Two people interviewing in professional setting.

Top interview questions for product owners

What makes a stellar product owner—and how do you spot them? These interview questions will help you identify a product owner that can diplomatically bridge teams, set meaningful long-term goals, exercise powerful leadership, and more. Here, you’ll find questions to help assess a candidate’s hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

Graphic that shows three different types of interview questions you should be asking.

Hard skills

Use these questions to identify a candidate’s technical knowledge and abilities

Behavioral

Use these questions to determine how a candidate handled situations in the past

Soft skills

Use these questions to assess a candidate’s personal traits and cognitive skills

Graphic to show hard skill interview questions you should be asking.

Top hard skills interview questions for product owners

Say you see a 3% decrease in the purchases of product add-ons over a 30-day period. How would you handle this?

Why this matters:

Product owners are by definition business strategists, with a central interest in keeping revenue consistent and growing. A 3% revenue decline may cause concern, and it’s helpful to know what actions they would take to mitigate the situation and turn it around.

What to listen for:

Good candidates will describe how they collect data and make efficient use of it.
A strong answer will also mention how the candidate relies on their team for insights, especially data analysts, sales, and marketing.

If our company’s most popular product was getting a refresh, how would you position the legacy product to keep the revenue stream strong?

Why this matters:

The most successful products cannot rest on their laurels: they must change to stay relevant—to continue meeting customer preferences and to beat the competition. An effective product owner will be able to offer a practical solution to this common business occurrence.

What to listen for:

Look for answers that demonstrate critical thinking, and an appreciation for the blend of form and function.
Strong answers will include ways they think the product could be improved and how they would go about doing it.

Name a product you believe is well-designed—and why.

Why this matters:

Successful product owners know a great product when they see one. But no two candidates are exactly alike in the way they would define that. This question will reveal your candidate’s key values when it comes to products. Do they prioritize function, solutions, elegance, value, or perhaps all of the above?

What to listen for:

Look for answers that demonstrate critical thinking, and an appreciation for the blend of form and function.
Strong answers will include ways they think the product could be improved and how they would go about doing it.

Graphic to show top behavioral interview questions you should be asking.

Top behavioral questions to ask product owners

Tell me about the most successful product release of your career—and how you contributed.

Why this matters:

Product owners command the strategic vision and roadmap for their products. This question seeks to understand how your candidate defines success. Beyond giving you insight into the candidate’s experience and thought process, you’ll learn how they use critical elements like roadmaps, user stories, and backlogs in their work.

What to listen for:

Strong answers will cover how the candidate planned, tracked, and empowered the development team.
Notice the use of “I” and “we” pronouns, which highlight individual and team efforts.

Tell me about a time you had to change priority while a sprint was in progress.

Why this matters:

An Agile principle is to welcome change, even late in development. At the same time, if change isn’t managed appropriately, it can negatively impact the team’s velocity, and potentially the quality of resulting components. The best product owners know the value of obtaining buy-in at all times from internal stakeholders—and they will share their tactics and views on change.

What to listen for:

Ideal candidates will resist interrupting sprints, limiting changes to the most compelling circumstances.
Top answers will cover how they set clear expectations with stakeholders around timeframes to enable consistency from sprint to sprint.

Describe a situation in which someone asked you to do something you had never done before. How did you handle the request?

Why this matters:

Since a product owner must keep up with rapidly changing market demands, adaptability and quick learning are essential to the role. Whether it’s their team having to adjust to new processes and tools, or end users having to adopt a new feature, it’s up to the product owner to successfully steer the ship in a new direction.

What to listen for:

Strong candidates will demonstrate a proven ability to think on their feet and gather the information they for the new situation..
Listen for indications that the candidate learned from the situation and used this knowledge to guide other projects.

Graphic to show top soft skills interview questions you should be asking.

How to screen product owners for soft skills

As a product owner, how do you keep a project moving despite varying opinions and requests from stakeholders?

Why this matters:

This is not the job for people-pleasers: it takes a strong person to successfully manage and prioritize work items and requests. Top product owners can sort through requests from competing stakeholders, while staying 100% focused on what a product needs to accomplish for any given sprint, quarter, or release.

What to listen for:

Candidates should stress that while diplomacy is the goal, moving projects forward often means making stakeholders unhappy.
Great answers will focus on the importance of keeping schedules and compromising.

How do you approach managing distributed teams?

Why this matters:

Organizations are often faced with the task of scaling implementations and releases, but it’s not always easy to find local development talent. Smart product owners know how to balance the use of collaboration tools for constant communication with co-location during crucial points of the sprint.

What to listen for:

Mentions of Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Zoom, or other tools display a practice of constant collaboration with remote developers.
Top answers will also highlight the role co-location plays in a successful release.

How would you describe a database to a non-technical person?

Why this matters:

Cross-functional communication is critical for a successful product. Marketing, development, customer service, and sales should be well informed of product features and objectives. This means the role will often require the product owner to translate technical concepts into easy-to-understand language.

What to listen for: