Enterprise Product Management

Sample questions

Two questions from this practice test, in the same style as the certification exam. Answer before opening the explanation.

1. Question 1

   During a conversation with a customer you came up with a feature idea, and you want engineering to start on it next week. The cycle under way is committed to two items the board follows, and the idea appears in no declared objective for the year. Engineering says it can fit it in if one of the two comes out. What do you do?

   1. Fit the idea in and postpone one of the two items, because direct customer contact is the best source of direction a product can have.
   2. Record the idea together with the problem it solves and put it up against the committed items in the next prioritisation.
   3. Take the idea to engineering as a low-cost technical investigation, removing nothing from the cycle, to have an estimate before deciding.
   4. Drop the idea, because what appears in no declared objective for the year should not consume the team capacity.
   Show answer and explanation

   Correct answer: B. Record the idea together with the problem it solves and put it up against the committed items in the next prioritisation.

   The idea may be good, but nothing in the scenario compares it with the two items already under way. Recording it with the problem attached is what makes that comparison possible, and competing in the prioritisation keeps the origin of the idea, rather than its merit, from deciding priority. The technical investigation sounds prudent, but what is missing is not an effort estimate, it is a comparison of value against what is already committed, and it still consumes engineering outside the cycle. Trading board-followed commitments for a single conversation, or dropping the idea unassessed, err at the two extremes.

2. Question 2

   A provider with a commercial appeal different from yours serves another audience today and lacks three features your product offers. Six of your customers said it fully covers their objective and that they may switch at the next renewal. Together those six account for 14 per cent of your revenue, and none of them uses the three features. What does this information demand of you now?

   1. Strengthen the communication of the three exclusive features, because the difference exists and the customers clearly do not know about it.
   2. Watch for one more cycle before acting, because a declared intention to migrate is different from migrating, and nobody has left yet.
   3. Cut the price for the six customers until renewal, because price is the variable that reacts fastest to a threat.
   4. Treat 14 per cent of the revenue as revenue in dispute and find out what holds those customers, since the three features do not.
   Show answer and explanation

   Correct answer: D. Treat 14 per cent of the revenue as revenue in dispute and find out what holds those customers, since the three features do not.

   The three exclusive features are worth nothing to those who do not use them, and those are precisely the customers signalling an exit: the differentiation you declare is not the one that retains them. The new information is that 14 per cent of revenue is in dispute for a reason your current advantage does not cover, and the decision is to find out what keeps that group. Communicating louder an argument already shown to be irrelevant, waiting for the loss to happen, or moving price without knowing whether price is the reason all postpone the only question that matters.