YouTube · Metrics · Entry · 45 to 60 minutes

Why are Shorts uploads down while viewing is flat?

YouTube is a video platform where people watch, upload, and share content, including short vertical videos called Shorts. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Root cause analysis
Metric thinking
User journey reasoning
Prioritization
Experiment design

The situation

You are an associate PM on YouTube Shorts. Over the last three months, daily Shorts viewers have stayed stable, but the number of creators uploading new Shorts each day has dropped by 35 percent. The VP responsible for creator growth wants your recommendation before next weeks planning review. Leadership is worried because viewer demand looks healthy today, but a drop in new uploads could reduce freshness, hurt creator trust, and weaken future growth. The problem is hard because Shorts creation has several possible failure points, including creator motivation, content discovery, editing tools, upload flow friction, and pressure from competing short video apps. You do not yet know whether the decline is concentrated in certain regions, creator segments, or steps in the creation journey. You also know that engineering capacity is limited this quarter, so a broad rebuild is unlikely to be approved. Your job is to frame the problem, identify the most likely root causes to investigate first, and recommend the first action YouTube should take if your leading hypothesis is confirmed.

What to produce

A 1 to 2 page root cause memo.

Your answer must

State the core metric problem and 2 to 3 business risks if uploads keep falling while viewers stay stable.
List 8 to 12 clarifying questions, grouped into sensible categories, and explain why each question matters.
Build a hypothesis tree with at least 3 plausible root causes across different parts of the creator journey.
For each top hypothesis, specify the data or evidence you would request and one testable fix or experiment tied to that cause.
Recommend one first action and compare it with at least 2 alternatives using impact, effort, and speed to learn.
Define one primary success metric and at least 2 guardrail metrics for your recommendation.

Constraints

Use only the facts given here. If you need more data, state the question and why it matters instead of inventing an answer.
Keep your recommendation to one near term product move that could start this quarter.
Work within limited engineering and design capacity. Do not propose a full rebuild of Shorts creation.

Format

Use short sections titled Problem, Questions, Hypotheses, Tests, Recommendation, and Metrics.

How YouTube actually played it

A worked metrics case where Shorts viewers hold steady but uploads fall by a third. It runs clarifying questions, possible causes and prioritisation to land on a draft saving fix.

Ask clarifying questions before naming causes
Tie each cause to a testable fix
Rank by impact and effort

Built from Root Cause Analysis: Product Case Solving Day 2 by Sreerag (DailyDoseOfPM).