108 Project Manager Interview Questions in 2023 [Comprehensive Guide]

Hello, welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Helena, and in this video I'm going to go over the 108 most commonly asked interview questions for project managers. So if you study all of these questions, I think you'll be in top-notch shape for your interviews. As we're going through some of these questions, a lot of them are going to be situational— tell me about a time when blah blah blah. So I really want you to pause the video and think about real experiences that you've had when you're actually managing projects and encountering some of these situations. And if you never encountered some of these situations before, think about what you would do if hypothetically you have encountered these situations. And if you want a full PDF of all of these interview questions, simply click on the link in the description below and you can download the PDF with all of these practice interview questions. And now without further ado, let's jump in. And as I'm going through some of these questions, I'm gonna give you some tips and tricks on how to answer them too. So let's dive in now. All right, now let's dive into the 108 most commonly asked project manager interview questions. Now, this is in no particular order, so question number 1 is not more important than question number 2, for example. So I'm gonna read each question out to you. For each question, I'm gonna try to give you some tips and tricks on how you can approach the question as well. Now let's dive in. Question number 1, how do you deal with team members who are not productive? For this question, you may wanna say something like, you know, you wanna talk to that team member to find out what the problem is and what you can do to support that team member. If the problem's still not fixed, then you may need to escalate that to upper management. Question number 2, how are team members kept up to date on the project's progress? So for this question, you may want to mention any project management tools you have used, whether that's Jira or some sort of Kanban board, and how you have created that and kept that up to date. and given access to all the team members so that they all know what's going on in the project. You could also mention how you hosted daily scrum as well. Question number 3, what type of feedback does the executive management provide? So you can talk about any time you have demoed your working product to the executive management team and what kind of feedback they have given you. Or whenever you have finished the project and presented that to the project sponsor and what kind of feedback they have given you and how you dealt with that feedback, especially negative feedback, right? Question number 4, there are many moving parts in every project. To ensure everyone is on the same page, how do you track progress and communicate status to your team? Again, here you can mention any project management tool that you're using and what kind of communication structures you have in place, whether that is the daily scrum that you do to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is working on, any Kanban boards that you're doing, any sprint boards that you have created, or Excel spreadsheets with Gantt charts. So any kind of project management tool you've built in the past would be sufficient to answer this question. Question number 5, how do you measure the progress of changes made to your project? So with this question, you want to mention something like the changelog that you have on your project, which will store the list of changes that have been approved to be implemented on your project. And on the changelog, maybe you have different columns on the progress of those changes, whether it's still to do, whether it's in progress, how much of the change has been completed, and all of the changes that have been made, right? Question number 6, how often should you revise your project plan? What are the signs that it's time to update the project roadmap? Is there a document outlining the revision frequency for everyone on the team to reference? So with this question, you probably want to look at your project roadmap or project plan about once every quarter, and just to see that the project plan is still in alignment with the overall organization strategy, right? So that you're still on track to helping the organization reach the organization goals, and that the features that you're creating is still beneficial to the customers given the new information, new discoveries you have made about your customers. And if it's not, then you may wanna remove some features and add in new features, prioritize different things, et cetera. And you never throw away old versions of your project plan. You just simply create a new version that people can now reference. Question number 7, what steps may you take to ensure that you and the rest of your project team members have the required technical abilities to complete it? Well, in order to ensure that your team members have the required technical capabilities, you have to first find out what you're building, right? And what skills are required to build the specific product in question. And from there, you can see if your team members have the capabilities, and if not, then you need to hire to ensure that you have all the capabilities in order to complete the project. Question number 8, how do you give tasks to your team members? So with this question, you first need to figure out if you're running an Agile project or a Waterfall project. So in a Waterfall project, your role as a project manager is to be more directive. So you are assigning tasks to different team members, and you do so based on their role, based on their skill set, based on kind of your history with them and what you know their strengths and weaknesses are. But if you're running a project using agile methodologies such as Scrum, then you want your team to self-manage, right? So there is the concept of servant leadership. You're just removing the obstacles and letting different team members shine and for the team members to figure out who is best to do what task. So with this question, you first need to figure out what method— what kind of project methodology is being used, and then you'll be better able to know what your role in terms of assigning tasks to the team members would be. Question number 9, what is the primary document that should be consulted to learn more about your project, the tasks you accomplished, and your schedules and milestones? This would be your project management plan. Question 10, what is the best way to motivate team members who are feeling burnt out or bored? Well, to answer this question, you first need to know why this team member is feeling burnt out or bored, right? If the work is not interesting to them, maybe you're giving them some other tasks that are more interesting to them and that will give them more room to grow. If they're feeling burnt out because they have way too much to do, maybe you want to extend out the schedule so that the team member is not working on death margin, they're always getting burnt out, right? So to properly answer this question, you would have to ask some follow-up questions to figure out why these team members are feeling burnt out and bored first. Question 11, what is the best approach to deal with team members who come to you with their personal difficulties? Now with this question, it's not best to say, well, it's just personal difficulties, it's not work, so it's none of my business. You have to remember that the people you're working with are human beings too, and you have to relate to them on a personal level if you want them to give you their best performance at work, right? So again, with this question, you had to figure out what that personal difficulty is, and then you can better assist that team member. Perhaps, you know, it's taking a few days off of work, or perhaps it's getting them some counseling. So you had to figure out what that particular difficulty is and then do your best to help that team member from there. Question number 12: What are your long-term career aspirations? In what way would this job help you achieve those goals? Well, this one's pretty straightforward. Question number 13: How do the departments within your company communicate and collaborate with each other? So here you have to realize that your project doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens within the organization. It needs to talk to HR, it needs to talk to finance, it needs to talk to IT, etc. So you just have to Explain how you have worked with the external environment of your project, like the other departments within your project, and how that has helped you collaborate and help you reach your project goals. Question number 14, tell me how you would react to a scenario in which there were several ways to complete the same activity and people had strong feelings on each side. So this is a scenario where there was the You can reach the same goal, but there are 2 or 3 different ways to reach that goal, and part of your team wants to go Route A, part of your team wants to go Route B. In this scenario, you as a project manager or the Scrum Master, you don't just want to side with one team automatically. You want to listen to both teams and also for both teams to listen to each other and also play the devil's advocate too. Both solutions. So you want to ask hard questions and for, you know, people who like solution A to really justify their answer, and for people who like solution B to also really justify their answer. And as you ask more and more of these tough questions, I think flaws in one of the solutions would naturally appear, and the better route to take would naturally occur as a result of these discussions. So the important thing here is you're not just forcing a solution onto the team members But you're discussing it, you're talking it out and coming up with the best solution as a team. Question number 15, if you were to find yourself in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar situation, how would you react and lead the team? So think about a time when you were in unfamiliar territory and how you led your team through that. Question number 16, give me an example of your leadership activity where cooperation was essential. So think about a time when you took on a leadership position and that required your team to cooperate with each other and with you as well. Question number 17, can you recall a time when your loyalty was put to the test? If so, what did you do in that situation And why did you act that way? Question number 18: When in today's business world is loyalty to your manager especially important? Question number 19: What about this position interests you? So what the interviewer is trying to get with this question is why do you want this job, right? What they want to know is that you are are not just here for the paycheck. Like, there's something about this project that motivates you, whether it's really liking the industry or really passionate about the company or really liking the product that you're going to be building, right? So what's important here is you don't just say like, I'm just here to, you know, collect a paycheck kind of thing. Question 20, what do you feel makes you qualified for this role? So in other words, why are you the best candidate for this job? So you want to list your top attributes, whether it's your past experiences, your education, etc. Question number 21: What can you take away from your failures? This is a really great question. So what the interviewer is trying to get at is, are you self-reflective? Can you recognize that, you know, you've made mistakes in the past, and how did you correct them in the future? Question number 22, what was your favorite job and why? What did you like and dislike