Strategy question
A customer says, "We cannot launch without feature X." How would you determine whether X is a true core product gap, an integration issue, or a change-management problem on the customer side? What evidence would you gather first, who would you involve, and what framework would you use to choose between building, working around, or pushing back?
- Scale AI
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Whether you can diagnose an ambiguous blocking claim with a repeatable framework instead of taking the customer's framing at face value.
How to approach it
- Restate that not all launch blockers are true product gaps: separate a missing capability, a broken integration, and a customer-side change-management issue before reacting.
- Gather evidence first: reproduce the issue with the customer's actual data and workflow, check whether other customers hit the same wall, and review the customer's internal rollout plan.
- Involve the right people early: an integration engineer to rule out configuration issues, and the account team to understand the customer's internal politics around the launch.
- Use a simple framework: if multiple customers need it and it is core to the workflow, build; if it is a one-off configuration issue, work around it; if it is really the customer not being ready, push back with evidence.
- Communicate the finding back to the customer with the evidence, not just a decision, so the pushback path preserves trust.
What a strong answer includes
- Explicitly separates product gap, integration issue, and change-management issue as three different root causes needing different responses.
- Names the evidence gathered, like reproducing with real customer data, instead of relying on the customer's self-diagnosis.
- Shows the pushback path is not just saying no but bringing evidence the customer can act on.
Common mistakes
- Assumes the customer's framing of X is correct without verifying it.
- Jumps straight to build without checking if other customers need the same thing.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle it if the customer disagrees with your evidence.
- What would you do if this is the third customer asking for a similar feature.
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More questions from Scale AI
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop