Product Owner Interview Questions
Product owners are key players in agile development projects. Often the most invested in the outcome of a project, product owners direct development teams towards achieving key goals. Teams looking for product owners will be searching for candidates who have the ability to create a clear vision for the future of the product, prioritise objectives and successfully lead a team to delivering results.
Top Product Owner Interview Questions & How to Answer
Here are three top product owner interview questions and tips on how to answer them:
Question No. 1: Who do you think is the essential product stakeholder and why?
How to answer: This open-ended question seeks to establish whether the product owner knows who the target market is. As a product owner, you should understand who the external stakeholders are and develop your product accordingly. Although each stakeholder plays a vital role in the process, you must also interact with the stakeholders and explain how each one contributes to the success of a product.
Question No. 2: How do you update your team about market situations or products?
How to answer: As part of your interview, this open-ended question helps the interviewer assess your communication and interpersonal skills when working with a team in product development. As the product owner, it is your job to ensure that the team is aware of any changes in market demands. You must make sure that all team members understand the vision behind your product. Explain the process of updating your team. Describe the information that is most important to share with your team and why.
Question No. 3: Which product discovery frameworks have you used?
How to answer: This open-ended question allows you to showcase your knowledge of and experience with various product discovery frameworks. You can demonstrate how you determine the applicability and efficacy of each and why you use the frameworks you do.
Many questions on scenarios related to position requirements.
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Did you study for any of the Assessment Tests? Thank you.
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How long after the last interview did you wait for until they contacted you?
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I got an email within a week
Case Study Based Questions
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Any example? Was case study given in advance?
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Yes it was given in advance and was discussed during meeting with founder
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Yes it was given in advance and was discussed during meeting with founder
How do you handle conflict resolution between team members?
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Interesting question for a Product Owner, I would generally consider managing the team dynamics (including conflict) as a key part of the Scrum Master role. Less
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In response to the inquiry above, the Product Owner and Scrum Master role at Renovate America are considered one role. It's obviously not ideal since these two roles are supposed to balance each other, but that is the current setup at the company. Quite a bit of responsibility for one role. The PO manages the backlog (feature prioritization) and runs all retrospectives as well. Less
Did you have contact with [internal recruiter]?
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Yes, she emailed me about the assessment
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How long did it take them to tell you you were not getting an offer?
Tell me how to calculate the cost and release date for an MVP?
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MVP has to be defined first. Assuming you have a list of stories that are all groomed and sized, you can combine that with your estimated velocity of your dev team. This velocity should be based on a historical average. If you have roughly 100 points worth of stories in your MVP and you do 10 points of velocity a sprint, you should be done in 10 sprints. You then multiply the cost of the development per sprint (# of engineers @ rate) by 10. That's the cost, but you should charge your margin on top of that. Also, there's always "found" work so you should add 50% schedule slack so it really should take 15 sprints. Underpromise and overdeliver. Less
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MVP has to be defined first. Assuming you have a list of stories that are all groomed and sized, you can combine that with your estimated velocity of your dev team. This velocity should be based on a historical average. If you have roughly 100 points worth of stories in your MVP and you do 10 points of velocity a sprint, you should be done in 10 sprints. You then multiply the cost of the development per sprint (# of engineers @ rate) by 10. That's the cost, but you should charge your margin on top of that. Also, there's always "found" work so you should add 50% schedule slack so it really should take 15 sprints. Underpromise and overdeliver if you can. Less
If I am fine with working in adult entertainment industry.
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Thank you for your honest feedback. We feel it's important to thoroughly explain our business model with openness and transparency. Our websites have changed how people relate to and think of online entertainment market and we are the leader in premium adult content worldwide. Our award-winning brands have become a point of reference for the industry and we are very proud of the recognition we have gained. This would not be possible without the amazing talent we hire - anyone across our teams from marketing to technology - we ensure we hire the people who are passionate and comfortable with what we do. We feel by asking the right questions you get the right answers! Thank you! Less
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It was unexpected as we are in 2018!!!! Why would somebody care for a tech job in adult industry? Less
As a PO you met with two VPs who want their Biopham compliance documents in digital format. Describe how you would go about this in 10 minutes
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I would ask them what exactly do they envision being able to do when this work is delivered. This is my way crafting acceptance criteria and success factors. I would ask why the current way is not working, why the change now? If the ask seemed like a ton of effort, I would ask if the team could produce part of this request, what would be the most critical piece in order for the digital format to be useful. I would just listen for the messages not said directly suchas, if they really know what they want and why. Less
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Since the VPs want a digital version of their compliance documents, it is implied they have physical versions. I'd ask for a hard copy of the compliance document. Once I have a version in hand, I'd ask them what parts of the document tend to be the same doc-to-doc, and which parts change or require user input. Less
What would I do if time and money was no oblect ?
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How much do you want to earn and by when ?
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Spread knowledge
How much liquid capital i had
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With proof of my liquid capital.
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