about it? What was your biggest accomplishment in that role, and what was your most frustrating moment while working there? So this would be specific to your situation, so feel free to pause the video and think about how you would answer this question here. Question number 23, tell me about any interesting or exciting projects or courses you've taken that would be beneficial to this position. Now, this would depend on the specific role that you're taking on. If it's a project manager role, you could talk about, you know, for example, PMP courses that you have taken or interesting projects you have managed in the past. Question number 24: What are some things that you don't want your career to entail? Question 25: What is causing you to want to leave your present job? Now it's really important here to not badmouth your current employer, so you could say something like, I want a professional challenge, I want to get to that next step in my career. You don't want to say, I hate my boss, I hate my current job, my colleagues suck, and That kind of thing. Question number 26, describe your ideal work environment. So whether that involves working from home part of the time or going to the office, whatever that may be for you. Question number 27, how would you respond if you learned that someone on your team was in a conflict of interest situation? So if there was someone on your team who was in a conflict of interest situation, you need to first figure out what that conflict of interest is. For example, let's say that, you know, their brother was bidding for a contract that your project just issued, right? So if you found out something like that, you have to escalate it to upper management. For them to know that there is that conflict of interest, and the sponsors or the upper management can decide what to do next. But if you do notice there is a conflict of interest on your project, you do need to report it to the relevant parties. Question number 28: If I contacted your former employee, what would he say about your decision-making skills? Question number 29, tell me about a time when you've worked on a win-win situation. Question 30, tell me about your capacity for communicating using words and writing. How effective do you represent yourself to others? Question 31: Give me an example of a stressful scenario you've been in. How did you do in that situation? Would you do it all over again if given the opportunity? How do you handle stress, tension, and unreasonable demands? So in this question, you want to give an example of when you were in that stressful situation, and what I would mention here is how you broke down that stressful situation into components and then tackled each component until the whole situation has been handled, right? So they're just looking at, you know, how do you break down those big messy scenarios into manageable pieces and actually manage through it? Because sometimes on your projects you are going to run into very stressful situations. Question 32, can you recount a time when you had to make a tough decision? Question 33: Who is best suited to lead projects? And of course you want to say you and why it would be you. Question 34: Who is responsible for the project success? And you know, the answer to this question is everyone on the team is responsible, right? Even though you as a project manager, you're leading the team, but ultimately in order to succeed Everyone is responsible for that. What was the biggest project you've ever managed and what was the budget? What did you do at work yesterday? What does your typical day look like? What would you do if your organization encountered the following technical problem? And then a technical problem would be presented to you and you have to resolve that accordingly. Question 38, what made you successful in your last role? Question 39, how did those contributions impact results? Question 40, what are the most important steps to accomplishing a project successfully? So what you want to do here is actually like break down a project that you managed successfully. Let's say it's to build a doghouse, right? So first is gathering requirements, asking the dog owner like, how big do you want that doghouse to be? What kind of materials do you want to use? You know, how big of a dog are we building this doghouse for? Does it have cushions? What color do you want painted, etc.? Right? So first is like gathering those requirements, and then creating that project plan on how do you build this specific, in this example, doghouse, right? Getting the people the necessary skills to do that and actually executing upon that plan until this final product is completed. So it's basically taking— walking the interviewer through how to manage a project from beginning to end, from gathering requirements to putting together that plan to managing the people and the plan to make sure that the project is completed successfully. Question 41: What are the first steps you'll take to get started on a project? What you would do here is make sure you have a project charter in place, like why are we starting this project, what is the objective that we are trying to accomplish, right? Why do we need to start this project in the first place? So really defining the goals and the KPIs that you want to achieve through completing this project, that would be the the first step that you take. Once you understand why this project has to be started, then you want to start gathering requirements and creating your plan, etc., to actually fulfill the goal of the project. But the first step is always finding out why are we starting this project, like why is this project needed. Question 42, when preparing for your projects, what elements are necessary to account for? So you want to think about the triple constraint here: the scope of your project, the schedule— how much time do you have— and the cost. All right, so those 3 are, you know, the first things you're going to