitor and have a deep knowledge of the benefits and quality of your competitor's products. As a product manager, it comes under his work profile to analyze all aspects of the product, from basic to technical. 

SWOT analysis is perfect for understanding the product's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the elemental analysis to get the product's total value. 

SWOT Analysis 

SWOT analysis can be directed in both ways, looking at your own company or outward conducted on competitors; these are four elements of SWOT analysis 

1.  Strengths: What do our products do well? What advantage does it have over the competitors?
2.  Weakness: What does our product lacks or where competitors are outranking it? What is the limitation of our product?
3.  Opportunity: Where the competitor products are missing the target audience and lays an opportunity for our product to take advantage.
4.  Threats: What new competitors/features are coming to market that can bring our product value down, or any regulation, laws, or standards changing, how does it threaten the business?

In the technical analysis, it is essential to analyse all the features of the products, like pricing. Mapping a business model will help to understand how to price similar products in the market. 

Benchmarking analysis is another leading process that helps an organization examine key facets of competitors and adopt improvements. This analysis leads to reduced cost, optimizing the sales funnel, and improving the product that delivers more value to target customers. 

The magic quadrant is helpful for software vendors who wish to analyze their competition. 

The Magic Quadrant provides an abstract view of a market's top businesses, displaying their strength and weakness. Competitive organizations can use that information to improve their software products or services, giving them an advantage in the market. 

Gartner's magic quadrant research technique offers a competitive graphical positioning of four different types of technology providers in fast-growing markets based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. 

1.  Leaders: Scoring well on both completeness of vision and ability to execute. Leaders tend to be the large companies in mature markets, have a large customer base, and have high visibility.
2.  Visionaries: Be aware of how the market will evolve and can potentially be innovative but may not be able to execute those visions.
3.  Niche Players: Scoring low on both completeness of vision and ability to score, these companies may do well in smaller segments but cannot outperform more significant vendors.
4.  Challengers: They can execute but may lack a strong vision; challengers seem to be prominent vendors who do not want to change their current offerings, have a stable customer base, and do well in their specified market.

Magic quadrant research reports can be valuable tools for investors looking to find a company that fits their needs and businesses, thus helping companies secure funding. 

Usually, product and project managers work closely towards the same goal, to build a successful product, but have different responsibilities. A product manager is responsible for driving the development of products, while a project manager is responsible for overseeing them. If the product manager is the strategic thinker, the project manager is the executor.

Product Manager's responsibilities are research, setting a vision for the product, communicating the product's image to stakeholders and the team, and developing a strategic roadmap. There responsibilities also include breaking down the tasks, planning a project timeline, allocating project resources, and monitoring the task completion.

Organizations utilize value streams to implement solutions that provide continuous value to customers through several steps. A value stream starts, ends, and continues with the customers, and the value stream is an excellent tool to improve delivery chains with complex processes. A value stream is built on understanding, organizing, and delivering value in SAFe.

SAFe has two types of value streams: 

• Operational value streams describe the steps and people involved with delivering end-users value with solutions created in the development value streams. 
• Developmental value streams contain information about how operational value streams develop solutions and who develops them.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most trusted system for business agility and development teams. SAFe gives the product development team flexibility, with three pillars; Team, Program, and Portfolio. SAFe can be used; 

• Teams face failure and delays in product deliveries; SAFe helps them to streamline the tasks and stay focused on customer needs. 
• It helps improve quality by highlighting the importance of including quality in every step of product development. 
• SAFe improves productivity by removing unnecessary work, tracking performance, and allowing teams to work independently. 
• SAFe is used when multi-team programs need to be transformed on a larger scale across the organization. 

No, features, and capabilities are both different things. A feature is a function that meets the need of the users and provides value. For example, Facebook users can direct messages to others with the FB app. 

Capability is the set of features of the product and can be split into multiple features. For example, enabling a posting feature in FB have various aspects, 

• The user gets a notification when a post is done. 
• User gets an error when a post is unsuccessful to upload. 

TAM (Total addressable market) calculates the total revenue opportunity for a product and defines the total available market. It helps determine the funding a business or company should put into product development. The TAM concept is essential for a business because the calculation of effort and budget allows for setting priorities and customer segments. When an organization is ready to launch a new product or plan to cross-sell the existing product, TAM helps in breaking down all numbers at an understandable level. 

