4 Tips For Take-home Product Managers' Assignments

Tips for attempting take-home product manager assignments:

1. Market-sizing assignments

• Total Addressable market questions usually seek a $ value unless stated otherwise
• Know the difference between TAM, SAM, SOM & know which one is being asked for
• If past data is given, use bottom-up: find out average value per transaction and multiply by customer population
• Use top-down by seeking industry research e.g. Gartner

2. Prioritization assignments

• Model your answer around a framework like RICE
• Produce a matrix to rate features across the framework's parameters
• When prioritizing defects, work with importance/severity/urgency model

3. Spec development assignment

• Set a clear outline: Goal, Success Criteria, User Stories, Journey, Design, Tracking, Messaging etc.
• Unpack primary flows but always acknowledge edge cases
• Invest most time on crisp wireframes with any decent tool. Clickable prototypes are better. Hiring managers love visualizations
• Complex logic? Flowchart it
• Email/SMS trigger? Work hard on copy
• Always document assumptions

4. Product Analysis assignment

• Break down using AARRR framework if possible
• Contrast with competition to identify gaps
• Use SEO tools
• Tie recommendations with a business/product metric