105 Project Management Interview Questions

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General

1. Can you describe the responsibilities of a project manager?

2. What is the difference between a project and a program?
3. What are project constraints? Can you give me a few specific examples?
4. If you could choose up to 3 software tools to help you manage a project which would you
choose?
5. What is the most common mistake project managers make?

1. Not identifying all stakeholders

A project, by definition, is a group effort, and will only be completed successfully if the team and
all those involved are considered. One of the worst mistakes a project manager can make is to fail
to identify everyone who’s invested in the project and affected by it. If you fail to consider the
interests of even one important stakeholder, this could cause the undermining and ultimate failure
of a project.

2. Not being 100 percent clear on requirements

Projects are about turning ideas into reality. You will not successfully complete a project if you
cannot compare what you have done to the original idea.  Being clear on your
project requirements is essential to project management, and should be a topic that is always
central to project work.  If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

3. Not taking Risk Management seriously

When I wrote my book Project Management for You, I asked a number of experts what the most
important aspect of project management was. To my surprise, many mentioned Risk Management.
And after doing more research, I completely agree with them. Often, unless you are part of a very
sensitive project, there’s no need to overthink this: Simply get together with your team, create a list
of potential roadblocks or risks your project might encounter, come up with a simple action plan in
case these risks become a reality, and assign a team member to “own” that risk.

The owner will have the job of watching out for it and raising a red flag if they see any of the
identified risks coming. It’s a simple exercise that will make you better prepared and also give you
peace of mind during the planning and execution phases of your project. (And if you have a project
management tool that surfaces risks in your plan, all the better!)

4. Not learning lessons

In the heat of the project, when you and the team are trying to stay on schedule, scope, and budget,
many project teams forget that promoting lessons-learned exercises is fundamental. These pow-
wows are around lessons that are being learned during the course of the project. Too often when
lessons-learned sessions are held, many times they are done only at the end of the project. Too late.
A good practice is to hold lessons-learned sessions or meetings on a regular basis so you and your
team become used to the process.

5. Not investing time and effort in hiring the right team

There was a time when hiring team members based on their resume, cover letter and interviews
was enough. Today, besides having the subject matter expertise necessary to perform the work,
team members need to be, well, members of the team.  As the project manager, I would
recommend you ask yourself two questions before hiring a new person:

 Can they do the job?

 Will they fit in?

Companies who take these questions seriously and take a methodic and careful approach to finding
right candidates are creating amazing corporate cultures in which employees are happy and excited
to work.

6. Not getting buy-in

Have you ever tried to give a child a bath when they’re not in the mood?  That’s what it’s like to
manage a project without buy-in from those involved. When looking at getting buy-in, typically we
think of getting it from high-level stakeholders who have the formal power to have a negative
impact on the project. While that’s important, it is also just as important to get buy-in from the rest
of the team. You want everyone who’s involved in actually doing the work to be 100 percent
behind the idea and purpose of the project.

7. Allowing scope creep

Scope creep is serious, and if not dealt with, could really turn a project into a failure.  As the old
Arabian proverb says “If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” Keep
that camel out of your tent before it creeps in. The best way to keep scope creep from happening is,
in short, by making a big deal out of change requests. Create a process that acts both as a deterrent
for impromptu change requests, and also analyzes the impact on both timeline and budget for
them. Treat scope creep with care and nip undesirable changes and increases in scope in the bud.

8. Keeping bad news to yourself

We all have the tendency to keep bad news to ourselves. We often justify it by thinking along the
lines of, “it’s just a small issue, why get everybody worried?” While this approach may suffice
when you are in a project by yourself, it doesn’t work when a team is involved—and an
organization’s well-being depends on the project going well.

All team members are working on different tasks and work packages, under the assumption that all
is going according to plan. Your “small issue” might play a part in some other team member’s
work in a way you can’t predict. Also, this issue might be included in the risk register as a potential
problem, and you might not be aware of it (or it could be in someone’s personal risk register that
they haven’t communicated either). There are many other reasons why clear and transparent
communication regarding issues, even if small, are extremely important.

9. Not using integrated tools

Projects generate tons of documents; they require meetings, sharing of information, tracking of

changes—all the while requiring that a record of activities (once called a “paper trail”) be kept.
Using the wrong tools can quickly turn a project into chaos. But even when effort is put into
working with good tools, a silo mentality may prevent the team from thinking about how these
tools will integrate with each other. When choosing tools, ensure that they integrate as much as
possible, so information can flow freely through the team and records are kept.

10. Communication breakdown!

And finally, we get to communication. All of the nine topics above really come down to
communication. Whether it’s not using the right tools, or keeping bad news to yourself, allowing
scope creep, not getting buy-in, failing to hire the right people, not learning lessons, avoiding risk
management, being unclear on requirements, or leaving out stakeholders, it’s a lot easier to avoid
these problems by being a better communicator.

6. What is the most challenging project you've managed?

7. Have you worked with offshore teams? What challenges did you face?
8. Can you walk me through the most recent project you managed?

Leadership
9. Can you tell me about a time you had to second guess the recommendations of a SME on your
team?
10. Do politics ever stress you out? How do you handle it?
11. What are your professional values / ethics?
12. Can you tell me about a time you mentored someone?
13. How do you keep your team inspired in the face of difficulties?
14. What is better — control or trust?
15. What is your leadership style?
16. How do you handle the situation in which a powerful stakeholder is making decisions that
you feel are sending a project off a cliff?

IT Project Management

17. Can you give me examples that illustrate the difference between business and technology
scope creep?
18. How do you ensure that technology teams build what's defined by project requirements?
19. Have you encountered developers who add features of their own to a product? How did you
handle the situation?
20. What is enterprise architecture?
21. What artifacts does a solution architect typically deliver for a project?

