Indian metros are swelling in population every year. The traffic conditions are worsening due to a large number of personal vehicles despite the same road infrastructure over the last 10 years. For office goers, the commute effort for reaching the workplace takes almost 2 hours for even just 10-12 km. The city corporations are building new roads/bridges and revamping the road infrastructure in the last five years. However, there is already an inordinate number of vehicles in these metros than what will be handled with the future infrastructure.

Your company Zippy Rides has been hired for IT services by your city's Traffic Department for an initiative to promote a carpooling platform crowdsourced by citizens to share their personal vehicles with others needing commute services. Initial ideas shared by civic experts are along the lines of a) Improved Usage of Public Transport and b) Encourage Personal Car Pooling.

As the Product Manager, you are leading the software development effort for building a car rideshare application to be hosted as a mobile app for citizens, supported by a web-based portal for service/support.

Assignment Evaluation

1. PROD ORG DESIGN

What is the typical size and composition of the overall product organization you would estimate initially? Which key groups/teams will you depict the organization into, and what skillset and mindset considerations will you consider while hiring/forming the teams?

2. PROD MARKET FIT

What are the primary levers that you would look for as you design the product-market fit? Discuss your ideas, assumptions and plans on the emerging high-level requirements in how will they address these levers as you carry out the product discovery?

3. PROB-SOLUTION MAPPING

Outline a clear Vision Statement and the Problem Statement that define this product development effort. Discuss the key solution components in the Positioning Statement format, as it applies to the Car Rideshare app platform.

4. REQUIREMENTS DESIGN

Discuss at least three key business requirements and at least three key technology requirements from your discovery discussions, and map these 'high-level' requirements to the Charter and Roadmap elements Depict/narrate them in a suitable format that is easy to prioritize.

5. STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT

What key stakeholders you will identify in the overall product organization and what are the primary responsibilities in their engagement? Depict or neatly bullet the key considerations in building an alignment between the stakeholders.