Linear · Product sense · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should Linear improve project status visibility?

Linear is a software product for planning and tracking product development work. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product sense
Prioritization
Trade off analysis
System thinking
Written communication

The situation

You are the PM helping the Projects area at Linear. During 2022 roadmap planning, Projects was named as a core theme, and the team now needs to choose a small but meaningful investment that improves how project work is run in Linear. Internally, with 22 employees, project leads share weekly status notes in dedicated Slack channels and then cross post them to a broader channel so the rest of the company can stay informed. The process kind of works, but writing is manual, updates get buried in chat, and the reporting lives far away from the actual project work. Conversations with other companies suggest the broader market is not much better, many rely on spreadsheets, docs, slide decks, and email roundups stitched together by hand. Leaders want a clearer view of whether projects are on track, while teams want less admin work and less context switching. At the same time, Linear wants to stay focused and avoid turning Projects into a heavyweight management system. Assume you have room for one small to medium product investment this quarter. What should Linear do?

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product recommendation memo.

Your answer must

Identify the primary user groups involved in project status communication, including who creates updates and who consumes them.
Define the core problem to solve, including why current workflows break down for both writing and reading project status.
Recommend one product direction for this quarter, with a clear V1 scope and the main user value it creates.
Discuss at least two realistic alternatives or variants, and explain why your recommendation is better for Linear now.
Explain the key trade offs, including qualitative versus quantitative status signals, native workflow versus external tools, and breadth versus simplicity.
Define success metrics, biggest risks or unknowns, and how you would validate the approach after launch.

Constraints

Do not assume Linear can build a full project management suite or a heavy reporting system this quarter.
Your recommendation should reduce context switching, not create a new separate workflow that teams must maintain.
The solution should consider both people who work inside Linear and stakeholders who may still follow updates in another tool.

Format

Use sections for users and problem, options considered, recommendation and V1 scope, trade offs, and success measures.

How Linear actually played it

Linear describes how Project Updates, short status reports on project health, came out of its 2022 roadmap planning where projects was a core theme. The post explains the discussions on which features would improve projects meaningfully. A small look at turning a planning theme into a specific feature.

Anchor feature ideas to a roadmap theme.
Choose the smallest feature that improves the whole area.
Status communication is a product problem, not just a process one.

Built from How we built Project Updates by Andreas Eldh.