think about. Of course, there's a lot of other elements like quality and risk and resource management, etc., but when you're preparing for a project, you know, by default you need to think about the triple constraint here. Question 43: When it comes to planning for a project, what are some of the items that you consider low priority? This would vary from project to project. On some projects, procurement might be a very low priority item because you may not need external vendors to manage your project. For other projects, it may be a very important item to have good vendors in place, right? So this would vary from project to project, so you have to give a specific example here. Question 44, what separates a project from operations? So a project is a temporary endowment with a clear beginning and end that produces a specific result, right? Whereas operations is daily management. So for example, you know, your project could be that you're creating a new widget, right? So when this new— you come up with the design of the widget, you come up, you know, you go and you talk to the customers and you figure out what customers want, and then you build this widget. And once you have built this widget, you hand it over to operations, and operations would, you know, turn out like 1,000 of these widgets in an assembly line or something so that, you know, all the customers can get one of these widgets. So a project is a temporary endeavor with a clear beginning and the end, whereas operations is the daily grind, daily management within the company to turn out the products that the company is supposed to create. Another example here is cars. So a project could be creating a new model of a BMW or something, right? And then when you create that new model of BMW, then you turn it over to operations, and the operations would mass produce this new model of BMW and sell it to everyone. Question 45, how do you choose the appropriate project methodology? So here you have to understand what the project methodologies are. The 2 main ones are waterfall, where you do things sequentially, and then there's agile, where you do things in sprints, where you don't define all your scope up front, but as you get to know more and more information, then you get a clearer picture of what that project looks like, right? So to choose the right methodology would depend on the complexity of the project requirements. So if the requirements are pretty straightforward and the scope isn't going to change very much, then you want to use the Waterfall methodology. If the requirements are more complex and there's more uncertainty on the project, then you want to use Agile methodology. Question number 46, what inputs will you use to create the project management plan? To create a project management plan, you want to look at your project charter, you want to look at maybe any templates your organization has for how the project management plan is supposed to look like, you want to consult your team because it's not just you creating this plan in the dark by yourself and then presenting it to your team. It's a group effort as well. How do you calculate the amount of work for your project? Is there a method for estimating in place? For this question, it will vary from organization to organization because there's different ways to estimate for projects, and it would depend on the rules that the PMO for your project has in place. So you may want to talk about how you have been able to estimate time or cost for a project that you have done in the past. You could do so by looking at historical similar projects, or you could look at benchmarks from industry averages, or from doing some sort of rough math calculation. For example, if it costed $1,000 to lay down 100 meters of wires and we have 10,000 meters, how much that would cost, right? So you can just just use simple arithmetic to kind of find out that sort of estimation. Question 48, what steps do you take in order to arrive at the project schedule? So here you would want to say that, you know, you first defined what you need to do on the project, then you listed out the task, and then you sequence the task in the right order so that you also take dependencies into consideration Like for example, task B cannot start until task A is finished. So once you have identified all the tasks and sequenced them in the right order, then you estimate the duration of each of those tasks that needs to be completed to complete the project, and then you schedule everything in something like a Gantt chart or whatever you want to use to arrive at the project schedule. Question 49. 9, how do you identify and document the risk associated with your project? So you want to document all of the risks associated with your project in your risk register. So the risk register would contain a list of all of the identified risks along with risk triggers and their severity and the probability of this risk to occur. Just as a refresher, a risk is a Uncertain event that may or may not happen in the future. So if it's a negative risk, it could derail your project, and you definitely want to manage this risk to kind of make sure that the risks with high probability and high impact on your project don't actually occur. If they do occur, you do have a fallback plan to deal with them. What are the triple constraints? And these are Scope, schedule, and cost. Question 51, what are the 5 lifecycle stages of a project? The 5 lifecycle stages are initiation, so this is when you're just beginning the project, you're initiating the project. Then the second stage is planning, then executing. The fourth stage is monitoring and controlling, and the last stage is closing. So you initiate, then You plan, you execute the project, you monitor and control, and finally close the project. What experiences or skills are necessary to excel as a project manager? What is your background in project management? What are the 5 most common indicators