What is the plan baseline?
These are the final version of all plans before the initiation of a project. It includes time schedule, quality plan, communication plan, and everything else. This acts as the reference to measure the project performance.
How in the project time schedule represented most often?
Activity scheduling network diagram is the most common form of representation for the project time schedule. This is often accompanied by milestone chart, and bar charts.
If the project is not adhering to schedule, how do you get it back on track?
Knowing that a project is not keeping to its schedule is only as important as being able to get the project back on track. Once a project manager is aware of the discrepancy between the actual progress and the planned progress, what steps do they take to get the project back on time without jeopardizing the enterprise? Any project manager worth hiring will be able to answer this with practical specifics. On these types of questions, it’s best to answer with the STAR method.
How do you improve your knowledge regarding project management?
Companies want their employees to be fully invested in the jobs that they are applying for. There are many software tools coming up and many processes being invented regularly in the project management landscape. Hence, project managers need to continually upgrade their skills to be relevant. Basically, tell your interviewer about what you are doing to grow in your field. It could be certification courses you are taking or workshops/courses you are attending. Also, you can talk about your interactions with project managers and people in the field to stay up-to-date with the latest.
Which project management methodology do you prefer following in your projects?
Not a single methodology can be applied to all types of projects. The selection of project management methodology must be based on the following criteria:
- Strategic goals and core values of your organization
- Key business drivers of your project
- Constraints (if any) in the project
- Stakeholders involved in the project
- Risks that might occur
- Level of complexity of the project
- Estimated size and cost of the project
What to you understand by a project charter?
This is a document where it all begins. Project authorization is done on this document and a project would be initiated with the top level requirements listed in this document. Initial requirements as seen by stakeholders and the outcomes of the project also are listed in it.
What are the types of risks you may encounter in a project?
These could be categorized as technical, external, internal/organizational, etc. Depending on the type of projects other categories may have to be considered.
How should a project manager communicate a failure to his team?
A good project manager is optimistic. The way you handle failure reflects the true leader in you. If your team worked on a project and it ultimately failed, they are bound to be unhappy. But as a manager, it is your duty to ensure that failures don’t affect the morale of the team. You can tell the interviewer that instead of blaming a particular person or a group, you make it a collective responsibility. Also, mention that you communicate to the team members to learn from the mistakes they made in this project and not repeat them in the future.
What was the biggest challenge that you faced while working on a project?
‘I didn’t have the right team’. ‘I don’t deal well with changes’. ‘My boss wasn’t very supportive’. These would be bad answers to give your future employer. As a project manager, you are expected to manage people and handle risks. So, don’t tell your interviewer that you fall short in those two areas. Give an example of a situation in which the challenge was due to the external factors. It can be about when the project was abruptly shelved or when the funding for it has been stopped. Don’t forget to mention how you handled the situation and what you learned from it.
What do you know about the critical path of a project? What steps will you take if you find that one of your tasks is going to take more time than expected?
To put simply, the critical path of a project is all the key tasks that are required to complete a project. There are ways to shorten task time. E.g. adding an extra person to the project on the contract or from a different team to complete the particular tasks.