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Product & OperationsSimulated project
Operations Associate portfolio brief
A simulated product & operations exercise for Operations Associate. Treat it as realistic practice, not real client or protocol work.
7 deliverables6 tools referenced3 linked interview questions
Objective
Run one small programme end to end
Expected deliverables
Programme planOperating dashboardSOPVendor trackerBudget or resource sheetRisk registerRetrospective
Recommended workflow
- Run one small programme end to end
- Create an owner, timeline, budget, and risk system
- Publish a retrospective showing what should change next time
- Review the result against the rubric, then package it as a case study.
Constraints and safety
- Use only public sources or clearly simulated data.
- Never include seed phrases, private keys, or wallet secrets.
- Redact private user, company, security, legal, or compensation information.
- State every assumption you make.
Tools in practice
- Notion
- Draft, review, and maintain programme plan and operating dashboard, with owners, source links, and change history.
- Airtable
- Maintain the operating record behind programme plan and operating dashboard, including owners, dates, exceptions, and unresolved dependencies.
- Google Sheets
- Maintain the operating record behind programme plan and operating dashboard, including owners, dates, exceptions, and unresolved dependencies.
- Linear or Asana
- Track decisions, dependencies, bugs, and owners connected to programme plan and operating dashboard; the ticket is a coordination record, not the work itself.
- CRM
- Maintain the operating record behind programme plan and operating dashboard, including owners, dates, exceptions, and unresolved dependencies.
- finance and vendor tools
- Track invoices, contracts, payment status, renewal dates, and approval ownership without mixing operational records with accounting judgment.
What a strong submission shows
- A programme operations plan
- A dashboard with defined metrics
- A process redesign
- An issue and escalation log
Weak submission patterns
- Generic project plans with no decision rights
- Busy dashboards with no owner
- Claims of efficiency without a before-and-after workflow
Review rubric
- Accuracy of claims and sources
- Relevance to the target role
- Decision quality and trade-offs
- Completeness of the deliverable
- Clarity of communication
- Honest limitations and next steps
Present it as a case study
- Explain the problem, sources, decisions, ownership, constraints, output, review, and what you would change.
- Show the final artifact before the process notes.
- State what you owned and what belonged to other people.
- Label the work as simulated, and keep any real contribution clearly separate.
Interview questions this project helps you answer
How do you decide whether to fix a process or handle an exception manually?
Describe how you would run a regional event or grant programme across several owners
What makes an operations metric useful rather than decorative?