🟠 Product Sense: Root Cause Analysis

When an interviewer says "Metric X dropped Y%," use this structure:

1. Clarify: What exactly is the metric? How is it calculated? What timeframe?
2. Decompose: Revenue = Users × Conversion × AOV. Which piece dropped?
3. Internal first: Recent deployments? Bugs? Logging changes? A/B tests?
4. External: Seasonality? Competitor actions? Market events?
5. Segment: All users or specific group? All platforms? All regions?
6. Classify and recommend: Name the likely cause, suggest next steps.

Practice: "DAU dropped 8% this week." Walk through the framework in your head before reading.

Example answer: "First, is this vs last week or vs same week last year? Is it all platforms? I'd decompose into new user signups vs returning user logins. Check: any recent app updates or outages? Any logging changes that might be measurement artifacts? External: is there a holiday, competitor launch, or app store ranking change? I'd segment by platform (iOS/Android), geography, and acquisition channel to isolate where the drop is concentrated."