Brand manager, licensing at Maple and Moss Foods
About 70 minutes. Included in Plus.
A licensing partner wants its co-branded cereal bar pack approved before a printer's slot. The logo is too small, the partner's logo too big, the bar is short of fibre for its high fibre claim and short of granola for its made with claim. Review it, decide, and hold the claims when the launch date is used as pressure.
Skills: Review artwork against brand rules and a licence; Separate must fix items from advice; Check claims against evidence and a claims register; Give a partner clear, usable feedback under time pressure; Hold brand and legal standards against commercial pressure
Release captain (senior software engineer) at Orla Books
About 80 minutes. Included in Plus.
Release 5.4 must get a new bank feed connector live before an aggregator switches off its old interface on 31 October, but Android crashes, a slow migration and a quarantined test stand in the way. Judge readiness, recommend a plan and roll it out without over-promising.
Skills: Judge release readiness against written criteria and evidence; Separate what a dashboard shows from what the policy counts; Recommend a release plan that protects a hard external deadline; Ask for only the exceptions the policy allows, with reasons; Plan a staged rollout and the communications that depend on it
Legal operations assistant at Kittering Homes
About 60 minutes. Included in Plus.
A supplier has sent back your company's contract with fifteen changes and the sales team wants it signed by Friday week. Sort the changes against the playbook, escalate what you cannot agree, and answer the supplier without giving away more than you may.
Skills: Review contract changes against a playbook; Spot a change of meaning hidden in a definition; Escalate with a clear risk and recommendation; Negotiate in writing within your authority
UX research assistant at Brightside Pharmacy
About 65 minutes. Included in Plus.
Eight people tested a new prescription reorder flow and most said they loved it. Work out what actually happened, rate each problem by the team's rules, report it honestly and hold the line when the team wants a better number or to drop an awkward finding.
Skills: Count usability results by eligibility and observation rules; Rate problem severity from impact and frequency; Separate observations from interpretations in a report; Defend a finding with evidence when a team pushes back
Management consultant at Larkspur Partners
About 85 minutes. Included in Plus.
A client's finance director has told his board that closing a depot will save 3.04 million pounds a year. Rebuild the savings from the client's own data, tell the steering committee the true number in a deck, and correct it again when a depot manager's figure turns out to be wrong.
Skills: Separate costs that end from costs that move; Build a savings and payback model from client data; Present an unwelcome number answer first; Handle a client sponsor's expectations with evidence; Revise analysis openly when data changes
IT service desk analyst at Pellworth Housing
About 50 minutes. Included in Plus.
Seven requests are waiting on a Monday morning. Score and order the queue, report a possible account takeover with the facts security needs, and handle a new starter's access request without copying another person's access.
Skills: Score and order a service desk queue by impact and urgency; Refuse an account change that fails the identity check; Report a suspected account compromise with the facts security needs; Request access by least privilege through the data owner
Learning and development coordinator at Corran Foods
About 70 minutes. Included in Plus.
Fourteen training requests and a budget that covers about half. Allocate it by the policy, check the compliance dates yourself, say no to a director's favourite course with a real alternative, and re-plan when Finance cuts the budget.
Skills: Allocate a budget by a published order of priority; Check requests against records before funding; Say no to a senior manager with a real alternative; Re-plan quickly when the budget changes