Strategy question
You are working on developing a new product. Doing it right would take 18 months. By then, competitive gaps would be insurmountable. How do you come up with a delivery strategy that would keep your company in the game?
- Salesforce
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests execution strategy under a hard timeline-versus-competitiveness constraint: can you propose a phased delivery approach instead of choosing only speed or only quality.
How to approach it
- Clarify the tension: the full version takes 18 months, but competitors close the gap by then, so the real choice is how to sequence delivery, not fast versus right.
- Propose breaking the vision into phased releases: the smallest slice addressing the most urgent gap, shippable in 3 to 4 months, even if not the full product.
- Sequence later phases toward the full vision, using real user feedback from each phase to validate direction before investing further.
- Address the resourcing trade-off: phased delivery means a less polished first release, needing explicit stakeholder buy-in.
- Consider a parallel option: if part of the gap can close faster via partnership or licensing rather than building, use that to buy time for the in-house effort.
- Define success as time-to-first-competitive-release and the ability to iterate on real usage data, not a single all-or-nothing date.
What a strong answer includes
- Reframes the false binary, 18 months right versus rushing something wrong, into a phased-delivery approach, the actual skill being tested.
- Proposes a concrete, scoped first release timeline rather than a vague 'ship an MVP' statement.
- Adds a build-vs-partner option as a genuine alternative lever, showing strategic thinking beyond pure internal execution.
- Names the stakeholder buy-in challenge honestly, since leadership often resists a scoped-down first release.
Common mistakes
- Choosing one extreme, either 'ship fast with something bad' or 'stick to the full 18-month plan', without proposing a phased middle path.
- No concrete first-phase scope or timeline, leaving the answer abstract.
- Ignoring the stakeholder management challenge of convincing leadership to accept a scoped-down initial release.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide what to cut for the first phased release?
- How would you convince leadership to accept a smaller first release instead of the full 18-month vision?
- What would you do if the first phase's user feedback contradicted your original strategic assumptions?
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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 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop