Product design question
Partner developers integrating Glean with tools like ServiceNow, Zendesk, GitHub, and Microsoft Teams keep filing tickets about webhook reliability and confusing API behavior. How would you isolate whether the main problem is API design, SDK abstractions, documentation, operational reliability, or partner-specific complexity, and how would you prioritize what to fix first?
- Glean
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests isolating the root cause of partner integration complaints across API design, SDK, documentation, operational reliability, and partner-specific complexity, then prioritizing fixes.
How to approach it
- Categorize incoming tickets by root cause: webhook delivery failures or retries (operational reliability), confusing payload structure (API design), unclear integration steps (documentation), or issues specific to one partner's unusual setup (partner-specific complexity).
- Check webhook infrastructure health directly, delivery success rate, retry behavior, and latency, since reliability complaints often have a measurable operational root cause independent of what developers report.
- Check if the confusing API behavior complaints cluster around one specific endpoint or payload structure, which would point to an API design fix rather than a documentation gap.
- Check if SDKs abstract webhook handling adequately, since a confusing raw API experience often means the SDK isn't doing enough to simplify common patterns like signature verification or retry handling.
- Segment complaints by partner to see if issues are broadly shared or concentrated in one partner's unusual integration, which changes whether the fix is platform-wide or a targeted partner conversation.
- Prioritize fixing operational reliability first if delivery failure rate data confirms it, since unreliable webhooks undermine trust regardless of how good the API design or docs are.
What a strong answer includes
- Separates measurable operational reliability data, delivery success rate, from developer-reported confusion, since the two can look similar in tickets but need very different fixes.
- Checks whether complaints cluster on one endpoint, distinguishing a real API design flaw from a broader documentation gap.
- Flags SDK abstraction gaps specifically, since raw API confusion often means the SDK isn't handling common patterns like retries or signatures well.
- Prioritizes operational reliability as the root fix when data confirms it, since no amount of better docs fixes an actually unreliable webhook system.
Common mistakes
- Assuming documentation is the problem because tickets mention confusion, without checking the underlying API or reliability data.
- Treating all partner complaints as the same root cause instead of segmenting by partner-specific complexity.
- Fixing SDK or docs symptoms while an underlying webhook reliability issue continues to cause real failures.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you validate webhook delivery reliability independent of partner self-reports?
- What would you do if the issue turns out to be concentrated in one partner's unusual setup?
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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 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop