Interviews can make a person uncomfortable, even when he/she is well-prepared. Especially if it’s for a sensitive project manager position, then they’re bound to accelerate our body temperature. However, if you know what’s most likely to come, you’re most likely going to get a sense of enhanced confidence. We have curated a list of top 50 project manager interview questions that will help you land the job.
Getting effectively through an interview is both an art and a study. There are many unknowns, so you will be chosen based on how you answer the questions asked in the interview. Here is a list of the top 50 project manager interview questions you will frequently encounter. Also, below are tips on addressing them to help you show that you are the best choice for the project manager position.
Project Manager Interview Questions
These project manager interview questions consist of various basic to advanced level project manager interview questions that are often asked the candidates in their project manager interviews. It is important to have a calm approach towards each question because, most of the time, the project manager’s interview questions are based on scenarios, and the interviewer wants to see how you would approach the situation.
Q1. Difference Between a Project and a Program?
Projects are carried out for a single reason or a series of similar purposes. A program is a series of projects designed to accomplish various parts of an ultimate objective in an organized way. For example, NASA’s moon landing project has to manufacture the command module and moon landing missions as different programs. The specialized collection is a pool. A portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and even other portfolios that help an organization accomplish a high-level general business target.
Q2. What is your Understanding of Project Management?
Project management is the practice that deals with the execution of various procedures, strategies, expertise, skills, and experience to accomplish the aims of a particular project. Project management is nothing like handling administration. One key aspect that separates these two is that project management has a definitive deliverable and an exact schedule, while the administration is a phase that is going on. A project manager still needs to obey the 6P project management law known AS Careful Preparation Avoids Bad Project Results.
Q3. Explain the Project Management Life Cycle Process.
A project has different phases where the scope of tasks needed to conduct the project work is significant. There is a separate “exit” process, followed by planning and training. “Sending out” is the fundamental component of project implementation. Step “Closure” means that the project-related transient operations are consistently terminated. When the process shifts happen, the phases are termed step entrances, exits, thresholds, or elimination points. If a project needs to be terminated, it will be determined at these steps depending on the results and the project’s requirements.
Q4. According to You, What are some Important Skills that a Project Manager Should Possess?
The essential qualities a Project Manager would have are:
- Communication
- Professionalism
- Team Management
- Intervention Power
- Personal Organization
- Risk Management
Q5. What is the First Step that you Would Take as a Project Manager?
The interviewer effectively attempts to verify your clearness of mind through this issue. He/she needs you to detail the crucial first steps you need to take to ensure a project’s progress. A good boss will strive to consider the ‘how’ before the ‘what’ of the project. What this means is that you first want to grasp what the project’s goal or intent is before jumping into ways to accomplish the project’s objectives. So something on the lines above will earn some brownie points for you.
Q6. How will you Prioritize Tasks in your Project?
It is crucial to prioritize tasks in a project, mainly when it is lengthy. It helps ensure that the project is finished successfully and quickly. To prioritize the activities, you should follow the instructions below:
- Label the duties and the activities
- Differentiate between critical and essential
- Assess the importance of each function
- Approximate efforts to organize the tasks
- Stay resilient and ready to accommodate
- Remember when to answer NO
Q7. What is your Leadership Style?
Speaking about handling a project would eventually lead to a leadership-style conversation. There are several different ways to show your leadership qualities, and they all have their plus and minus. A project manager may choose to select and decide how they want to lead based on the project, extending from a top-down entrance to servant leadership.
Q8. What is your Ideal Project?
This is one of the most relevant and frequently asked project manager interview questions. By addressing this question, frankly, you are opening up a chance to lead lessons that can excite you or the ones you can excel in. Your response should include several points, such as whether you want to work as part of a team or on your own, the kinds of deadlines you want, whether or not you are involved in ambitious and artistic ventures, and more.
Q9. What are the Processes and Process Organizations in the Project Management Framework?
A method within the context of project management is a structured way of executing activities involved in effectively completing a project. These procedures and their order determine the acts to be done. There are approximately 49 structures located in separate phase classes in the project management system. Method classes are an assortment of processes that extend through multiple phases of a project.
Five process classes are divided into ten information fields and 49 processes. The five parties participating in the project are:
- Introduction
- Planning Running
- Surveillance & Monitoring
- Closing
Q10. What are the Learning Areas, and How Relevant are they in a Project?
Information fields relevant to distance control, time, and expense control are self-explanatory. The same goes for managing quality too. To achieve a project in all its ways, one has to be conscious of the information field of project integration. Communication is a significant problem, and so is the concept of information management. Acquisitions and risk control are two essential fields of assistance. Managing human capital is also equally critical because it’s ultimately the people who get the work done.
Q11. How Would you Handle a Problematic Stakeholder Involved in your Project?
