Essential Work Sample Exercises for Hiring a Product Owner

Product Owners serve as the critical bridge between business stakeholders and development teams. They translate business needs into actionable product requirements while ensuring the development team delivers maximum value. Finding the right Product Owner can significantly impact your product's success and your team's effectiveness.

Traditional interviews often fail to reveal a candidate's true capabilities in managing backlogs, writing user stories, handling stakeholder relationships, and making tough prioritization decisions. These skills are best evaluated through practical exercises that simulate real-world scenarios Product Owners face daily.

Work samples provide a window into how candidates think, communicate, and solve problems. They reveal not just what candidates know, but how they apply that knowledge in situations similar to those they'll encounter in the role. For Product Owners, this means demonstrating their ability to balance competing priorities, articulate clear requirements, and advocate for both user and business needs.

The following exercises are designed to evaluate the essential skills of an effective Product Owner. They assess a candidate's ability to prioritize work, craft clear user stories, communicate with stakeholders, and develop strategic product thinking. By incorporating these exercises into your interview process, you'll gain deeper insights into each candidate's capabilities and fit for your specific product environment.

Activity #1: Backlog Prioritization Exercise

This exercise evaluates a candidate's ability to make tough prioritization decisions based on business value, effort, and risk. Product Owners must constantly balance competing priorities and limited resources, making this skill essential for the role. The exercise reveals how candidates think about value, how they weigh different factors in decision-making, and their ability to explain their reasoning to others.

Directions for the Company:

• Prepare a list of 10-15 potential product features or user stories with brief descriptions.
• Include a mix of features with varying levels of complexity, business value, and user impact.
• Provide basic context about the product, its users, and business goals.
• Allow 30-45 minutes for the exercise.
• Have the candidate present their prioritized backlog to 1-2 team members who can ask questions.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Review the provided list of potential features for the product.
• Prioritize these features based on business value, effort, risk, and dependencies.
• Create a structured backlog with your top priorities clearly identified.
• Be prepared to explain your prioritization methodology and reasoning.
• Present your prioritized backlog and be ready to defend your decisions.

Feedback Mechanism:

• After the presentation, provide feedback on one aspect of their prioritization approach that was particularly effective.
• Offer one suggestion for improvement, such as considering a factor they may have overlooked.
• Ask the candidate to reconsider the priority of 2-3 specific items based on the feedback and explain how their thinking has evolved.

Activity #2: User Story Writing and Refinement

This exercise assesses a candidate's ability to create clear, valuable user stories that development teams can implement effectively. Well-crafted user stories are fundamental to successful product development, as they communicate requirements in a way that focuses on user value while providing sufficient detail for implementation. This activity reveals the candidate's understanding of user needs and their ability to communicate requirements clearly.

Directions for the Company:

• Provide a brief description of a product feature that needs to be implemented.
• Include information about the target users and the business context.
• Supply any relevant constraints or technical considerations.
• Allow 30 minutes for the exercise.
• Have a developer or technical team member available to ask clarifying questions.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Based on the feature description provided, write 3-5 user stories that would be needed to implement this feature.
• Include acceptance criteria for each user story.
• Consider edge cases and potential technical challenges.
• Be prepared to discuss how you would refine these stories with a development team.
• Prioritize the stories and explain your reasoning.

Feedback Mechanism:

• Provide feedback on the clarity and completeness of one of the user stories.
• Suggest one area where more detail or different acceptance criteria would be helpful.
• Ask the candidate to refine the selected user story based on the feedback.
• Observe how they incorporate the feedback and whether they ask appropriate clarifying questions.

Activity #3: Stakeholder Communication Role Play

This exercise evaluates a candidate's ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders, especially in challenging situations. Product Owners must frequently negotiate scope, manage expectations, and advocate for both the development team and the product vision. This role play reveals how candidates handle pressure, communicate trade-offs, and build stakeholder relationships.

Directions for the Company:

• Prepare a scenario where a key stakeholder is requesting a significant change or addition to the product scope.
• Brief an employee to play the role of the stakeholder, providing them with specific concerns and objections.
• The scenario should include some tension, such as tight deadlines or limited resources.
• Allow 15-20 minutes for the role play.
• Record the interaction if possible (with candidate's permission) for later review.