There are three ways to calculate TAM: 

• Top-Down Analysis 
• Bottom-Up Analysis 
• Value Theory 

A product manager is responsible for product development from vision to product launch among users. The product manager is the best-known person for the needs of a sales and marketing team and helps them by educating marketing resources. The key activities a product manager should know: 

• Sales effectiveness 
• Sales efficiency 
• Customer engagement 
• Marketing effectiveness 

Apart from this, while you release the MVP and collect the feedback, keep the sale and marketing team in sync and mention the revenue times and lifetime values such as KPIs. 

The strong KPIs are best for monitoring the growth, progress, and success of a product, and these should be the critical categories like; 

• Current customer counts 
• Sales in process 
• Bookings and revenue-generating 
• Product retention, and
• Customer satisfaction by feedback 
• Testing, monitoring, and checking code quality 
• Delivering the product in time

Various google products have made our lives easy. My favorite product is a google map, which solves the issue of carrying big folding maps and provides a detailed map with different views like streets or terrain. I like google maps because it solves the main pain points of the users while we are in a new place; it is difficult to find gas stations or ATMs as it shows the nearest restrooms, restaurants, and petrol pumps.  

Selecting what will be a budget and time-friendly commute to the destination is a real challenge for users. Google maps solves this challenge by giving every available transport option a number for a particular destination, like a metro number and bus number with the estimated time.

Active User is the indicator of product health by calculating the total number of users using or interacting in a particular period. Time interval and interaction are two important components to measure active users. Though active users sound straightforward, there are few ways to calculate them; 

• ADAU (Average daily active users): It is the average of the users in 30-days 
• User return: Helps the product team calculate how much the product attracts users and compels them to come back. 
• WAU (Weekley Active User): It helps to measure the performance of the products that work dominantly during weekdays, like analytics, forums, etc. 

As the name suggests Northstar metric gives direction to the company's long-term growth. An organization uses the Northstar metric to measure the amount of value it delivers to the customers. The Northstar metric explains the relationship between customer needs and the revenue that that organization aims to generate. To choose the best suited Northstar metric, one needs to keep a few things in mind; 

• Northstar metric equals to customer's success moment 
• Northstar metric should express value to the customer 
• Northstar metric should be measurable 
• Northstar metric should be time bound and based on a particular period 
• External factors should not influence Northstar metric
• Northstar metric should be a reflection of the growth 

Net promoter Score is one of the most used KPIs for customer satisfaction. NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a widely used market research metric to get aware of customer experience and predict revenue growth. NPS can be calculated by asking just one question to the customer,  

"On a scale of 0-10, what is you score to recommend a product to anyone?”

Customers rated six or below are Detractors, seven or eight are passives, and that rated nine-ten are promoters. And by using the given formula, one can get the NPS;

NPS = % promoters - % detractors

Statistical Significance is a powerful digital marketing tool, and this is used to optimize various core marketing activities like A/B testing. Statistical Significance deepens into specific causes and helps make informed decisions, like; whether the result of the experiment is attributed to the change or random.  

Statistical Significance is essential and gives the confidence that the used data is reliable for marketing decisions, like campaigns that positively impact engagement. For example: If the statistical Significance of your product is 70%, it means 30% success of the product is by chance, and it's a huge risk to take a chance.  

The Chi-square test is used in calculating the statistical Significance and uses the formula;

Statistical Significance = Probability (p) < Threshold (a)

Retention metrics are a tool to measure how long the customers stick around and engage with the product. It can be measured by comparing the number of customers at the beginning with the number at the end. To get the value from the formula, there is a need to understand two key phrases,  

"Continue to use" means customers have been using the product.

"Period " means what period a retention rate refers to, i.e., weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Formula:

Retention rate = All customers at the end of the period – New customers acquired during the period / All customers at the beginning of the period.

Quora is a Q&A social platform where users from around the world can ask questions and get an answer from a diversified community. So, the goal of Quora is to share and grow the user's knowledge, and in my opinion, to measure its growth, I will focus on two significant metrics, engagement and retention.  

To track customer engagement, measure the total number of questions answered over time because it's important for users to get the answers, as it is the platform's purpose.

To track retention, measure how many users return to the platform in 30-days because they find it valuable.

And one more important metric to measure is the percentage of questions with one answer with five upvotes.

These metrics measure the qualitative and quantitative value of Quora.

