The late-morning slide

A root cause analysis question from a product manager interview, set at PayDhara, a fictional payments / upi company.

The question

Skills this case tests

A starting metric tree

Success rate = successful attempts ÷ all payment attempts

How to approach this case

Start with the definition: is success measured per attempt or per payment, and how are retries counted? That decides whether the 3.7-point fall is all lost payments or partly a counting effect. Confirm the numbers match settlement data. Then segment by payment type, by the payer's and receiver's banks, by time of day and by failure code, since a technical problem and a user mistake look very different in the codes. UPI is an ecosystem, so separate what is happening only to PayDhara from what is happening to everyone, and check whether a release, a campaign or a change in user mix lines up with the start date. A strong close splits mitigation you control today from fixes that need partners, and reports the metric so it won't mislead next time.

The full method for root cause analysis questions · A worked example answer

After the mock interview you get scores on five skills, what to fix with quotes from your answers, and the ideal path for this case.