that your project will not succeed? Ooh, this is a good question here. So I really wanted you to pause and think about this. It's common for interviewers to sometimes ask you about your failures or your projects that didn't succeed. So be prepared to talk about them, but also spin it around to show that you learned from that, how you would do things differently, and how this is actually like ended, you know, Even though things didn't go the way that you thought it would go, but there were still blessings in disguise, so to speak. Question 55, can you describe a project that you were a part of and what was your role in it? Question 56, what are the first steps you take when you're assigned a new project? So if you were assigned a new project, you first want to figure out what stage of this project it is in. Is it just starting? Or is it already in execution, right? So you want to figure out why is the organization taking on this project, who is on this project, what kind of documentation have already been made, are there any working products already on this project. So you kind of like just want to take an inventory, read any documentation there is, talk to the team, figure out what everyone's role is, figure out what state of the project is and what still needs to be done. Question 57, less than a month into your new assignment as a project manager, you realize that the company sponsoring the project is no longer interested. What now? Well, you first want to figure out what's going to happen to your project. Do they want to end the project, or do they want to reduce the funding? So first you want clear direction on what's going to happen to this project. Maybe it's merging it with another initiative, maybe it's ending it. So once you have that clear direction, direction on what's going to happen to your project, then you can proceed. If they do decide that they do want to cancel this project, make sure you say that the project doesn't just end. You still have to go through the closing processes. You want to document your lessons learned. You want to make sure all the vendors are paid. You want to make sure that the team members are given notice that the project is ending and they'll be reassigned to new projects or where they need to find other job opportunities to pursue, etc. Question 58: After the first month, your 3-month project appears to be exceeding the anticipated budget. What measures will you take to manage any increases in expenditures? So here you have a situation where you're going over budget, so You have to take a look at what your future expenses would be, see if there's any way that you can cut back, make sure you manage the amount spent on all of the team members, see if there are cheaper resources that you can possibly get. With this question, you have to ask some follow-up questions. What does this project look like? What am I managing? What are the remaining tasks? that are still in place, right? And then see if there are any ways to reduce the cost from there and put in tighter budget controls. And another good question to ask here is like, why did the project exceed the anticipated budget? What happened there? Are there any lessons learned that we can take into the future? Question 59, can you think of a project in which you were successful, and what exactly did you contribute to that success? Well, always good to talk about your successes, right? So just talk about a project that went really well and what you did on it. Question 60. You've been assigned as the project manager and the members of your team have already been selected. What actions will you take to improve the efficiency of your project team? So you get on a project, right? You don't get to choose your team. And you have to manage these people to complete the project objectives. So you can talk about different team building activities you can do, maybe having one-on-one, figuring out what each team member hopes to accomplish, you know, figuring out what their personalities would be, strengths and weaknesses. And then kind of from there, you'll be better able to guide the team. And when conflicts arise, make sure you can You know, be able to deal with different team members who are in that conflict, listening to both sides, and just with this question really showcase your leadership skills and give specific examples as well. Question 61, you've been given a role as a project manager for a group of fresh college grads and entry-level consulting staff. What measures can you take to ensure that the job is completed in a timely manner? So the way that you manage college grads or entry-level staff is no different from managing anyone else. You need to ensure that they know their roles and responsibilities. You need to follow up to ensure that they have been doing the work that they have been doing. You may want to time box them, so give them like 2 hours or 4 hours to do a specific task and then check up on them to make sure that they have done the tasks properly And you also want visibility so everyone on the team can see what everyone else is working on. Question 62, what is a project milestone? So a milestone is an event on a project with zero duration and marks an important time. It marks an important milestone on the project. For example, you know, you got all of the foundation done on the house or something like that. So it has zero duration and it marks a significant event. On your project. Question 63, this is also a technical question. What is project float? Float is the amount of time you can delay a project activity by without delaying the overall schedule of the project, and those activities on your project critical path will have a float of 0. It's important for you as a project manager to know what your critical path is because if any event on the critical path is delayed, then the whole project will be delayed. Question 64, due to near-daily user change orders and increasing clashes in user