Test: Module 01 — Introduction to Product Management¶

Instructions: Answer all questions. Write your answers directly below each question. Bonus questions are optional and can raise your score above 100%.

Total Points: 37 pts (Easy: 5 + Medium: 10 + Hard: 12 + Expert: 10) Bonus Available: 5 pts

Section 1: Easy Questions (1 pt each)¶

Q1. What is the primary responsibility of a product manager, in one sentence?

Q2. Name three roles that product management is frequently confused with. For each, state the key difference in one phrase.

Q3. In the "PM at the intersection" model, what are the three dimensions the PM must balance?

Q4. What is the difference between "output" and "outcome" in the context of product management?

Q5. What does "continuous discovery habits" refer to, and who coined the term?

Section 2: Medium Questions (2 pts each)¶

Q6. Explain why the "CEO of the product" metaphor is both useful and misleading. Your answer should identify what it captures well and where it specifically breaks down.

Q7. A PM at a B2B SaaS company receives 50 support tickets in one week, all mentioning a desire for a specific report format. A colleague says: "Clearly we need to build this — users are asking for it constantly." Explain what the PM should do before agreeing to build, and why.

Q8. What is the difference between product discovery and product delivery? Why do most teams underinvest in discovery?

Q9. Compare two types of PM roles (your choice) and explain what makes the skills required different. Use specific examples.

Q10. Look at the following roadmap entry and explain what is wrong with it from a PM perspective. Then rewrite it correctly.

Original: Q2: Add dark mode, CSV export, and SSO login

Section 3: Hard Questions (3 pts each)¶

Q11. Scenario-based: You are a PM at a consumer fitness app. Your North Star metric is "weekly active users who complete at least 3 workouts." You receive this data: users who receive push notifications have a 40% higher completion rate than those who don't. Your engineering team proposes sending push notifications to all users who haven't worked out by Thursday of each week.

Describe three questions you would want to answer through discovery before implementing this, and explain what each question is trying to validate. Your answer should demonstrate that you are thinking about all three PM dimensions (desirability, viability, feasibility).

Q12. Scenario-based: A product team is about to launch a redesigned onboarding flow. They have been in development for 8 weeks. The PM realizes they never ran the proposed design past real users during the definition phase — they only showed it to internal stakeholders.

Using the product development lifecycle framework, identify (a) what phase was likely skipped or rushed, (b) what the consequences of this skip might be, and © what options the PM has at this late stage. Be specific about tradeoffs.

Q13. Analysis question: Amazon's "Working Backwards" process requires PMs to write a mock press release before any engineering begins. Explain the purpose of this practice using the discovery vs. delivery framework from this module. What assumptions does the press release exercise force the team to confront?

Q14. Debugging scenario: A PM writes the following problem statement. Identify at least three things that are wrong with it and explain how to fix each one.

"Users want dark mode because it's trendy and all our competitors have it. We should add dark mode to improve user satisfaction, which will help us win in the market."

Section 4: Expert Questions (5 pts each)¶

Q15. Essay: Marty Cagan argues that the difference between "feature teams" and "empowered product teams" is one of the most important distinctions in product management. Explain this distinction, describe the conditions under which each type of team operates, and argue which model is appropriate in different situations (startup vs. enterprise, early-stage product vs. mature product). Use specific examples to support your argument. (Minimum 250 words)

Q16. Synthesis: The Netflix Quick Laughs example (covered in the module) and the Spotify Discover Weekly example represent opposite outcomes. Using the frameworks introduced in this module — the three PM dimensions, discovery vs. delivery, and the product development lifecycle — construct a comparative analysis that explains what the underlying difference was between the two product decisions. Then generalize: what principle can be extracted from this comparison that a PM could apply to their own work? (Minimum 250 words)

Bonus Questions¶

Bonus 1. (+5 pts) Choose a product you use regularly. Write a 200-word analysis of what you believe their North Star metric is, why you believe that, and what discovery gap — if you could identify one — might be limiting their ability to improve it. Ground your answer in observable product behavior, not speculation about the company's internal processes.