Interview Questions

Question: Why are you looking at moving on from your current role?

Answer: Although this is quite a direct question it’s a great opportunity to set the scene and tone of the interview. You will likely want to convey that you’re looking for a new challenge and/or a step up in your career. Or perhaps you’ve been attracted to the company because of the awards they’ve won and their reputation in the industry and you want to be part of it.

Conversely, you may be looking for a new role because of redundancy, if this is the case then I appreciate candidates being honest about that. It doesn’t need to be the main focus of the answer but can be helpful for context.

Question: Why do you think [this company] and this role is the one for you?

Answer: You should make reference to something they do that is specific to them as a company. For example

• I like the innovative ways that you’ve invested in technology solutions (e.g. Virtual Queuing) to help combat the challenges of the lockdown and keep customers safe.
• I’ve reviewed some of your employees profiles on LinkedIn and it looks like people stay with the company a significant amount of time and progress with their careers during that time.

Question: Tell me about a time when you had to manage a difficult client when delivering a project?

Question (alternate): What is the most difficult client relationship or escalation you have managed and how was it successfully resolved?

Answer: Anyone who has ever worked agency side will likely be familiar with this scenario! When answering try and be specific about how the client was ‘difficult’ and the steps you took to mitigate the problem. For example, the client was difficult because they dictated the speed of the project yet didn’t want to take ownership of the budget implications of this.

This was managed by running a joint burndown review session (at the midpoint in the project) where we sat down together and mapped out the remaining features to be developed, against our budget used to date. This helped make it clear how the lack of urgency on their part was restricting what could be delivered.

Answer: The client PO was a very difficult character, and was often obstructive to work with which caused demotivation in the team. He believed he could develop and often said things were ‘easy’ as he could do them locally in code.

Question: How do you deal with conflict of opinions on a project with a client or colleague?

Answer: Conflict of opinions happen frequently (even hourly on some projects!) and they are a natural part of delivering successfully. Without them we would be unlikely to push ourselves to the best solution. What is important is that everybody aligns to certain boundaries when expressing their opinion. Creating a team charter at the beginning of a project will let everybody know what the ground rules are. When we were working on a project for a certification body we created a Team Charter that everyone agreed to.

Question: Could you tell me about a time that you took the lead on a difficult project?

Answer: I was drafted into a content delivery project and within a few weeks was leading the comms around the delivery.

Question: Tell me about a time when you have had to deal with multiple conflicting priorities?

Answer: On a project for a banking organisation – this was resolved by giving ownership / delegating to other individuals to complete the work.

Tell us about a time when you made an impact or overcame a challenge?

Wrote a CMS guidance and curriculum.

Question: What size of budgets and portfolio have you managed previously – both in terms of revenue size and number of client accounts?

Answer:

Question: What is the largest project that you have worked on? What challenges did it present and how did you overcome them?

Answer:

Question: Why do web projects typically overrun? And how can this be mitigated or overcome?

Answer: RAID Log & Project Health Check.

Question: Can you describe your experience managing dependencies between teams, and thrid parties

Answer: You could mention scrum of scrums. Third parties where possible should be be brought into the sprint team to aid communication.

Question: What does good delivery leadership look like and why is it important?

Answer: Good delivery leadership is about a variety of different things, but the most important should be helping the team believe in the shared vision of the project. Contributing to that shared vision is the empowerment of individuals to work in a manner in which they are most effective and a clear and understood methodology of delivery.

Question: Can you tell me about a digital product (website, app, or other) that you’ve used recently that you consider to be a good product?

Answer: CityMapper

Question: What do you do to get the best out of your team when delivering a project?

Question (alternate): How do you motivate your direct reports and how comfortable are you dealing with team members who are struggling or poor performers?

Answer:

Question: With a new team how do you foster team culture and communication

Answer: A typical answer should be multi faceted to include all the different techniques that can be employed.

Team communication can be fostered by empowering all voices in the room to be heard. Especially those who are more junior.

