20 Product Owner Interview Questions and Answers

Here are some of the common and most important questions you should ask prospective product owners. We will divide the questions into segments:

Segment 1: Product Owner Role
These questions are meant to get a grasp of the candidate's understanding of the job responsibilities.

1. What do you expect from this job as a product owner?
The question is supposed to be an opening question that lets the candidate provide an overview of their exposure. It would tell you how prepared the candidate is for the interview and how much of an expert they are in their field.

Each answer to this question will be different depending on the industry, company, and products. However, there are some commonalities you should look for. A few keywords you should be looking for include sprint planning, sprint retrospective, grooming, and sprint review. If the candidate mentions these activities, you know they have the relevant knowledge and experience.

2. Do you think it's a good idea to have one person performing both the Scrum Product Owner role and the Scrum Master role?
It’s essential to get an idea of how well the candidate understands the entire product development process. This question is the best way to figure out how well the candidate understands their role compared to other roles.

Unless the candidate has a really good explanation, the answer should be "no". Scrum masters and product owners have different responsibilities, and mixing them will always have a negative impact on the development process. The Scrum Master acts as a mediator between the product owner and the development team. Therefore, if the same person plays both roles, a conflict of interest would arise.

3. Do you have experience working with a Scrum framework?
Every product owner needs to have a basic understanding of the Scrum framework. The answer to this question will give you an idea of how well the candidate understands the framework. Their knowledge of the framework can be a baseline on what you can expect from the product owner.

Answering the question would be different for every product owner, but a few elements should remain the same. For example, Scrum is an incremental way of providing value to the end-user in a timely manner. The answer should revolve around this particular statement.

Furthermore, if the product owner describes the origin of the framework, that’s even better. The candidate should also mention the three fundamental roles that come along with it. To be more specific, they should understand the product owner, Scrum team, and the Scrum Master role.

4. What other product discovery frameworks have you worked with?
Scrum is the most widely used Agile software development framework, but that doesn't mean it is the best model for every situation.

If the potential product owner has experience with Kanban or Waterfall, for example, that's going to help them make a judgment of the best approach to take in each circumstance.

Segment 2: Engagement with External Stakeholders

The following questions help the hiring managers to understand the level of experience that candidates have in conducting interviews and getting feedback from users.

5. Who do you consider to be the most important product stakeholder?
One of the most important things to establish is whether the product owner understands whom they’re targeting. Their job requires them to understand the external stakeholders and develop the product accordingly.

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[usvirkaur]

hello very helpful with interviews i got 3-5 interviews in a row by using this information👍

[PaweSkorupinski]

Lots of good content, thanks!
I just have one strong reservation: I would say that the question about backlog prioritization can have a lot of correct answers that are more to the point than just knowing one particular tool like MoSCoW (e.g., strategic themes, urgency/importance, validated assumptions in product discovery, cost of delay, business vs. customer value).

[inframatic]

If there is a product owner who wants to use the scrum framework in their product development, but there is no scrum master, the product owner would need to be responsible for making sure that his scrum team follows Scrum. The product owners main job is to create the most value from their scrum team. This includes needing to implement scrum into a team

[jcheupy]

Great information, watching this before my PO interview tomorrow, cheers!

[rnreddy]

Fantastic stuff Joshua, recently I attended an Interview, you're not gonna believe, I have got at least a question from almost all segments you mentioned.

[MrJJ]

Solid content, I like the "key takeaway" rather than robotic examples that may not apply

[raghav]

I have more than 12+ years of experience in data engineering, data science, and architecture, with significant expertise in the payment domain. I am currently working partialy as a product owner.

I am contemplating a transition to a full-time product owner role in my career, leveraging my technical skills and domain knowledge.

Now Im getting interest in domain and move out to become more of techno functional roles. I felt product owner is the best option.

Though current role of partial product owner is only of few months as of now. considering

[walterhigo]

Excellent explanation!!!
This is High Quality content
Thanks!

[SomosExperiencia]

Very comprehensive rehearsal. Thank you for sharing.

[gaurangrajyaguru]

You should write the answers on the screen

[Macjizle]

Are all stakeholders really equally important or this is just in product management as the stakeholder mapping matrix’s of influence and interest sorts of categorize SH into importance ranking.

[PaweSkorupinski]

4:52 Should be "product delivery" or "product development", I presume.

[iykonic]

Great content and tips. Thanks! Please can anyone explain how does a Proxy Product Owner role work with the PO role and the Scrum team in general? I have a Proxy Product owner role interview which is going to be a written scenario based interview. Any tips or explanations will greatly help.

[suayshjustu]

Really helpful video. Thank you so much!

[BIA-nvmg]

Do you know any companies that take juniors? As a product owner? So hard to get an interview 😪

[taozapp]

please use a better mic, the sound is not so good

[ayodejirauf]

I came here for knowledge and found it. If anyone doesn't like the accent, they can go search for knowledge elsewhere, or pay a translator to translate to their local accent or mute the video and follow the closed captions. Stop whining on a top class content because everyone doesn't speak like people around your village

[s]

Questions are nice, answeres are not.

[teabibis]

I can’t help but wonder where are you from? I’ve never heard anyone talk with this accent. It is so hard to listen. Great information though, thank you.

[andskimusic]

White noise and echo too much I can't listen to this