E-commerce KPIs are key indicators that can measure a business's success and monitor online business growth and sales, and we can set KPIs according to our business objectives. There are some important KPIs that can not be ignored at all; 

• The sales conversion rate can be calculated by the number of people who purchased out of the total number of people who accessed the website. 
• The average order value calculates the average amount customers are spending at one time on the online store. 
• Customer lifetime value calculates the total revenue the online store expects from a single customer throughout the lifetime. 
• Customer acquisition costs calculate the costs to get a new customer and help to allocate a marketing budget. 
• The shopping cart abandonment rate will help understand the potential checkout problems. 
• Returning customer rate 
• Bounce rate, it is very important to know the number of people who came to the website and left it again without taking any action. 
• Net promoter score 

First, I will get good knowledge about active users (sending, reading, and opening messages), and second, I will set a period; let us set DAU down for 30 days. Now coming to the issue, I will look into four types of issues; 

• User Issues: I will try to use data to identify a segment of the userbase that is the cause of the issue, like what platform and device the user is using, the version of the app, demographic, etc. 
• Feature Issue: I will try to check the product's health, like message delivery latency, notification sent and opening rate, etc. 
• How do users access the messenger directly through the FB app or third-party widget? 
• Lastly, the outside factors impacting the user activity like FB reputation, competition, etc. 

If there will not be any issue from above, then it's essential to break down the message by type of sender and message, and when I think about these segments, few ideas are there, 

• Sharing via message is not the priority. 
• Other FB features like videos and commenting are suppressing the messages 

User interface is the most common front-end app view, in which users interact, manipulate, and control the app or software. The user interface has a fundamental task; communicating information from machine to user and user to the machine. 

A good user interface has these key qualities; 

• The user interface should be simple with fewer mouse clicks. 
• The user interface should be more consistent, preventing ambiguity and instability. 
• The user interface should be intuitive that is easy to learn. 
• The graphical user interface is the best quality as it includes the objects like buttons, icons, and text. 

Several reasons make me want to work as a product manager. I will list the top ten reasons; 

• I love to work as a visionary, as I understand the user's needs and like to solve them and make business opportunities. 
• I am a keen learner, and as a product manager, one should be in a continuous learning phase. 
• I understand and have an analytical answer to "what," "why," and "how" questions. 
• I am good at dealing with uncertainty and have the courage to take risk 
• I am a good communicator and work well with cross-function teams 

Facebook is a social media place that builds community by bringing the world together. Blood donation fits directly into the Facebook frame and enables the social good with its vast network. The scenario to focus on before starting making the solution are; 

• Building up the infrastructure and awareness about the feature 
• Know nearest hospitals and blood banks 
• Potential blood donors 
• Active blood donors 
• Demand sides 

There are pain points for users, like; 

• The donors are unaware of the blood type and how much there is a need. 
• The donor's eligibility 
• Don't feel motivated 

I have an idea for blood profiling; 

• Add a section for users to document their blood type, which should be kept private and identified by a lock icon. As soon as a user enters their blood type, a message communicating the rarity or need for their blood type should appear, for instance, universal donors and challenging to find blood types. 

• We can give a badge and get to know someone who has donated blood many times. 

I have an idea for motivating the users; 

• Post on the feed when someone donates the blood 
• Videos from celebrities with a thanking note 
• Videos from blood receivers with thanking note 

80% is a considerable drop; I will first identify what metric this is, like monetization, customer retention, etc. Secondly, I will determine whether the decline is sudden or gradual, as an 80% drop is a definite sudden drop. Next, I will find the times when the drop happened and the factors (External/Internal) that caused it.

External Factors: Bad PR or new competitors in the market are some external factors that affect the product. 

Internal Factors: New feature was released, a server issue or a bug are some internal factors that majorly affect the product performance. 

After narrowing down the factors, I will check for relational KPI drops by checking the user journey, as it is essential to narrow down what time the problem starts. If the issue is a feature, I will check the purpose of that feature and will check if changes affect the goal of the feature.

If the issue is uncertain, I will work with my development team; we will fix it urgently if it is a bug. If there is a server issue, the system op will work on it. It will take time if the issue is external, as it must understand full product development and communicate with the team. 

I will use a top-down TAM (total Addressable market) approach.  

The total population is 7.5 billion.

China does not use google, and 50% of Russians don't use google as a primary search; it leaves us with 6 billion.

Only half population is connected to the Internet, the remaining 3 billion.

Google share 75% market with other search engines, remain 2.25 billion

Now I will break down 2.25 billion with user frequency, Active, aggressive, or passive.

Passive searchers don't use google daily, like older adults, kids, and the rural population, who assume they are 50% of remain 1.1 billion.

Active users search once a day, assume it's 25% of the population, remain 550 million.

Aggressive users are super active and search 7-8 times daily; 25% of the population remains 550 million.