Question: What value do you think you can bring to a team environment?

Answer:

Question: How do you deal with conflict within a team remotely?

Answer: Working remotely is something that we have all had to learn to adapt to in 2020, and while many of the challenges are the same as they would be in person, dealing with them remotely can add another layer of complexity, and it is worthwhile prefacing your answer with that. Once you’ve done that you can revert back to the artefacts you use in your chosen methodology. Perhaps this is via the retro form in a sprint cycle or via a project health check on a governance layer.

Question: What do you consider to be a healthy relationship between a Product Manager, Delivery Lead (Project Manager) and tech lead. How should the three look to work together?

Answer: Should employ the three amigos technique, to consider the other perspectives; Business, Development and Testing. The purpose of the three amigos technique is to have necessary communication while also shielding the team from having to spend time on every little detail.

Question: What information do you feel is essential to give to your organisation at the beginning, during and end of a project?

Answer:

Question: How have you improved project management processes at your current agency?

Answer: I have created a Project Managers/Delivery specific meeting where challenges & issues are discussed and fed back into senior management. We recently implemented a specific process for when we work in partnership with other agencies on web projects, where the time constraints of the PM were too great so we needed to add a back-up PM.

Question: What different methodologies have you used to prioritise work?

There are a number of techniques to prioritise work depending on the stage you are at with the project. If an MVP needs to be defined from a list of features, each proposed feature can be scored against a list of key business drivers (e.g., reputation etc.) This is an exercise we did with a banking client to help them establish what was part of their MVP.

A tried and tested method is MoSCoW prioritisation method, where all features are rated and then ‘Should have’ or ‘Could have’ are given a lower priority on the backlog. This method works well alongside User Journey Mapping, where we can identify the absolute key parts of the journey vs. those that enhance it but are not critical.

Cost of Delay and Weighted Shortest Job First could also be employed to make tactical solutions. For example, we worked with a client where they did not have a process for booking lessons outside of office hours and all the time this facility wasn’t available bookings could have been lost.

Alternatively a lean approach of value stream mapping where all of the steps associated with a feature are mapped and then those that don’t add value are removed.

For a more high-level approach the value vs. complexity model could be employed to help decide what initiatives have value. We have used this technique with a certification awarding body to help them prioritise the effort they need for a website revamp.

RICE Mehtodology.

Where and when have you used lean practices

My client was a franchise model to find the nearest swimming lessons, the customer needed to find a location but didn;t necessarily need a map to do that. The waste (the map) was removed from the feature.

Question: Give an example of when you have worked with a team to increase their cadence?

Answer: This is really about unblocking paths, both short term and long term. Worked with a longstanding client (building materials) to improve the CI/CD pipeline. Removing those blockers helped increase cadence. Also short term blockers like documentation for new developers coming on the project, right access. Remove distractions such as client asking lots of questions on slack.

What is your approach to creating product roadmaps?

Product vision and company goals > develop product themes > customer insight (focus groups) to Epics).

About you

Product Owner Questions

How does Product Owner maximize the value of the Development Team’s work? A large part of the Product Owner role is to establish the mission and vision for their teams work efforts. The Product owner can increase the value the team delivers through different strategies, which are: Continuous interaction contributes to maximum value being delivered Domain Training, investing time in teaching the development team about the domain, helping them understand the business and how it works Vision, taking out time explain the vision for the product and the organization Value Delivery, making the team understand the value being delivered at the story level. Doing all the above-listed things not only encourages the team and helps them own the product but it also helps the overall business. How will you know if you are successful as a product owner or not? Generally, the success of the product owner depends on how much invested the person in this role and understands the true meaning of being a product owner. Certain parameters that would help you evaluate yourself are: Strength of Product Backlog Constant delivery of Value Attaining of Release Goals Understanding of Product Vision by team members Defining a successful Product Roadmap When the customer is satisfied and pleased But, in no way, these are the only parameters. There can be many parameters to access the success of this role.

Good questions candidates can ask