Product Puzzle: a series

Embark on a series exploring product basics through intriguing problem statements, ideas and analyses—all based on popular tech products we use.

Product Puzzle: a series

It was on an unremarkable afternoon over a year ago, as I was scrolling through my YouTube feed, that I chanced upon a mock product management interview by Exponent (a topic hitherto unfamiliar to me; strange are YouTube's ways of recommendation). It was a root-cause analysis question (what even?) that piqued my interest. It was a simple one: how would you get to the root cause when, as a PM at Flipkart, you notice a 15% decline in cart additions in just 3 days?

Before I knew it, I was watching many similar videos and going over some similar prompts—product sense and strategy, especially, being favourites (E.g: how would you improve Google Maps?). For every prompt or problem statement, I would come up with my own solution, and I'd occasionally even scribble down the approach. And then, hearing actual PMs approach the problem and outline their solutions was very impressive and insightful. This led me to read up about product management itself, and some of the terminology I frequently heard product managers use.

Recently, I realized I wanted to share some of these thoughts and ideas. I love brainstorming, problem-solving, and thinking about a product comprehensively—it’s what I enjoy most about hackathons and ideation events. Even better is bouncing these ideas around with team members and getting feedback from other stakeholders. I see this series as a similar chance to share ideas and spark discussions with other curious minds, even if it's just for fun.

To help out fellow amateurs like me, I thought it would be great to deliver bite-sized intros to product fundamentals through these articles. Be sure to check out the links and highlights throughout. I've carefully selected resources that not only explain the basics but also lead to intriguing, related topics.

I can't wait to get this series going!

Read the first article here.