Directions for the Candidate:

• You will participate in a meeting with a stakeholder who has requested changes to the product.
• Review the provided context about the product, the current development timeline, and the stakeholder's request.
• Your goal is to understand the stakeholder's needs, communicate constraints, and work toward a solution that balances business value with feasibility.
• Be prepared to negotiate and suggest alternatives if the original request cannot be accommodated.
• Focus on maintaining a positive relationship while being realistic about what can be delivered.

Feedback Mechanism:

• Provide feedback on one aspect of the communication that was particularly effective (e.g., active listening, clear explanation of trade-offs).
• Suggest one area for improvement (e.g., being more assertive, asking more clarifying questions).
• Give the candidate a follow-up scenario that builds on the first interaction and ask them to demonstrate how they would incorporate the feedback.
• Observe how they adjust their approach based on the feedback.

Activity #4: Product Vision and Roadmap Exercise

This exercise assesses a candidate's strategic thinking and ability to develop a coherent product vision and roadmap. Product Owners need to balance short-term delivery with long-term strategic goals. This activity reveals how candidates think about product evolution, market needs, and how they communicate a compelling vision to others.

Directions for the Company:

• Provide information about a product, including its current state, target market, and business objectives.
• Include some market data, user feedback, and competitive information.
• Allow the candidate to ask questions about the product and business context.
• Give the candidate 45-60 minutes to prepare their vision and roadmap.
• Have 2-3 team members available to hear the presentation and ask questions.

Directions for the Candidate:

• Review the provided information about the product and its context.
• Develop a high-level product vision that addresses user needs and business objectives.
• Create a 12-month roadmap that outlines key initiatives and milestones.
• Explain how you would measure success for the product.
• Prepare a 10-15 minute presentation of your vision and roadmap.
• Be ready to answer questions and defend your strategic choices.

Feedback Mechanism:

• Provide feedback on one strength of their strategic thinking or presentation.
• Suggest one area where their vision or roadmap could be improved or clarified.
• Ask the candidate to revise one aspect of their roadmap based on the feedback.
• Have them explain how this change impacts other elements of their plan and why they made the adjustments they did.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should we allocate for these exercises in our interview process?

Each exercise requires 30-60 minutes including setup, execution, and feedback. We recommend selecting 1-2 exercises that best align with your specific needs rather than attempting all four in a single interview session. The backlog prioritization and user story exercises can be combined into a 90-minute session if needed.

Should we provide these exercises to candidates in advance?

For the backlog prioritization and user story exercises, providing the context in advance allows candidates to prepare thoughtfully, which better reflects real-world conditions. The stakeholder role play is more effective as an on-the-spot exercise. For the product vision exercise, providing background information 24-48 hours in advance yields more thoughtful responses.

How should we evaluate candidates across these exercises?

Create a scorecard based on the key skills for your specific Product Owner role. Rate candidates on dimensions like clarity of communication, strategic thinking, prioritization rationale, and stakeholder management. Compare candidates against your criteria rather than directly against each other, as different approaches can be equally effective.

What if our product is highly technical or domain-specific?

Adapt these exercises to include relevant domain knowledge, but focus primarily on the Product Owner skills being demonstrated. A strong candidate might not have specific domain expertise but should ask intelligent questions and demonstrate an ability to learn quickly. Consider providing additional context or a brief overview of technical constraints.

How do we ensure these exercises don't disadvantage candidates from different backgrounds?

Review your exercises to ensure they don't require specific cultural knowledge unrelated to the role. Provide clear context and be open to different approaches that may be equally valid. Focus on the reasoning and process rather than expecting one "correct" answer. Allow candidates to ask clarifying questions to level the playing field.

Can these exercises be conducted remotely?

Yes, all of these exercises can be adapted for remote interviews using video conferencing and collaborative tools like Miro, Figma, or Google Docs. For the backlog prioritization, provide a template they can fill out. For role plays, ensure good audio quality and consider recording (with permission) for later review.

The right Product Owner can transform your product development process, improving team efficiency and product outcomes. These work samples will help you identify candidates who not only understand Product Owner responsibilities in theory but can execute them effectively in practice. By observing candidates in action, you'll gain insights into their thinking process, communication style, and problem-solving approach that traditional interviews simply cannot reveal.

To explore more resources for improving your hiring process, check out our AI Job Descriptions, AI Interview Question Generator, and AI Interview Guide Generator.

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