Total searches per day = 550*1 + 550*6 = 3.8 billion per day = 3.8 billion / 24 hrs/ 60 min/ 60 sec = 44,000 searches per second

Save feature is an important feature and affects users and marketers. This user will ease the user's work, and they do not have to take a screenshot or copy the link to see later. Metrics to measure the save feature success; 

• Feature discoverability, percentage of users who have at least once saved an item > user knows about the feature. 
• The time frame it took users to save an item to open it again. 
• #of times the user opens the Save page vs. the #of times the user visits FB (% in 1 month) 
• Amount of time user spends looking saving page 
• Engagement; no. of likes, save, comments, clicking links, playing videos. 
• Percentage of saved items user is deleting after engage 
• User segmentation is based on FB usage and demographics. 
• What items are most saved, like images, text, video 
• Monetization

individuals use Google maps to reach from point A to B, and ETA calculates the accurate time for users. Higher the accuracy, the higher the user satisfaction. The algorithm inputs used in calculating ETA include: 

• Mode of traveling, pedestrian, bike, public transport 
• Distance from point A To B 
• The average speed of vehicles 
• Traffic lights, stop signs, and intersection navigation 
• Current traffic and accidents 
• Time of data and rush hour traffic windows reduce the speed 

All these inputs combinedly give the ETA, as any of these change ETA change. 

Facebook is where people interact with each other, and defining meaningful social interaction works as a north star to increase engagement. In FB, interaction happens when someone responds to content with likes, comments, and shares. Meaningful social interaction can be between the creator and the viewer or between two viewers. I will look into four dimensions: 

• Reactions versus comment 
• Comments: insightful versus generic
• Frequency of interaction 
• Follow-up interaction, like dm on messenger 

Now, I will use data science to calculate the score on each of the above points to calculate meaningful social interaction. 

Any web search speed depends on its functionality and features. When we search on the web, we all get almost the same result; this means web search work on cache, while there is no cache stored for Gmail searches. This is one reason; I think there are a few more reasons why Gmail search is slow; 

• Gmail search is real-time and needs to be a perfect match, while web search is sorted by relevance. 
• Gmail search needs to be 100% accurate. 
• Gmail does not have a cache or hot searches. 

Cloud computing offers faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale by providing a broad range of internet-based computing services, storage, database, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence. 

Benefits of Cloud Computing:

• With cloud computing, you can build nearly anything you imagine since you can easily access many technologies. Moreover, it gives freedom to test new ideas to transform the business. 
• Cloud allows cost-saving like no need for data centers or physical servers. 
• Cloud computing removes many tasks, unburdens developers, and helps increase productivity. 
• It is the most reliable. 

Instagram reel is a platform where individuals share their creative videos in a broader Instagram network and help them build a community worldwide. The business goal of IG reels is: 

• Grow the number of users
• Build a stronger creator network 
• Complete with Tiktok or other short video apps 
• Increase the time spent on Instagram 

The top three success metrics: 

1. Usage Metrics; 

• An increasing number of average daily users of IG reels,

• Average time spent on IG reels per week 

2. Community Metrics: number of creators greater than 150k followers 

3. Counter Metrics: reel feature is not impacting the other features of the Instagram 

A product manager works with a cross-function team; as we know, a happy and motivated team leads to the most innovative and creative solutions. So, to motivate my team, I keep a few points in my mind: 

• I involve my team by setting realistic goals to release the product, giving them clarity towards their purpose, and inspiring them to participate in product development enthusiastically.
• I embrace the problems and ask the team to share their solution for the issue. 
• As a product manager, I must derive value from the team, not the hollow story points.
• I try to protect the team from unnecessary meetings to protect their productivity. 
• I constantly connect with the team to understand the hurdles they are facing to achieve their goals. 

Task management involves the task lists and determining the necessary things and deadlines, task assignments, prioritizing, and tracking the progress. There are many tasks management tools, and I am familiar with a few;

Asana focuses on project and workflow management, with its key feature of task list comments, community support, and workflows. In addition, asana helps assign the task to the team, and you can see each member's assigned work with a deadline.  

Monday focuses on setting timelines, automated workflows, and creating Kanban boards.

Fellow work as a team meeting hub for setting meeting agenda, notes, and feedback. There are various meeting templates and full integration of other important apps, like google calendar.

Proprofs project is a simple tool that allows creating tasks, assigning resources, and setting deadlines across multiple projects within a minute.

There are many more names that I have heard, like ClickUp, todoist, bascampAirtable, etc., and will use in future product management.