Describe a time when you translated a broad product or business objective into a concrete technical roadmap for your area (e.g., milestones, architecture choices, and sequencing of work). How did you decide what to do first, manage risks, and ensure timely execution?

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VirtualInterview.AI · Accepted Answer

At my last company, leadership set a broad goal: “Launch a self-service analytics product this year and grow upsell revenue by 15%.” Nothing existed yet for my area, which owned data ingestion and query APIs. I started by working with PM and analytics to define what “MVP” actually meant: 5 core dashboards, sub‑5s query latency, and coverage for our top 20 customers.

From there I drafted a 3‑phase roadmap: first, stabilize the data layer (schema normalization, SLAs, backfill jobs); second, design a scalable API layer (gRPC + GraphQL gateway, rate limiting); third, add “delight” features like saved views and alerts. We prioritized anything on the critical path of data trust and latency. I ran weekly risk reviews, tracking three explicit risks: data quality, performance, and schema churn. We built feature flags and shadow traffic into the plan. We shipped MVP in 5 months (vs 6 planned), hit 99.95% API uptime, and the product drove a 17% uplift in expansion revenue within two quarters.

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