Product design question
You need to introduce enterprise identity and access management for the API platform. How would you scope and sequence SSO/SAML, SCIM, roles and permissions, and admin tooling, and how would you handle tradeoffs among security, developer usability, and compliance requirements?
- OpenAI
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Ability to sequence a complex enterprise infrastructure buildout and balance security, developer usability, and compliance.
How to approach it
- Start from what blocks the most enterprise deals today, typically SSO and SAML, since procurement and security review often will not proceed without it.
- Sequence SCIM, automated user provisioning and deprovisioning, next, since manual user management becomes a security and compliance liability as accounts scale.
- Add roles and permissions once you have real usage data on how enterprise teams actually split responsibilities, such as separating billing admins from API key managers.
- Layer in admin tooling, audit logs, usage visibility, last, once the underlying identity model is stable, so admin screens do not need to be rebuilt.
- At each stage, name the tradeoff: SSO first prioritizes deal velocity over granularity, SCIM prioritizes compliance over short term engineering cost.
- Define what you would ship as a minimum viable version of each stage rather than the fully featured version, to avoid blocking deals waiting for perfection.
What a strong answer includes
- Sequences SSO and SAML first with a clear reason, deal blocking, rather than an arbitrary order.
- Names SCIM's compliance value explicitly, not just as a technical nice to have.
- Grounds the roles and permissions model in observed enterprise org structures rather than guessing upfront.
- States a concrete MVP scope per stage, for example a handful of fixed roles before a fully custom permission system.
Common mistakes
- Trying to build a fully custom permissions system before basic SSO is even in place.
- Ignoring developer usability, making admin flows so locked down that legitimate developers get blocked.
Likely follow-up questions
- Which enterprise deal or segment would you use to validate the roles model first?
- How would you handle a customer who needs SSO today, before SCIM is ready?
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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