Process Design: Designing and Scaling a Process

Question

Your team owns an API (or framework) that many teams across the company make changes to. Design a process to ensure that all changes are reviewed by a member of your team.

Background

Designing good processes is another core TPM attribute. The purpose of this question is to probe the strong process design skills you’ll need as a TPM, and apply it to a technical domain to see if you are comfortable with combining technical skills with rigorous program management skills to manage change.

Similar to a previous question, we’ll use a role playing approach to simulate a real live interview.

Solution approach

We will use the following structured approach for this question:

• Clarify assumptions given its ambiguous nature.
• Outline the process workflow and the goals we want to accomplish at each step.
• Propose a process solution that will meet the stated goals.

Sample answer

Interviewee: I would like to start by clarifying some aspects of the question. First, how frequently should we expect changes to the API?

Interviewer: Let’s assume changes are quite frequent and tend to spike during certain time periods. There are at least several changes every week.

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