Methodologies

22. What is the waterfall model?

23. What types of projects are best adapted to a waterfall approach?
24. What are your thoughts about agile?
25. What are the 5 process groups of the PMBOK Guide?

Project Integration Management

26. What is project integration management?

Ans- Integration management is a collection of processes required to ensure that the various
elements of the projects are properly coordinated. It involves making trade-offs among competing
objectives and alternatives to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations.

Comprised of:

Project plan development

Integrating and coordinating all project plans to create a consistent, coherent document
Project plan execution
Carrying out the project plan, according to the strategy, plan and activities as per the plan
Integrated change control
Coordinating changes across the project

Project plan development

Inputs Tools and techniques Outputs Other planning inputs Project planning
methodology Project plan Historical information Stakeholder skills and knowledge
Supporting details Organizational policies Project management information system

Constraints Earned value management

Assumptions

27. What information is captured in a project charter?

28. How do you handle a situation in which the stakeholders assigned to your project lack the
requisite authority or abilities (e.g. too
junior)?
29. How do you handle a project that you feel is doomed to failure because of a lack of executive
support?
30. How do you ensure that your team members are clear on the objectives of a project?
 By setting the goals to each and every team members
31. How do you manage team members who appear to be unproductive?
32. How do you manage internal conflict within your project team?
33. What is a project Statement of Work (SOW)?

Ans- The SOW is a valuable organisational tool to capture the work of the project. Its
value lies in its ability to capture all the critical work elements of your project and is
useful in two situations: to form a part of a contract with an external vendor or
consultant, or as an intermediate planning step for a large complex project where the
work is being done internally.

34. What goes into a business case?

A business case document is a formal, written argument intended to convince a decision maker to

approve some kind of action. A well-crafted business case explores all feasible approaches to a given
problem and enables business owners to select the option that best serves the organization. This guide
explains the format and content of a business case document and the processes involved in its creation.

Project Scope Management

35. Do project managers provide estimates? Why / why not?

36. Can you tell me about a project you managed that went over time / budget? What would you
do differently next time?
37. What techniques do you use to minimize scope creep?
38. How do you communicate scope to stakeholders?
39. What is a change management system? Why is it useful?
40. How do you prevent gold-plating scope creep?
41. In our industry, what percentage of projects go over budget?
42. What is the difference between project scope and product scope?
43. How do you manage the situation in which your team is providing estimates that you feel are
too optimistic?
44. How do you manage the situation in which your team is providing estimates that you feel are
far too high?

Project Time Management

45. What is project decomposition?

46. What is a work breakdown structure?
47. What are project dependencies? Can you give me examples of different types of
dependencies?
48. What is the difference between a top-down and bottom-up estimate?
49. How do you establish accurate estimates?
50. What is the purpose of resource leveling?
51. Can you give me some examples of typical project constraints?
52. What value do milestones add to your schedule?
53. How do you deliver a project to a hard-deadline that's predefined by the project sponsor?
54. Are you familiar with any schedule compression techniques?
55. What is the typical impact of schedule compression?
56. What techniques do you use to bring a badly delayed project back on schedule?
57. When do you need to re-baseline a project?
58. Can you give me an example of a project progress metric?

Project Cost Management

59. What financial measures do you use to evaluate the feasibility of a project (e.g. in a business
case)?
60. What is net present value? How is it useful?
61. What is an opportunity cost?
62. Can you give me an example of pay-back? How is it calculated?
63. What is return on investment?
64. What is the difference between internal rate of return and return on investment?
65. Have you developed a cost management plan? What did you include in the plan?
66. Who participates in project budgeting?
67. What artifacts do you need to have before preparing a budget?
68. How do you monitor / control a budget?
69. What is a project cash flow?
70. What is earned value?
71. Why do projects go over budget? How can this be prevented?
72. Can you give me an example of a productivity metric?
73. What strategies have you used in the past to keep projects on budget?

Project Quality Management

74. How do you measure project quality?

75. How do you plan project quality?
76. Can you give me some examples of quantitative metrics you've used to measure project
quality?

Project Human Resource Management

77. Can you tell me about the most difficult stakeholder you've dealt with?
78. Do you prefer a collocated team? What are the challenges you've faced working with remote
teams?
79. How do you help a low performer to improve?
80. How do you ensure retention of top performers on your team?

Project Communications Management

81. How do you handle a stakeholder who doesn't read your communications and doesn't attend
your meetings?
82. How do you ensure that project communication is effective?
83. Do you typically gather communication requirements from all stakeholders?
84. Have you developed a communication plan? What did you put in it?
85. Can you give me an example of a time you had difficulty managing stakeholder
expectations?
86. What metrics do you use to get the attention of important stakeholders during the project
execution phase?
87. Are you a good listener? Why is this important?
88. What factors make for effective verbal communication? What about visual communication?
89. What is a communication matrix?
90. Do you hold project performance review meetings? What is discussed?
91. How do you report project variances?
92. What is the most common type of project variance?

Project Risk Management

93. How do you identify project risks?

94. What is a risk response plan?
95. How do you estimate the probability of a risk?
96. How do you assess the impact of a risk?
97. How do you minimize risks?
98. How do you ensure that risks are identified as early as possible?

Project Procurement Management

99. Have you recruited a project team? What process did you follow? What challenges did you
face?
100. In what situation would you recommend a fix-price contract? How about a time and
materials contract?
101. What is a cost-reimbursable contract?
102. What is an incentive fee?
103. Have you produced a request for proposal (RFP)? What information did it contain?
104. Are you a good negotiator? What is your technique?
105. What is a material breach of contract?