Deal Desk
A simulation game set in private-credit software. Claude plays the stakeholders and I play the PM. Each round presents a scenario, such as a compliance concern or a customer request, then critiques my choices across five dimensions. Below is a debrief from one of my playthroughs. The company, characters and commercial figures are fictional.
Real debrief. "The Covenant Monitoring Request"
Scenario
Your biggest customer, a $4B direct lending fund, wants automated covenant monitoring. Their head of portfolio management wants a dashboard that auto-flags potential breaches 30 days out, and says if you build it they'll expand from $80K to $200K a year. Your head of product wants scope defined before committing. Eng estimate, 8 to 12 weeks depending on what "automated" means.
What I got right
Led with discovery questions instead of jumping to a commitment. Asked whether compliance certs even arrive on time. Caught that 30-day-advance prediction is structurally impossible given when cert data actually arrives. Gave the customer a concrete next step instead of an open-ended later.
What an experienced PM would catch
Priya, the head of product character, was the one who turned my diagnostic question into the actual tiered-scope product idea, not me. My first pricing answer was vague before recovering when pressed. And I committed to a scope call without first checking feasibility with engineering.
Score
8 out of 10. Rank, senior associate PM. Two more points and the game promotes you to product manager, which it will not do quietly.