CTO Digital Product Development 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A CTO is evaluating build vs. buy vs. partner decisions for a new product capability. Which factor most strongly favors building in-house?
- The capability is a commodity available from multiple vendors
- The capability is a core differentiator that provides competitive advantage (Correct answer)
- The team lacks domain expertise in that area
- Time-to-market pressure is extreme
Correct answer: The capability is a core differentiator that provides competitive advantage
Core differentiating capabilities that provide competitive moat are best built in-house; commodity functions are better bought or partnered.
Question 2: In product-led growth (PLG), what is the primary driver of acquisition and expansion?
- A large enterprise sales team
- The product itself delivering value that prompts users to invite others or upgrade (Correct answer)
- Heavy digital advertising investment
- Partnership integrations with complementary tools
Correct answer: The product itself delivering value that prompts users to invite others or upgrade
PLG uses the product experience—viral loops, freemium tiers, and self-serve onboarding—as the primary engine for growth rather than sales-led motions.
Question 3: A team uses story points for effort estimation. A CTO notices velocity fluctuates wildly between sprints. What is the MOST likely root cause?
- The team is working too many hours
- Story points are being estimated inconsistently or include unaccounted-for interruptions (Correct answer)
- The product backlog is too large
- The sprint length is inappropriate
Correct answer: Story points are being estimated inconsistently or include unaccounted-for interruptions
Inconsistent story point calibration and unplanned work (bugs, incidents, meetings) are the most common causes of volatile sprint velocity.
Question 4: What is the primary purpose of a 'design sprint' in digital product development?
- To accelerate UI polish before a major release
- To rapidly prototype and test a critical business assumption in five days (Correct answer)
- To replace the product discovery phase permanently
- To train junior designers on user research techniques
Correct answer: To rapidly prototype and test a critical business assumption in five days
The Google Ventures Design Sprint compresses months of uncertainty into a structured five-day process of problem definition, sketching, deciding, prototyping, and user testing.
Question 5: Which technique allows developers to deploy code to production while hiding an incomplete feature from users until it is ready?
- A/B testing
- Feature flags (feature toggles) (Correct answer)
- Shadow deployment
- Rolling restart
Correct answer: Feature flags (feature toggles)
Feature flags decouple deployment from release, enabling code to be in production but conditionally shown only to specified users or when enabled.
Question 6: A CTO wants to measure whether users are getting 'sticky' with a new mobile app. Which metric best captures retention?
- Number of app store downloads
- Day-30 retention rate (Correct answer)
- Total sessions on launch day
- Average screen resolution of users
Correct answer: Day-30 retention rate
Day-30 retention measures the percentage of users who return 30 days after first use, capturing whether the product creates lasting habit.
Question 7: In the context of platform product strategy, what is a 'two-sided network effect'?
- A product that supports both iOS and Android platforms
- A marketplace where value grows as both producers and consumers increase on each side (Correct answer)
- A codebase with a front-end and back-end layer
- A product with both free and paid tiers
Correct answer: A marketplace where value grows as both producers and consumers increase on each side
Two-sided network effects occur in platforms like Uber or Airbnb where adding more suppliers attracts more consumers and vice versa, creating compounding value.
CTO Digital Product Development 3
A CTO is evaluating build vs. buy vs. partner decisions for a new product capability.
Which factor most strongly favors building in-house?