--- title: "Product Leadership Case Study Exercise" description: "Five days as Head of Product at a company with a flat AI bet, a retention risk, and a board meeting. Each decision shapes the next. A 90 minute exercise." canonical_url: "https://builderscamp.com/guides/challenges/head-of-product-leadership-week" date_published: "2026-09-16" date_modified: "2026-09-16" author: "Andre Albuquerque" publisher: "Builders Camp" guide_class: "challenges" --- # Product leadership case study exercise **TL;DR:** This exercise puts you in charge of product at a company where the flagship platform is healthy but the AI growth bet has stalled, a board meeting is six days out, and your best engineering lead has just told you she is getting recruiter calls. Each day's decision shapes the next, and by Friday you have to write the all-hands message that owns everything you decided. ## The scenario You are 18 months into a Head of Product role at a company whose flagship project management platform is growing steadily at $8 million in annual revenue. A newer AI growth bet, launched eight months ago, has stalled at a fraction of that and is not moving. The board meets in six days, and you know where the pressure points are before anyone else does. Monday morning, your best engineering lead pulls you aside. She is not threatening to leave, she says, she just wants you to know the product direction feels unclear to her, especially the AI bet, and she has been getting recruiter calls. The board does not know this conversation happened. Tuesday, sales closes the company's biggest deal yet, on the condition of a custom feature your team estimated at 14 weeks, with the CEO having already promised a 10 week delivery before checking with you. Wednesday, word of that deadline leaks into a public channel and your engineering lead messages you directly, worried the company is quietly becoming something she did not sign up for. Thursday, at the board meeting, an investor pulls you aside in the hallway and asks, off the record, how team morale is holding up. Friday, one of your PMs asks you point blank whether layoffs are coming, and you know something she does not: her team's project is likely to be shut down after the next review, though that decision has not been made official yet. Every one of these moments has more than one reasonable response, and every response costs you something with somebody. ## What you are asked to do The exercise walks through five days, each with the same three part structure, plus a closing piece: - For Monday through Friday, name your call, name what that call costs you or puts at risk, and then write the literal words you would say in the moment, whether that is to your engineering lead, in a Slack reply to your CEO, in a hallway with a board member, or in a one-on-one with a nervous PM. - Close the week by writing the paragraph you would open Tuesday's all-hands with, under 150 words, without using the words excited, aligned, or journey, and consistent with the actual trade-offs you made across the five days. ## What a strong answer covers The exercise's own objectives are what a strong submission has to hold up against: - Does each day's call name a specific, real cost, rather than describing an option as though it were free? - Do the literal words written for each moment sound like something an actual person would say out loud, rather than a polished internal memo? - Does the sequence stay consistent with itself, so that Wednesday's conversation with the engineering lead reflects what actually happened Monday and Tuesday, rather than resetting as if those days never occurred? - Does the Thursday hallway response to the board member handle an off-the-record question honestly, without either oversharing or delivering an obviously evasive non-answer? - Does the Friday conversation with the PM and the closing all-hands paragraph stay honest about real uncertainty without spreading unconfirmed information or causing unnecessary panic? ## Skills this exercise practises Making a real decision under incomplete information and living with what it costs, instead of waiting for a version of the situation with no downside. Seeing how one day's choice changes the shape of the next day's problem. Translating an internal decision into the literal words you would actually say to the person in front of you. Writing honestly to a wider audience without either destabilizing the team or hiding a real trade-off you already made. These map onto the bootcamp's own curriculum on stakeholder management and influence, and building and leading product teams. If you want the earlier-career version of diagnosing what is broken on a team before you have to lead through it, the [team dysfunction diagnosis exercise](https://builderscamp.com/guides/challenges/beyond-agile-team-dysfunction-diagnosis) from Beyond Agile is good preparation, and the [fixing broken OKRs exercise](https://builderscamp.com/guides/challenges/how-to-design-okrs-fixing-broken-okrs) from How to Design OKRs covers a comparable resource conflict between two teams. For the step-up context behind this kind of role, see [how to get promoted to senior product manager](https://builderscamp.com/guides/path/how-to-get-promoted-to-senior-pm), and for how the responsibilities in this exercise differ from an individual contributor PM's, [product owner vs product manager](https://builderscamp.com/guides/path/product-owner-vs-product-manager). ## Which bootcamp this comes from This exercise is the practical challenge from [Head of Product](https://builderscamp.com/bootcamps/head-of-product), a two week bootcamp on Builders Camp with four live sessions covering product vision, strategy and portfolio thinking, stakeholder management, and building and leading product teams. Completing the practical challenge counts toward the bootcamp's completion requirement and its certificate, alongside the certification quiz. Builders Camp runs this bootcamp both live and self-paced, included with the Builders Camp Membership alongside every other bootcamp, track, and masterclass. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the format of this Head of Product exercise? Five days, Monday through Friday, at a fictional company where the flagship product is healthy but a growth bet has stalled. Each day brings one leadership decision, and each decision changes the situation you face the next day, ending with an all-hands message you have to write. ### Is there a correct sequence of decisions to make across the week? No single correct sequence exists. The exercise is explicit that every option has a real cost, and it scores whether you name that cost honestly and stay consistent with your own earlier calls, not which specific option you pick each day. ### Why does every step ask for the exact words you would say, not just your reasoning? Because a leadership decision that only exists as internal reasoning has not actually been made yet. Writing the literal Slack reply or the literal thing you would say to someone in the hallway is what forces the decision to become real and specific rather than staying comfortably abstract. ### What is the hardest day in this exercise? Most people find Thursday the hardest, when a board member asks an off-the-record question about team morale in a hallway, with the CEO visible across the room and no way to know who already talked. ### How long does the exercise take? About 90 minutes, rated advanced difficulty, inside a two week bootcamp with four live sessions. ### Does completing it count toward a certificate? Yes. Finishing the practical challenge counts toward completing the Head of Product bootcamp on Builders Camp, alongside the certification quiz, and the bootcamp issues a certificate on completion. ## Sources - [Builders Camp: Head of Product bootcamp page](https://builderscamp.com/bootcamps/head-of-product) ## How this guide was made Researched from Builders Camp's bootcamp, track and masterclass material and the sources listed on this page, drafted with AI, and fact-checked against every source cited.