Strategy question

You are the Product Manager of Ads Business at eBay. There are 3 projects for 2021, two are integration with external partners, and one is platform vision (internal). How would you plan the roadmap for 2021?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Whether you can sequence a roadmap across competing project types based on business impact and dependency, not just fairness.

Clarify the roadmap horizon and how success will be judged, likely revenue impact and platform readiness for future growth.
Categorize the three projects by type: two are partner integrations with likely nearer-term, bounded revenue, one is a platform vision bet with longer-term, uncertain payoff.
Assess dependencies: check whether the platform vision work is a prerequisite that would make future integrations faster or cheaper.
Prioritize the partner integrations first if they have committed timelines or revenue, since external partners create hard deadlines.
Sequence the platform vision work in parallel at a lower resourcing level, so it makes progress without blocking near-term commitments.
Define how you would report progress to the exec team quarterly, separating delivered partner value from platform investment milestones.

Distinguishes externally-committed partner work from internally-driven platform work, since they carry different risk and urgency.
Checks for a dependency between the platform vision and the integrations before assuming they can run fully independently.
Proposes a parallel-track approach rather than a strict either-or sequencing, matching how real roadmaps balance near and long term.
Names a way to report mixed progress, since platform investment often lacks a clean short-term metric execs expect.

Treating all three projects as equally urgent and splitting resources evenly without prioritization logic.
Ignoring whether the platform vision work is actually a dependency that changes how the integrations should be built.

How would you decide to cut scope if all three projects could not be fully resourced?
What would make you delay a partner integration in favor of the platform work?