What is EVM, earned value management?
At every monitoring point the planned value (PV), earned value (EV) and actual cost (AC) are monitored. PMB, performance measurement baseline is the aggregation of all planned values. Variances from baselines are determined and Schedule variance (SV) and cost variance (CV) are calculated. If earned value is equal to the planned value then the project is achieving what it is supposed to. If there is schedule or cost variance is significant, appropriate action needs to be taken to correct the slips. Estimate at completion (EAC) is estimated and compared with budget at completion. In case there is a slip, the cost consequences will be known.
How do you handle any changes to the project?
A project manager’s strength lies in his/her ability to display a high level of adaptability. Nobody wants changes in a project and are not entirely unavoidable. You must approach this question with great wit and convince the interviewer that you are capable, having handled such situations before.
What were the communication challenges on your last project?
As a project manager, you’ll need to communicate with your team for all projects effectively. Communication challenges will arise; nobody expects that this won’t happen. What the interviewer wants to see, however, is how you’ve handled these challenges in the past. It needs to be evident that even with communication issues, you were still able to work with your team effectively. For example, perhaps instead of being able to have face-to-face meetings when necessary, you were able to put together webchat meetings. Think of a time when something like this happened and how you dealt with the communication challenges efficiently to ensure that the project outcome was still a good one.
How do you begin a newly assigned project?
Through this question, the interviewer is essentially trying to check your clarity of thought. He/she wants you to describe the important first steps you need to take to ensure the success of a project. A good manager would try to understand ‘what’ of the project before ‘how’. What it means is you first try to understand what is the objective or purpose of the project before diving into how to achieve the goals of the project. Hence, anything on the above lines would get you some brownie points.
What is Project Scope Management?
It is a set of processes to ensure that a project’s scope is accurately defined and mapped. The process involves a number of steps, which include –
• Planning scope management
• Collecting requirements
• Defining scope
• Creating Work Breakdown Structure
• Validating Scope
• Controlling Scope
How do you manage team members that are not working to their full potential?
Sometimes, no matter how much due diligence you put into assembling a skilled and experienced team for the project, someone underperforms or creates conflicts. While the project is rolling, you don’t have time to stop and tweak your team. Rather, the project manager must deal with the problem and resolve it. This comes up with even the best team, so any capable project manager would know how to nip underperformance in the bud.
How do you deal when you’re overwhelmed or underperforming?
It’s easy to forget that project managers are people, too. They are hired to perform and lead a project to success, but they can suffer the same setbacks as anyone on the team. The difference between a good and great project manager is the ability to monitor oneself and respond proactively to any drop offs in performance.
Explain the Work Breakdown Structure (WBD) and its effect on the work estimates of tasks/activities?
Work breakdown structure defines the work activities that are required for the project completion and the sub-activities of each of those work requirement. It has a hierarchical structure in which concrete/ main activities are segregated into logical sub-activities. There are two approaches:
- Top-down approach
- Bottom-up approach
What is a SOW?
SOW or the statement of work is a detailed description of the outcomes of the project in terms of what products, services or results are expected from the project. Most detailed SOW are usually given by the customer if he is the one requesting the project.
What do you understand of Pareto (80/20) principle/analysis?
This is a statistical analysis method that helps decide priorities between several actions to be taken. The basis is that there are about 20% action which when executed gets you 80% of the results. In QA this is used to identify the 20% of causes that create 80% of the problems.