Insist on the Highest Standards Flashcards
QUESTION: Tell me about a time when everything was going well on a project, yet you worked on an improvement that no one had asked for.
What was the improvement?
Why did you think it was important?
How would you measure success?
Title: Search previewer enhancement
Situation:
Campaign setup included a search preview that provided estimated results based on the user’s search terms and criteria
Previewer intended to provide user with feedback and confidence that the search inputs aligned with expectations for the campaign
Applied search terms would preview a list view of up to 10 of the most recent results
Results based on campaign criteria; a bug didn’t respect the campaign date range
Previewer showed most recent results that sometimes didn’t align with the campaign dates making it hard for the user to discern whether inputs matched expectations
Obstacle/Task:
Addressing the bug allowed me the opportunity to improve its value as well
Limited value in providing the user with a holistic view of what’s expected over the campaign period
Action:
Evaluated campaign parameters that could be useful to the user when previewing output from search query
Identified aggregated est. ads, # of markets, and # of stations along with a trend line graph of ads per day as beneficial
Worked with Design to create various layouts
Worked with search team to ensure aggregated data could be supported and returned from the API in a timely manner
Showed designs to internal and external customers to influence layout selection
Led development and oversaw QA
Launched with in-app announcement of the new enhancement and release notes
Results:
Recognized and thanked by customer success team during cross-functional meeting
Third highest viewed release notes (out of 20) or in the top 15%
Success was measured by a) resolving a timeframe bug and b) reducing post-campaign support tickets by 15% related to incorrect setup.
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Customer obsession
Insist on High Standards
QUESTION (2nd): Tell me about a time when everything was going well on a project, yet you worked on an improvement that no one had asked for. What was the improvement? Why did you think it was important? How would you measure success?
Title: Campaign Stepper
Situation:
Application workflow required user to create an “advertiser” (to correlate Google Analytics) and pair it with a “campaign” housing all of the media buy criteria (i.e. date range, stations, brand search terms)
After creating an “advertiser” the workflow landed the user on a blank campaign dashboard with empty graphs requiring the user to create a “campaign” to marry the advertiser data
“New Campaign” button in upper corner; however, overlooked by users
Unclear to the user that campaign creation was the next step
Obstacle/Task:
I wanted to improve the UX and design an optimized workflow
Action:
Reviewed inbound support tickets and identified 15% reported issues per month with confusion as to next steps
Analyzed user database records for createdAt timestamps and identified avg. time to complete advertiser-to-campaign setup was over 1.5 days
User setup campaigns after their advertiser connected
Designed a “stepper” flow that lands the users on a transition page directing users to the 2nd step, creating a campaign (while indicating step 1, create an advertiser was fulfilled)
Goal to reduce setup time to less than 15 minutes (a 99.99% reduction)
Socialized data, design concept and expectations to Success team and customers and gained unanimous consensus
Results:
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive from existing customer champions
Eliminated support tickets related to workflow advertiser-to-campaign next steps
Setup time avg. less than 10 minutes
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Are right, a lot
Insist on the Highest Standards
QUESTION: Biggest challenge/obstacle?
OR
Tell me about a time when you raised the bar.
Title: Make my stuff private please!!!
Situation:
Open, shared object mode within an org since company inception in 2014
Users within same org see other users content/objects
Numerous product/eng discussions over the years about OLP but “kicked the can”
Never been done before
General security and privacy concerns mentioned by customers and prospects
Business needs to safeguard information for users from other users
Obstacle:
No existing permissions model in place
Should be handled low level by platform team; couldn’t wait on dependency given timeline
Action:
Gathered requirements from customers
Locked objects (campaigns/advertisers) to the creator/owner
Identified need to share with peers and grant managers access without explicit sharing
Presented high fidelity mocks to customers to ensure it met their need
Worked with design to refine concepts, doc requirements and dev to build
Results:
Delivered on long-standing customer ask
First of its kind within the organization
Upended legacy model and inspired other PMs to follow suit
Showcased at company All Hands meeting
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Insist on high standards
Thinking big
QUESTION: When was the last time you had to apologize to someone?
Title: I’m sorry Attribute Roundtable
Situation:
Application has deep dependencies on platform
Responsible for data ingestion, storage, eventing and correlation
Numerous components involve and failures across the pipeline were not uncommon
Failures results in count discrepancies diminishing product value (customer sent 10 records, my product showed 7)
Experienced customer complaints and confusion regarding discrepancies
Vulnerable Sales and Success teams forced to handle upset customer and product problems
Morale was low and teams were frustrated and fatigued from on-going problems
Obstacle/Task:
Platform team prioritized building a new framework and didn’t want to invest in fixing the existing pipeline issues
2 non-converting trials and 2 customers cancellations citing data inaccuracies and quality concerns resulting in lost revenue
Action:
Deep apology to cross-functional team during time of crisis (sales, product marketing, customer success, stakeholders)
Pitched a “recovery plan” to executives necessary to rightsize the issue
Diagram process flow and components prone to failure (adapter > api > engine/eventing > index > engine > app)
Components were absent of retry logic; implemented exponential backoff up to 3 max for system resiliency
Stood up dashboards for monitoring data flow and alerting of failures
Deployed a post-process reconciliation service that addresses hourly failures
Results:
Reduced errors from 23% to 12% retry logic
Reduced discrepancy related tickets by 95% within 2 months with post process service
Improved customer satisfaction and avoided discrepancy related cancellations
Alleviated stress points on sales and support teams
Restored team and customer confidence in product
Enabled platform team to focus on new framework in order for better system reliability
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Earn Trust
Have backbone; disagree and commit
