Practice resources
Three PM exercises you can try before signing up
Practise prioritisation, metric selection and stakeholder judgment with synthetic cases, constraints and worked responses. No account required for these samples.
Use the samples as practice, not answer keys
Take five minutes on each task before reading the response. These original, synthetic cases illustrate the kind of reasoning to practise. They are not the hidden scoring answers for the signed-in exercise catalogue. There is no automated grading on this page.
1. Prioritise under a fixed capacity
A team has six engineering days available. An invitation fix costs four days, a reporting export costs six, and a cosmetic dashboard change costs two. Forty of 100 new workspaces write a note; twelve share one. Two enterprise prospects requested exports, but neither has committed to a purchase. Decide what you will do and what you will defer.
| Candidate | Cost | Evidence | Uncertainty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invitation fix | 4 days | Observed sharing drop-off | Cause is not yet verified |
| Reporting export | 6 days | Two prospect requests | Purchase and recurring need unconfirmed |
| Dashboard polish | 2 days | Internal preference | No demonstrated task failure |
- Write one sentence naming the target user and stalled task.
- Choose an action that fits the capacity, including any discovery work.
- Name what would make you change course.
Worked response: investigate, then commit
Reserve one day to observe recent creators trying to share a note and check instrumentation. If the invitation issue is confirmed and the fix still fits the remaining capacity, prioritise it. Defer export until the commercial need is clearer, and defer dashboard polish. If sharing is blocked by a lack of collaborative need rather than the invitation flow, stop the fix and investigate the value proposition.
Why this is stronger: it distinguishes a funnel symptom from a cause and makes the opportunity cost visible. It would be weaker to claim that twelve sharing workspaces prove an invitation redesign will work.
2. Choose a metric that can be wrong
The invitation change ships. In one synthetic week, 50 new workspaces create accounts and 15 share a note. Ten share a second note in a later session. The preceding week had 40 new workspaces and 8 that shared a note. What would you report?
| Measure | Earlier cohort | Later cohort |
|---|---|---|
| New workspaces | 40 | 50 |
| Shared a note | 8 (20%) | 15 (30%) |
| Second note in later session | Not collected | 10 (20%) |
- Define the numerator and denominator.
- State why the two cohorts may not be comparable.
- Choose a guardrail and an observation window.
Worked response: improvement is a hypothesis
Report that the observed sharing proportion rose from 20% to 30%. Do not call it a proven causal lift: acquisition mix, observation time and the small cohorts may explain the difference. Follow each cohort for a full seven days, inspect invitation failures as a guardrail, and collect the later-session measure consistently for both cohorts.
A percentage without an eligible denominator can look impressive while hiding an unfinished observation window. Ask whether the metric represents value received and repeated, rather than merely a button clicked.
3. Respond to a stakeholder request
Sales wants the export this week for a prospect demo. Engineering can build the invitation fix or the export, but not both. Draft a short response that acknowledges the commercial goal without promising unapproved work.
Worked response: “I understand the demo needs to show how reporting would work. Can we confirm the buyer’s required workflow and whether a sample export is enough for this meeting? We have six engineering days, so committing to the full export would defer the invitation work. I will bring both options and their evidence to the decision owner today, then give you a clear scope and date.”
Notice the acknowledgement, bounded alternative, capacity constraint and decision owner. It avoids a flat refusal and an unsupported delivery promise.
Review using the five-criterion rubricTry three guided exercises this week