PO Interview - Interviewee's experience

Question 1

Can you tell me about yourself, and your current position at T-Mobile?

Answer 1

I am currently working at Enterprise Emerging tech Salesforce Team as a SDET of the domain testing team. In this position, I led a 20 million 9 month long Enterprise project domain testing

Prior to that, I worked at different tech companies in Silicon valley and Seattle area including T-Mobile as QA Engineer. Through these experiences, I became an expert of Agile scrum methodology, gained a good understanding of software development life cycle, learnt how to communicate effectively in the technology industry.

Question 2

Why do you want to become a product owner?

Answer 2

Why did you want to become a product owner?

I started taking PM courses at Scrum Alliance and Udemy which I found exciting when going through the course! I was like “Oh, this is how the user stories were created!” and ‘Oh, I want to be involved in all stage of software development life cycle”
Also, I work closely with the Product Owner and had opportunities to gain access of product documents

My unique international experience will bring the team new blood. I originally came from China and grew up in the States. I studied International Relations and Trade in college. I learned Japanese and went to study abroad when I was in college.

After college, I started to work at YouTube as an operation support associate and later found my passion in technology. Few years later I took a QA crash course and transitioned myself into a testing role. Today, I feel like I want a change. I want to bring my different life and work experience to help this industry to build great products. I want to grow in different aspects of the tech industry.

Question 3

Tell me about how much you know about the PO position at T-Mobile?

Answer 3

I understand that as a Product Owner at T-Mobile,I am a member of the PM team and playing a crucial role in the Agile Scrum team. I will be involved in Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, Grooming, Daily stand up meetings of my scrum team. I will be owning the Sprint backlog and a point of contact to the Dev/Testing/Customer team for questions regarding the requirements, acceptance criteria in the U.S. I will be responsible for gathering requirements, defining the US, prioritizing the US backlog, drives US refinement activities for the dev team (?), review and validate AC, accept the US when stories is test complete. Support business during the night of deployment.

Question 4

Tell me about a good product you used in the morning?

Answer 4

That interviewee will be looking for is that the product owner should talk about design, functionality and usefulness of the product and should clearly articulate it. Also, the interviewer will give some points on the creativity of the product being picked.

Question 5

Can you what me what a product is?

Answer 5

A ‘product’ is an item created to produce specific value for a group of customers and to the organization that provides it. A product can be something physical (the spoon). It can be a digital product (Facebook application, an e-book or online programs). It also can be a service (consulting). As stated by Mike Cohn – “Products Can Be Defined Recursively” which means a product can exist within another product. Another important thing to note is, the product should deliver some value to the customer. Even the smallest entities in the product (sub-product) should be beneficial to the market.

Question 6

My specs: What I can contribute to the team?

Answer 6

software development background
Familiar with Agile Scrum methodology
Familiar with T-Mobile working environment
Familiar with scrum meetings
International background
Great market sense. Able to understand what product is a great fit for users
Years of testing experience - quality control of the product
Entrepreneur mindset

Question 7

Why PM

Answer 7

For self achievement, The product manager builds useful products for users and makes the world better.

For the team, The product manager can work with the team, and leverage the team resources to make things happen, which is more impactful.

For the company, Pm are usually problem solvers, help companies to solve problems and grow better

Question 8

Tell me about yourself template

Answer 8

Take initiate to introduce yourself. Try to get through as soon as possible since this is an ice breaker. Break the ice as soon as possible! 5 sentences Max! 2-3 are the best.

Rising Action Template
I am currently working on salesforce projectsat T-Mobile, supporting a team called Emerging Tech. I work in a cross-functional scrum team, which consist of Product Manager, Product Owner, Developers, QA testers, scrum masters, program managers, project managers, and orchestrate the product’s development end-to-end.

My responsibilities include test planning, set up test data, test execution, reporting defects, and reporting the project status and risks to the senior management, provide support to E2E testing team and BVT at night of deployment. I stared working at this team since April last year, I’ve been leading a couple of Enterprise projects through out the whole product testing life cycle ( one of them a challenging project that last 9 month long with a budget of 20 billion )

In the past, I worked at different tech companies in Silicon valley and Seattle area including T-Mobile as QA Engineer.