The company focuses on cloud content management and file sharing service for businesses. Official clients and apps are available for Windows, macOS, and several mobile platforms. Box was founded in 2005.

You are the Product Manager at Box for its file sharing products. You have identified a billion dollar opportunity in this arena. However, Aaron does not believe it to be a billion dollar opportunity because of the high investment needed. Detail how you would handle this situation.

  • Request Aaron for his time to hear me out even if he does not wish to take the idea forward.

  • Block Aaron’s calendar for a meeting, to express the importance of the opportunity

  • In the meeting, Have the presence of another stakeholder, whose opinion Aaron values. Also, include a subject matter expert(s) within the company who can second the idea based on the facts presented.

  • Ensure Aaron is happy with the presence of the people mentioned above

  • Be Prepared on the following before the meeting:

    • Conduct customer interview and market research to establish a use case for this new product

    • Define the vision of the product and the customer pain points which the product is going to solve

    • Create a high level product roadmap for an MVP launch

    • Try and get effort estimates of the MVP from tech team

    • Create a go to market strategy on how with minimal marketing expenses the product can be marketed.

    • Financial Viability

❖ Risks Associated

  • Make a concise, relatable use case to present it in an anecdotal manner

  • On the day of the pitch, start with the anecdote, followed by the data to back up the use case.

You are in a meeting with the engineering team to decide on the features for one of your file sharing products. There is no consensus emerging among the team and the meeting is proving to be a waste while the deadline looms.

A) How will you communicate your product vision?

  • Communicate the user pain point and the problem we are trying to solve.

  • Define the target audience- Industry, segment, user personas (addressable market size).

  • The solution we are using to solve the issues, and how we have arrived at it (customer interviews, use cases, wireframes/sketches).

  • Briefing on what the product roadmap will look like.

  • Describing how this new product will align/be integrated with the existing product.

  • Continuously communicating the product vision & reminding the team on the product vision.

B) How will you win the trust of the engineering team?

It is essential to convince the engineering team of the product vision, whilst keeping in mind that the engineering team does not report to the product manager. Hence empathy and logical reasoning along with addressing questions should be considered. Listed below are the pointers that can be useful while interacting with the engineering team.

  • Involve engineers early on in discussions.

  • Give a Walkthrough of the customer data insights.

  • Be open to idea of some engineers involving in customer interactions.

  • Understand the build challenges the engineers put forward.

  • Empathize with engineers while discussing the above point.

  • Trust that your engineers know their craft.

  • Provide workable solutions for the obstacles of the engineering team (ongoing or foreseen).

  • Decide to limit the scope of the task(s) to make the engineering team’s life easier.

  • Working from the same office, if possible.

  • Loop in a scrum master if things are getting out of hand.