Product Managers are often evaluated on their Analytical Thinking as well as their Product Sense. Some companies throw in Product Strategy or Root Cause Analysis prompts as part of the assessment. In a crowded market, hiring managers and panel interviewers look for signal for the best PMs. Analytical Thinking is all about setting goals for a product and its business and measuring success. This question should be top of mind for every product manager. After I ship my product, how do I know I am successful?
At the start of my career, I focused more on Business metrics instead of Product metrics. My concern was more about execution than strategy. Since then, I have grown a lot as a PM and now rely on frameworks. Analytical Thinking is more about prioritizing (and justifying) which metrics to watch rather than sharing a laundry list of metrics.
In Q1 2025, Lyft asked me to design a dashboard for the C-suite at Spotify, a product I use every day.This was the final round for a Commerce PM role. I came up with metrics that I assume each party of the C Suite (CEO, CPO, CMO, CFO, CTO, CIO…) would care about. These metrics would be superficial. While this approach is not necessarily wrong, 35 min is not enough to send the signals interviewers are looking for. Frameworks allow candidate to show breadth and depth through structured thinking
Framework for Analytical Thinking:
a) Product Overview: Describe the product, the users, the competition
b) Product Rationale: Why does the product exist and what value does it bring?
c) Success statement: what does Success look like?
d) Goals: Business and Product
e) Success Metrics: North Star Metric, Secondary Metrics, Counter metrics, Guardrail metrics
f) Trade Offs: How will the launch of this product impact the business and the users?
Here is a link of how I would design a dashboard for Spotify C Suite. It’s password protected.
The PM journey 