demands, your project is starting to go over budget and behind schedule. What will you do about user concerns? So again, here you have a situation where the project isn't going according to plan. It's going over budget and it's going behind schedule, so So what you had to do here is ask some follow-up questions like, where did we go over budget? Like, what were the tasks that we were supposed to do? How do we get behind schedule? You know, how do we get the project back on track? Like that, it would be your main goal, right? So asking follow-up questions, find out what the root cause of the problem here is, and then come up with solutions to correct the problem to get the project back on track. Question 65, you've been delayed in an early stage of your project. What can you do to counteract the delay? Which actions will have the most impact on the outcome? So you have a situation here where there is a delay on the project. So find out what kind of project it is, where did the delay happen, and then evaluate the options you have to move forward. It's important to say like, okay, so here we have like 3 different options that we can deal with this delay. Say that to the interviewer. And then keep asking follow-up questions like, if we do option 1, here's the pros and cons. Ask for more info. If we do option 2, here's the pros and cons. And then, and then do option C. So the interviewer here isn't really trying to see if you're coming up with the right solution. They're testing your logical thinking skills. So it's important to not just like jump to a solution right away. They want to see your thought process and that you have thought through all of the options before you come up with what you're going to do. Question 66, describe what you did to complete a challenging project on time and on budget in an adverse situation. Pretty straightforward question, just come up with an example of a project that you have managed in the past that you have completed successfully here. Question 67, what does it take to be an effective executive sponsor for a project? Question 68, what is the result of your last project? Question 69, can you elaborate on your roles and responsibilities? Again, really straightforward question here. Question 70, what did you enjoy most about your project and what did you dislike? Question 71, what was the most significant thing that you took away from the project? So in other words, what is your top lessons learned from your previous project? This is again a pretty straightforward question. 72, can you recount a time when you encountered any difficult circumstance? How did you go about managing them? So this question is asking you to list something that, you know, didn't go according to plan on your project and a difficult situation you had to manage, whether stakeholders or team It's important here to say that you evaluated different options, you listen to different people, and really tie in the human aspect of it. It's not just like my way or the highway where what I say goes, and you really have to show that you have the soft EQ skills that they're looking for, for a project manager. That's what you really touch on with this question. Question 73, tell me about a time when you achieved something significant and what it involved. Question 74: What similar PM consulting or independent contractor services have you provided before? So in other words, just talk about your previous experiences. Question 75: Describe how you would like to work for us as an independent contractor or PM consultant. Okay, so this question is more the interviewer is just trying to see how you would work. Sometimes as a PM, people work as an employee of the company. Other times they work as an independent contractor. Other times they work as a consultant. And there's pros and cons to these different methods. Generally, contractors and consultants are paid much higher than the employee, but the employee has the job stability. So you have to kind of think about what it is that you value more. Do you value the health insurance and The job security more, or do you want a higher salary, right? If you just want a higher salary, contractor is probably the way to go. Contractors are generally paid about double the salary of what the employees are being paid, but you know, when the contract is up, they have to look for a new job, and so they don't have that job security or the benefits. Question 76, what other duties will you have to handle So this question is really getting at, are you willing to go the extra mile on your job? Question 77: What are your primary objectives for this new position as a consultant or freelancer? In other words, what are you trying to get out of the position? What do you want to learn? They just want to see that you're there for the right reasons. Question 78: What experiences do you think will be helpful for this task? Question 79: This project will need a significant amount of blank. Is that something you'll have an issue with? For example, this project will require a significant amount of time. You may need to work overtime. Is this something you're comfortable with, right? Question 80: For this task, you will need to communicate with with insert different types of people. Can you share an instance where you successfully worked with a similar group? So they're really trying to see what your communication styles are and how you resolve conflict. Remember that, you know, 80 to 90% of your job as a project manager is just communicating with people. So a lot of the interview questions you'll see is the interviewer trying to see how do you handle tricky situations? How do you communicate with different stakeholder groups and navigate through tough project situations to help all of the parties come to resolutions to different conflicts? Question 81: What do you hope to achieve from this new assignment? Question 82: What are the most prevalent and major hurdles for a project like this? What