Tell me about a time you failed as a product manager.

Let me tell you about a time when I was driving a product feature for launch in a quarter but did fail to deliver on time due to misestimation on effort fro Enginnering team.

I was new to the team and requested effort estimates for delivering a feature that will offer customization capabilities for contract subscriptions to our customers giving them flexible options to choose terms. The engg team estimated it to be a quarter worth of effort and i did trust the team and took estimates on face value. Two months in the build phase, I realised this will take longer and we will not eb able to deliver on time. Meanwhile received an opportunity from leadership to drive aleading business feature to offer premium benefits to our customers, but I had to let it go since we were not yet done with our current assignment but that was the right thing to do.

 

Not only did we end up losing on the business opprtunity but also missed the timeline to go live, it was a failure for me as it was hit to credibility. Looking back I realize I could have done few thinsg differently which i put up as my learnings from this experience:

1. Never take estimates on face value- Drill down in design phase to have a good understanding of what time a feature might take to build.

2. De scope the business feature and plan out incremental release to serve the key aspects of project first and nice to have feature to be deployed subsequently

3. Communicate the progress with Exec Sponsor- To keep all stakeholders(Core groups/ Advisor and  informed groups)