# 8-week PM interview sprint ## Entry condition Use this sprint when you can already explain product discovery, metric trees, funnels/cohorts, basic unit economics, and a product development lifecycle. If not, complete the [30-day foundations](01-foundations-30-day.md) first. ## Weekly workload - Two concept blocks. - Eight untimed questions. - Six timed questions. - One written artifact. - One full mock interview. - One feedback-driven reattempt. - Two spaced-repetition sessions for prior mistakes. That is 112 untimed/timed questions plus eight full mocks. Quality beats volume: every miss gets an error code and a corrective drill. ## Error taxonomy Use one primary code per miss: - `FRA`: misframed goal or scope; - `STR`: weak or missing structure; - `ASM`: hidden or inconsistent assumption; - `USR`: shallow user/actor understanding; - `QNT`: arithmetic, units, statistics, or data-definition error; - `EVD`: conclusion unsupported by evidence; - `PRI`: list without prioritization; - `TRD`: missed trade-off or second-order effect; - `RSK`: material risk ignored; - `MET`: vague or gameable measurement; - `COM`: unclear, verbose, or poor time management. ## Week 0 — Baseline and setup Before the sprint: 1. Record one 35-minute product-design answer. 2. Solve one 20-minute guesstimate. 3. Record one 35-minute RCA case. 4. Write one behavioral answer. 5. Score all four with the mock scorecard. 6. Create a 12-story inventory from real experience. 7. Record target roles, companies, interview stages, and likely competency mix from official recruiter material. Do not tailor to reported question leaks. Tailor to competencies and product context. ## Week 1 — Product sense and design ### Focus Mission, objective, segmentation, JTBD, pain prioritization, divergent solutions, trade-offs, end-to-end flows, MVP, accessibility, validation, and success metrics. ### Artifact A complete redesign brief for one product flow, including empty/error/recovery/offline states and a usability-test plan. ### Mock 45-minute new-product or redesign case with two constraint changes. ### Exit signal You prioritize one segment and problem, consider multiple solution directions, close with a coherent MVP and metrics, and stay within time. ## Week 2 — Guesstimates and market sizing ### Focus Decision-led clarification, top-down and bottom-up decompositions, household and usage models, capacity, digital volume, TAM/SAM/SOM, marketplace balance, low/base/high ranges, sensitivity, triangulation, and sanity checks. ### Artifact A market-sizing memo with a spreadsheet-equivalent assumption table and explicit data-acquisition plan. ### Mock One 25-minute operational Fermi case plus one 25-minute revenue/TAM case. ### Exit signal Units are consistent, arithmetic is visible, the result is a range, the most sensitive assumption is named, and the estimate informs a decision. ## Week 3 — Metrics, experimentation, and RCA ### Focus Exact metric definitions, metric trees, funnels/cohorts, data quality, change points, segmentation, hypothesis tests, randomization, power/MDE intuition, guardrails, SRM, novelty, interference, containment, correction, and postmortems. ### Artifact An incident analysis plus an experiment design for the proposed corrective change. ### Mock 45-minute metric-drop diagnosis with a misleading correlation and one instrumentation fault. ### Exit signal You validate the metric first, choose high-information cuts, distinguish correlation from cause, and propose both immediate mitigation and prevention. ## Week 4 — Strategy, prioritization, and execution ### Focus Strategic diagnosis, where-to-play/how-to-win choices, competition, differentiation, moats, build/buy/partner, cannibalization, scoring limits, dependencies, outcome roadmaps, requirements, rollout, quality, migrations, and sunsetting. ### Artifact A two-page strategy and roadmap memo with explicit non-goals and reversal evidence. ### Mock 45-minute expansion or portfolio-choice case. ### Exit signal Goals are not confused with strategy, trade-offs are explicit, roadmap sequencing follows the strategy, and delivery risks have owners. ## Week 5 — Growth, monetization, and GTM ### Focus Acquisition loops, activation, engagement, retention, referral, reactivation, pricing value metrics, willingness to pay, packaging, unit economics, product-led vs. sales-led motion, positioning, launch tiers, distribution, and ethical growth. ### Artifact A growth model and pricing/GTM recommendation with unit economics and guardrails. ### Mock 45-minute “grow this product” case with a retention weakness and limited budget. ### Exit signal You diagnose the constraint before proposing tactics, connect loops to retention and economics, and avoid manipulative patterns. ## Week 6 — Technical, AI, platforms, marketplaces, and B2B ### Focus APIs, data flows, reliability, latency, identity, security, observability, migration, AI-vs-rules baseline, data rights, model evaluation, cost, drift, human fallback, multi-sided incentives, liquidity, enterprise buyer/user/admin splits, RBAC, audit logs, procurement, and SLAs. ### Artifact A technical context diagram and launch-readiness review for an AI-assisted B2B or platform feature. ### Mock 60-minute technical-product case with scale, privacy, and backward-compatibility constraints. ### Exit signal You can reason about system behavior without pretending to be the engineer, make build/buy trade-offs, and connect technical constraints to customer and business outcomes. ## Week 7 — Behavioral leadership, communication, and trust ### Focus Ownership, influence without authority, conflict, failure, ambiguity, coaching, inclusion, saying no, ethical escalation, concise verbal structure, executive writing, bad-news communication, privacy, safety, accessibility, moderation, fraud, and governance. ### Artifact A 12-story matrix plus one one-page executive decision document and one incident communication. ### Mock 60-minute behavioral loop with deep probes. Use only real experiences. ### Exit signal Stories specify your actions and judgment, include measurable results or honest limits, show reflection, and withstand “what would you do differently?” ## Week 8 — Full loops and calibration Run three simulated loops: 1. product design + guesstimate; 2. metrics/RCA + strategy; 3. technical or domain case + behavioral. Complete one 48-hour written case with a strict page limit. Use a different product from your primary portfolio case. ### Readiness gate Across the final six interviews: - average score at least 75/100; - no critical dimension below 2/4; - no arithmetic or unit-changing error; - all answers close with a decision and next step; - behavioral examples cover the target competency set without recycling one story excessively; - answer length stays within the agreed timebox; - at least two independent reviewers produce broadly consistent scores. If a domain fails the gate, repeat its week as a targeted two-week loop rather than continuing to collect new questions.