PO Interview - Product Questions

Question 1

Your development team is repeatedly failing to fulfill the sprint commitment. As a Product Owner, what can you do?

Answer 1

It is very important for Product Owner to look and understand the reason for development team failing the sprint commitment. There might be multiple reason for that. It might be because of incorrect estimation or over commitment. It might be because of lack of trust and collaboration in the team. It might be because of not understanding the user story and not slicing it correctly. A PO needs to identify it and based on it, needs to work with the development team and Scrum master to find the solution.

Question 2

You have important new features prioritized to be picked up for next Sprint. In that case, how will you handle new bugs and accumulating technical debts?

Answer 2

When valuable new features are competing with bugs and technical debt in a product backlog, as a product owner, with every sprint, along with the features I will include a limited number of the most important bugs and the most pressing issues caused by technical debt. Based on the product, we can also have some basic thumb rule set for it, such as allocating 10% of the resources to bugs, 15% to technical debt and rest to new features.

Question 3

How would a PO deal with uncooperative stakeholders?

Answer 3

The best (and perhaps the only) way to deal with uncooperative stakeholders is to win their confidence by engaging them through regular meetings and discussions and demonstrating the value of agile product development. If it still fails, the product owner should seek help from the sponsor.

Question 4

What is your favorite product?

Answer 4

1. Introduce your answer:
   I love my car, because ….
2. The product:
   What does it do?
   Who is it designed for?
   What makes it great?
3. The User:
   Highlight the top three traits of the product when answering the following questions:
   How does the product solve the user’s problem?
   What qualities or features delight the user?
   Are users attached to the product? If so, why?
4. Competitors
   Explore the competition or alternatives.
   What are the alternatives and how do they compare to your product?
   What sets your product apart from the competition and why do users prefer it?
5. Improvements
   You can choose to include this in your answer or not, but be aware that it is a common follow-up question.
   What would you change or add to the product?
   How would you improve its metrics? e.g, customer engagement, loyalty, and retention.