would you do if confronted with these barriers to keep your team on track? So it's basically they're asking you, if we do hire you as a PM here, what are the biggest obstacles that you'll see on this project and how will you deal with it? So this is really industry and project specific. Question 83, what is a project charter and what are its components? So the project charter formally authorizes the existence of the project. So without the project charter, you shouldn't starting a project, it basically lists out, you know, the objective of the project, why we need this project, what's the budget, and lists the project manager, it lists the preliminary risk and assumptions. And so it's really just like a rough outline of why we need this project and the funding involved, who is on this project, that sort of thing. And then when this project charter has been approved, Then you want to create the more detailed project management plan. Basically, you actually, you know, take what the objective was set out here and really get more detailed, right? So that's when you create the schedule, the budget, and all of the other components of the PM plan. Question 84, what document do you want to use as a reference for future decisions? So I would ask some clarification question here as to what kind of decisions are you trying to make that would impact which documents that you want to use. Question 85, what is the meaning of project scope? So again, here's another technical question that you may get on your interviews. I think by now you can notice that a lot of the questions you'll get will be involving you telling a situation on how you handle specific situations or technical questions about project management. So in this case, project scope is the boundaries of your project. So the scope includes everything that you're going to do on this project as well as everything you're not going to do on the project, right? For example, if our project was to build a house, then our scope could be that it's 2 stories tall, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,600 square feet. You know, and so forth and so forth. You know, we're not gonna deliver a 3,000 square feet home with 5 bedrooms to our client. So the scope will tell you what is the boundaries on the project, what it is that you're delivering, and what the client can expect when the project is completed. Question 86, what, what exactly is velocity and how can you measure it for your team. So velocity is an agile metric that measures how many story points your team can complete on average in each sprint. So let's say that, you know, your team is averaging like 50 story points in every single sprint in the first 3 sprints, then you can kind of say like our velocity is 50. So in your future sprints, you Plan to schedule in that Sprint about 50 Story Points because that's reasonably what your team can accomplish in each Sprint, and you can track the Velocity in a chart so that you can see if your team is getting more efficient as you do more and more of these Sprints. What is Earned Value Management and what does it do? What are the benefits of using EVM approach to project management. I have a separate video that goes into depth about earned value. So basically, it's measures for your project to see, you know, how closely you're sticking to your project plan and whether you are on budget and whether you're on schedule or behind schedule, right? So I'll link the video in the description below as well. Question 88: Qualities that make you a good team member. Give examples. Question 89: When you have lots of tasks to complete and not enough time, how do you prioritize? Question 90: How do you keep your concentration when a major deadline approaches? Question 91: Do you think you can handle more than one task at a time? Now, this is a tricky question here. Now, study after study have shown that multitasking actually creates a lot of waste because as you switch between tasks, there is you know the switch over and that creates waste, right? So generally, you want to focus on one task until it is. Done. But when necessary, sometimes multitasking may be required. What do you prioritize for your business, quality or quantity? Another tricky question here. So now it depends. You have to kind of see the overall cost of quality, right? So So it's impossible to get 100% of your product to be functioning 100% of the time. You're going to have some defects in your products, right? If you guys, you know, know the bell curve, the bell curve never hits zero. So your quality kind of can never be 100% functioning 100% of the time. So it's like, What quality standards are you willing to accept? Right. So if 99% of your products are already functioning fine and adheres to the requirements, then spending more money on quality may not make sense. Then in that case, maybe it's better to focus on getting more more quantity. But if the quality of your products are you know one and two are failing or something like that, then it's time to focus on the quality versus the quantity. So to answer this question, you need to know, you know, what is the current quality standards? How does your current products adhere to those quality standards? And, you know, if there are low-hanging fruits to improve that, and there really isn't many low-hanging fruits, then you should probably prioritize quantity, right? So this is a tricky question because It depends on the situation. What exactly is EVM and how will you utilize it to run projects? Again, I'll link the video for EVM below. Basically, EVM is a series of calculations you can do that will tell you the health of your project, whether you are, you know, going over budget or you're under budget, or if you're going behind schedule or you're over your schedule, right? Question 94, what is the difference between a project and a program? So a program would consist of a series of related projects. So basically, the project falls