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In the previous article, we reviewed five effective leadership behavior questions. These questions were designed to assess delivery based leadership behaviors, and to help foster a commitment to customer satisfaction and a drive for overall delivery. This article provides a set of technical project management questions that assess the candidate’s knowledge of project management tools and techniques.
Technical Competencies
Question 1: What steps do you follow to build a project schedule? How do you baseline a project schedule in MS-project?
These questions assess the project manager’s schedule development skills. The ideal candidate will walk through the steps to develop a project schedule including activity definition, sequencing, resource estimation, duration estimation and resource leveling. If the project manager can’t tell you how or when to baseline a project schedule using Microsoft Project or another scheduling tool, then it is an early indicator the candidate lack’s an important technical skill to execute the process.
Question 2: What techniques do you use to monitor and control project work?
This question is used to assess how the project manager monitors the project, addresses schedule and cost variances, and controls the project through delivery. I’m hoping to hear the project manager schedules weekly project status meetings where project tasks are tracked against baseline dates and late tasks are reported. The interviewer should probe about the project management methodology, reporting techniques and any type of project metrics used to monitor and control the project. The candidate doesn’t have to respond with the formulas for earned value management, but if they do, you know you’ve found someone who understands schedule variance and its impact on project delivery.
I have a personal bias to the importance of tracking and updating the project schedule. The project schedule is the key document that I use throughout all my programs and projects to ensure timely delivery. Project teams run the risk of missing key dates if they don’t actively monitor and control schedule variance. If you’re going to manage it, you need to measure it. Managing a project schedule provides the metrics to effectively manage progress. It is an administrative task, but it ensures the work will be tracked.
Question 3: Provide an example of how you’ve gathered business requirements for a project.
In IT, effective project managers understand requirements definition and requirements management. Poorly defined requirements result in poorly designed applications. If requirements are not managed appropriately, the project’s scope can grow out of control. Effective project managers have had past roles as business or systems analysts and can leverage those experiences to help gather business requirements.
Effective project managers can demonstrate usage of tools such as process flow diagrams, use case models, sequence diagrams and activity sequence diagrams to gather business requirements. A fully staffed IT project will have business and systems analysts available. However, effective project managers are knowledgeable in these techniques and tools and can apply them as necessary.
Question 4: Describe the SDLC methodologies you have applied to your projects. How do the PM processes support the methodology?
This question assesses the project manager’s knowledge of system development lifecycle methodologies and demonstrates knowledge of both adaptive and predictive lifecycles. Adaptive methodologies use iterative processes often found in the Rational Unified Process, agile development or extreme programming. Predictive lifecycles use waterfall centric models. Effective project managers know when to apply the various methodologies as well as align it to the supporting project management process. The project management question probes if the candidate understands that the SDLC methodology is the tool to deliver the project, while the standard lifecycle phases of Initiate, Plan, Execute, Control and Close support the chosen methodology.
Question 5: Describe the processes and tools you have used for software quality management.
This question focuses on the software quality management aspects within an IT project. The project manager may have a software test lead or test manager responsible assigned to the project. It is important for the project manager to understand the software testing process and the tools used to support software testing.
Project managers don’t need to be an expert in requirements traceability, unit, system, performance or user acceptance testing, but they should be knowledgeable in the process and its importance to delivering a quality product. At a minimum, project managers should understand requirement traceability from requirements definition through user acceptance testing. Without the traceability, the project runs the risk of missing test cases for key requirements.
If project managers demonstrate experience using industry tools like MercuryQualityCenter (formerly Test Director) or IBM’s Rational ClearQuest, it provides more validation of their technical software quality management competency. Understanding the tools available to support quality management is a useful skill set in any IT development role.
Question 6: Describe how you manage project issues and project risks.
Just like schedule management, the mechanics of issue tracking and issue resolution is an important success factor in project delivery. Project issues and risks need to be maintained in a project log and reviewed for action and resolution.
Candidates may respond that issues and risks are tracked as part of the project; however, the interviewer should probe for evidence of a review process. Effective project managers review the issue log each week with the project team and report the top issues with each status report. If the issue is logged and reviewed, project teams will not lose sight of the challenges requiring resolution.
Project managers should also describe how they identify risks, quantify the impacts, assess the probability and identify risk response plans. Risk identification and assessment workshops may be periodically conducted or at least reviewed as part of project status. Risk management is easy to overlook as teams are challenged with meeting schedule dates, creating deliverables and resolving project issues. Effective project managers will log the issues and risks, track their progress and continue to work the log. It is an administrative task that still needs to be performed to monitor and control the project.
This article and the previous one provided several useful questions to help guide interviewers to assess candidates’ leadership and technical project management competencies. The attached Project Manager Interview Guide can be used to record candidate responses and make a hiring decision.
If you are interviewing for a project management position, you may also want to read the article Mind Map Your Interview to help you further prepare for an upcoming interview. I also created a discussion thread in the Gantthead Discussion Board to capture any additional interview questions. I look forward to reading your responses!
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