A product teardown is a way to reverse engineer a product and think about all its components and purposes. It is an excellent way to develop and hone product sense. It is particularly helpful for people new to the craft of product management to think critically about products.

Think; Don’t Memorize

Many new to the craft try to memorize what someone more senior has said about a product instead of trying to think critically for themselves. They want to know what someone thinks to copy it, but to build product sense PMs must learn to have their own opinions. I think it is helpful for all PMs to periodically conduct a product teardown, where no answer is wrong. Speculate based on what you can learn by walking through the product experience.

The Fundamentals

A product teardown is defined as the act of disassembling a product, such that it helps to identify its component parts and system functionality. It started in the world of hardware, but most people reading this will be looking to run a teardown exercise for software. It is often conducted as a group exercise to learn more about a competitor or just to hone product sense skills.

For Interview Prep

If you are reading this, you are either looking to excel at your current role or prepare for interviews. When preparing for interviews, you should run a quick product teardown for any company you are interviewing at that you really care about. When trying to learn how to answer product design prompts, it can be helpful to run a few teardowns to learn how products are designed before you try answering design prompts on your own.

I have developed the following template for pre-work for those unfamiliar with or struggling with product design case questions.

Directions

1. Find a product

2. Walk through the user experience

3. Take screen grabs of anything that sticks out as an amazing or awkward user experience.

4. Answer the questions below.

NOTE: This type of product teardown is focused on learning a product for interviews or for a quick product sense refresh; others might advocate a slightly different list or focus if using it in a professional setting to compare competitors.

11 Product Teardown Questions 

1. What is the company's mission?

2. What is the product?

3. Who is the customer?

4. What is the problem the product is solving?

5. What is the “Aha” moment for the user?

6. What are three key metrics? Which is north star?

7. What is the onboarding experience like?

8. Generally speaking, what makes it well or poorly designed from an aesthetics standpoint?

9. Would you recommend it to a friend? Why?

10. How would you answer the favorite or least favorite product question for this product?

11. What improvement would you advocate for and why?

Use this Google Doc Template to help you get started: 10 Product Teardown Questions.