under— sometimes falls under a program, sometimes a project is a standalone in an organization. So what I mean by this is that A project is not always in a program, but a program always consists of, you know, one or many projects, related projects. How does one go about selecting a project? Well, this would depend on the organization, and it really depends on what the organization is after. Sometimes the what the KPIs the organization is after. Maybe they're selecting a project based on lowest cost or to get something done because it's a legal requirement. Maybe they're selecting a project to meet a customer demand, a technological shift. There's different ways and different reasons the organization may select projects, and you need to know what the goals, what the strategy of the organization is to know what is the proper metrics to use when selecting a project. Question 96, what software tools do you recommend using in order to effectively plan and monitor a project? Well, there's many project management tools. Probably the most popular ones are something like Excel or Microsoft Project or Jira, but you can list any other PM tools that you have used in the past. to plan and monitor a project. Question 97, what is risk management and how will you respond to potential risks? So here they want to see how you have managed risk in the past. So first you want to identify all of the risks, then you want to do qualitative risk analysis, and this is just, you know, giving each risk a probability like high, medium, and low. And also an impact, which again could be high, medium, low, or it could be on a scale of 1 to 10, whatever your project decides in that case. And then for the high priority risk, then you actually want to figure out, like, what is— if this risk does happen, how much money would it cost our project to fix it, and how long will it actually delay our project by? And if it did happen, is there any mitigation plan that we can do to soften the impact? So that in a nutshell is risk management, but it'd be great if you give a specific example of how you actually did this process during one of the projects you have actually managed. Question 98, what are the results of project closure? So basically here they're looking to see that when a project ends, You're not just saying, okay, great, bye. Like, you're actually going through documenting lessons learned, letting your team know that the project has ended, paying off any final bills, and documenting all of the results of the project to the relevant stakeholders as well. What are the most popular techniques for project estimation? There are many, so you can talk about how you did either schedule estimation or cost estimation for your projects in the past. There's analogous estimation, which is where you use historical information. There's also parametric estimation, where you get a parameter and then you just multiply by the factor of that parameter. You can also do bottom-up estimation as well. There's a lot of techniques for estimation, but by PMI, those 3 are the most popular. Project estimation techniques. Question 100: What is the first step of launching a project? Creating a project charter. Question 101: What if a customer required a project and timely delivery depended on a sub-supplier? What strategies would you use to handle the supplier? How would you put any necessary contracts in place? So this is a procurement question. So you have to communicate with the supplier, see what their dependencies are, make sure that they can deliver the necessary materials that you need for your project on time. And there are 3 different types of contracts you can use on your project. It could be cost-plus, it could be fixed cost, or it could be time and material. And depending on what the supplier is supplying, you want to use the appropriate type of contract in place. So some follow-up questions need to be asked for you to fully understand what's going on in this scenario. And don't be afraid to ask those follow-up questions, right? Sometimes interviewers are keeping things high-level and vague on purpose. They're trying to see if you're gonna dig deeper and ask the right questions. Question 102: In this field, whatever the one that you're interviewing for, what are the 3 things that would be extremely crucial for your project success as a project manager? So this is really industry-specific. Just think about this before your actual interview. Question 103, what indicators would you expect to see to determine the ongoing success of your project? And again, this would depend on the type of project And the KPIs would differ from project to project, industry to industry. So really know your industry and really know the drivers for them. Question 104, what strategies do you use to deal with difficult individuals/problem workers? Question 105, what's the best way to raise morale among your employees? What is Scrum in a nutshell? So here they're looking for you to explain the 3-5-3 framework, which is like the 3 roles in Scrum, the 5 ceremonies, and the 3 artifacts. What exactly is team building and what are the different phases of it? Is it a vital component of your business? What are the advantages and disadvantages of team So talk about times when you have built teams. What did you do and how did you do it? Lastly, question 108. What have you learned from your previous delivery? How did you apply those lessons to your current iteration? So what the interviewer is looking for here is they're looking to see how did you do your lessons learned and did you actually apply those lessons learned to your future sprints or iterations. All right guys, so this wraps up this video on the 108 most common project manager interview questions. I hope you learned a lot. Now if you want to download this entire list, make sure you click on the link in the description below. Thank you so much for joining me, and I will see you soon in my next video. Ciao for now!