Unlocking Team Efficiency: How This Sr Product Manager Navigates Slow-Moving Teams
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
So, you know, obviously you sent me a lot of different potential places where you would be wanting to look for work. I'm not going to mention any of them, but many of them are what I would consider the. You know, the top end of tech companies out there. And so it is not an unreasonable statement to make that You know, and going to work for any of these. Uh, you're gonna be one managing teams, uh, and managing teams are very smart people. That is a kind of a given, so. What I'm actually more curious about is less about when you're managing directly, but more about when you had to work with teams over whom you didn't have direct managerial control, um, specifically, how do you deal with teams that aren't moving fast enough for things that are directly affecting your deliverables? How do you, how do you deal with that? Pick a situation, just talk to me about how you, how you handle it.
CANDIDATE
Yeah. So, um, I think there's, there's, there's two types of, of like scenarios I've had to approach that in the past, right? So one is my team, right? I'm, I'm an ICPM ah dealing with a team of engineers that I work with day in and day out. Um, and in that type of case, ah, I worked with the engineering lead, right? I don't think typically that it is my job to say like, These 3 engineers are not working fast enough. They're not delivering enough output, they're not writing enough lines of code. Like, I don't think I'm equipped to do that, ah, and even if I have an opinion, I think that that should come from the engineering lead. So I work with them to say, hey, let's have this conversation, right? Like let's be transparent. Is this team performing the way that they should? Um, and if they're not, um, what are the things that we can do to change that? Can we reduce the scope? Uh, can we, you know, are we spending more time on like quality and tests than we should? Are we not spending enough time on quality and tests? Um, are there Things that we can change to help the team accelerate and deliver quality products at a higher pace because at the end of the day it's not about lines of code, it's not about functions written, it's about value and how quickly you can get value to your users. So that's, that's like one side. The other side is is partner teams. Um, and in that case, I found that it's actually like often a very similar conversation, um, depending on the relationship with the team, it's, hey, ah, you know, is there something that we can do to help, like our team is blocked at this point. Uh, and so we'd like to move forward, but we're, we're really struggling because your team isn't delivering. Has something changed in your estimates? Has something, you know, come up that has thrown off your roadmap? Ah, is something randomizing your team? Is this something my team can help with? Can they pair with your team, ah, for a couple of days, ah, to help take something off? Will you take a PR? Um, there's a bunch of tools in the tool belt, ah, but I think it always comes down to a, a frank conversation with the engineering lead. Um. And one that doesn't involve blame or saying like, hey, you're not doing fast enough. It's like, let's talk around facts about where, what our estimates were or where we think we need to be and where we are today and what seems like a reasonable approach.
Interviewer Insight
there is a risk that this gets interpreted by an interviewer as someone who is too acquiescent. Small risk, but risk.
INTERVIEWER
And so, uh, there was in this specific instance, you didn't give me, you know, a specific, uh, instance where this happened, right? But let's now play the what if game or the, the, the hypothetical game, right? What type of information are you looking for? That would lead you to believe that they're not moving fast enough. Like what are, what are your leading indicators that, that you're kind of in that situation?
CANDIDATE
Yeah. Do you, do you wanna focus on, on like an individual team I'm working with a partner team or?
INTERVIEWER
Yeah, it's a fair question. Uh, let's uh. Let's go with your, you know, the, the, the former, which is the my team scenario where you're a product manager and you're managing a partner engineering team that's, you know, in the same organization, but you're all working to the same goal.
CANDIDATE
Sure, um. So, so I think The first thing I'd look for is estimates on like weekly or biweekly sprints, um, right? Are we estimating that we're gonna do 2 points of velocity, ah, and then not delivering on that? So are our estimates off? Um, the next, I think would be to look for, um, having That conversation with the engineering lead, right, who is more in the, in, in the weeds and, you know, looking, doing code reviews and understanding like the actual delivery cadence of his team, um, and, and work with him. Um, I've been around long enough and I'm technical enough that I generally have an idea of like how fast or how long things should take. Um, but I know enough that, ah, I don't wanna stick my head in that, um, because that's a great way to break trust with my team. Ah, so, instead of like going in and saying like, I don't think we're going fast enough, ah, I think the better approach. Which is like, hey, could we be going faster or what would it take for us to go faster? Do we need to reduce scope? Do we need to change something, provide more detail, less detail? Um, are we backed up on design? Um, could be any number of things. Um. So, so, to like come back to the question of like what, what data points would I look for or like what I look for as leading indicators, it's missing estimates. Ah, it's how we're tracking against our like longer term roadmap and estimates. Ah, and then it's like kind of a sense of are, are things, are we estimating things or are things taking longer than, than I would expect.
INTERVIEWER
OK, I'm gonna challenge you on that last one though, because I think there are definitely instances where, you know, empathy matters and and retaining trust matters, but. There are certainly times where you actually have to state you're not moving fast enough and, and more often than not it happens when there's poor ownership on the part of the partner with whom you're working, so. When you, when it's clear you have to state you are not moving fast enough when the problem is the engineering manager, in this case is what I'm asserting, what then is your path to resolution?
CANDIDATE
When, when the problem's an engineering manager, um, You know, in, in, in an internal partner, right? Maybe I talk to them or to their manager and say, hey, like, what's, what's the deal? How do we move, how do we move faster cause this, this needs to be fixed. At the, if we're coming up on a business deliverable and we have like value on the line that we can articulate clearly, um, I think that question comes to like, how do we get there? Ah, can my team, does my team have capacity to jump in and help with this? Is there another team? Like, let's problem solve and look at the near term, like how do we deliver the thing on time with the resources available to us, um, in order to get the value that we need. And then the longer term, like, how do we fix this performance problem within this team? Uh, and I would almost approach them separately because getting a code, code or a product out the door is, is like a very near term problem typically, uh, as opposed to the longer term problem of this team is continually underdelivering.
INTERVIEWER
And so How then, once you've got, you know, you, you have a talk with the manager, uh, you guys agree that maybe the estimates were slightly off, things are kind of starting to improve, how do you stay on top of the facts, right, the agreed upon truth, but also how do you stay on top of the team to ensure that they continue to maintain that newly kind of established pace?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, so Depending on the size of the organization, right, you might have project management or program management or somebody, or scrum master, somebody who's like can keep these dashboards up to date. If not, that typically falls on me as a PM to like keep an idea of where we are in our burn down chart, where we are in terms of estimates and things. Um. I, I don't know that there's any trick to it other than like being organized and, and staying on top of like, here are the things that we thought we were going to deliver, here are the things that have changed, here are the things that we have delivered. Um, and I suspect that a lot of times the, the unexpected changes come from OK, almost by definition, but like something that changed, right? So, something we didn't anticipate in planning. Something we, we, ah, a new priority that came in and is randomizing a team. Um, at which point I go into problem solving mode again of like how do we prevent this in the future. OK.
Interviewer Insight
more discussion about the actual process of how candidate stays on top of these issues would be helpful, coupled with more discussion of prioritization frameworks and how they are applied.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Candidate demonstrated sufficient Bias for Action for L6, but showed hints of lacking conviction in how to address issues head on in a way that is expected of an L7 or higher. The lack of discussion of objective truths related to progress, coupled with what presented as a very ambiguous assignment of Ownership has the risk of painting the candidate in the light of a leader who has difficulty in taking charge and leading with a Bias for Action and instead preferring to lean on consensus first management. This may work for lower level management positions, but tends to lead to inaction and poor decision making the more senior the role. Not a red flag, but certainly something about which interviewer would want to have spent more time assessing.