If a stakeholder has a strong position and if he/she is an integral part of a project, your decisions require his/her approval. At times stakeholders can be challenging. In such situations, you should:
- Respect their jurisdiction and do not fight
- Throw out all the bad feelings
- Understand their dilemma
- Ask and listen to advice
- Be tactful in your choices and be frank
- Appreciate them and try to stabilize the link
Q12. As a Project Manager, When can you Say that your Project is Off Track and What Should Your Steps be to Ensure that the Project is Completed Within the Given Timeline?
To determine whether your project is on schedule or slipping behind the negotiated timetable, you must review the indicators given below:
- Budgets are regulated or not
- Is it too time-intensive
- Will the scope of the project change even more
- Initial targets either exist or not
If the responses to these tests are correct, then the project is probably out of track, and you must take urgent steps to get things back on track. A few steps you might be considering are:
- Find out the root cause
- Set the time and resources required to keep up
- Continue to achieve the initial target or goal
- Assets management readjustment
- Keep free contact with consumers and interested parties
Q13. Suppose you are Assigned a Project; Which Project Management Methodology Would you Use?
There are literally as many ways of planning a project based on the type of project you handle. It would be best if you aspired to become a project manager who knows the different operating approaches, from conventional techniques like the waterfall and innovative methodologies like Lean & Agile.
Q14. Which Tools Would you Mostly Pick for Improving the Process Activities?
The most popular project management tools are:
- Comparison and desalination of a method
- Flowcharts
- Value-Flow Simulation
- Analyzing cause and effect
- Test hypothesis
Q15. How will you Manage your Team Members who are not Working to their Full Potential?
Usually, no matter how much due attention you invest in bringing together a professional and competent management team, somebody is always underperforming or causing disputes. You don’t have time to sit and tweak the staff as the project moves. Instead, a project manager must fix and address the issue. This comes up with even the most skilled crew, so any competent project manager would know how to handle underperformance in the head.
Q16. How will you Gain the Trust and Your Team’s Agreement for a Project?
Confidence and agreement are crucial elements promoting true collaboration and teamwork within a team. That gives the best performance. To get approval from the members of the group, you have to:
- Keep your goals clear right from the start
- Create measurable goals so as not to be under strain
- Work together to hold team morale during the project
- Agree with the team on the terms & ask for their views
- Timing regular sessions on transparency
- Defines effects and implications
- Dispose of any disagreements between team members as soon as they occur
Q17. How do you Motivate Team Members?
As a boss, it is essential to ensure that the team is on the right track and inspire your team members. Maybe you offer praise as a form of encouragement for a well-done job. As long as you can show previous examples of how you have inspired team members, there is no fixed answer to this question.
Q18. What are the Ways a Project Schedule can be Compressed?
Crashing and fast-tracking have always been two ways to accelerate the schedule for a project. The cracking method attempts to optimize the program by using available time floats while controlling costs. Fast-tracking is speeding up the selected activities by trying to apply extra resources where necessary. It can mean paying overtime for group members, paying for a consultant’s time, etc.
Q19. How Will you Deal with Changes to your Project?
Modifications and improvements are part and parcel of most programs. An organization is looking for a project manager who is agile and adaptable to change. The better approach to deal with change is to set up a change management plan long before the changes have taken place. Simultaneously, prove you are not timid to say ‘no’ when you find a particular improvement is not acceptable for the project.
Q20. As a Project Manager, will you Seek help Outside of the Project Team?
This is another very important project manager interview question. Your answer to this question should be positive. A good project manager should figure out when to act independently and when to seek help from others.
Q21. Explain What is Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and its Effect on the Work Estimates of Tasks/Activities?
The work breakdown structure defines the work activities required for the project’s completion and the sub-activities necessary for each of those works. It has a hierarchical structure segregates concrete/main activities into logical sub-activities.
Two approaches do exist:
- Top-down attitude
- Towards the bottom
Q22. Is There a Way to Prioritize Tasks on a Project? How will you Do It?
It is essential to prioritize. There will be more extended hours in a day than can be completed, but any successful project manager will have to decide what is essential and, if possible, what should be left unfinished. Seeing how the candidate takes those choices will be insightful and helpful.
Q23. What do Processes Ensure?
“A process is a method of regularly tracking and reviewing facets of a product, program, or facility to ensure that quality requirements are followed,” according to the dictionary. Ensuring consistency of everything that goes into manufacturing a product providing no errors, is produced when manufacturing guarantees efficiency.
Q24. How do you Gain an Agreement with teams?
Often in the best of teams and projects, conflict of opinions occurs. Healthy people are working together, and they support each other. When there is a conflict between two or more team members, it has to be addressed immediately. This applies to anyone who is involved in the project: customers, suppliers, and so on. In such situations, a project manager should act as a counselor and settle disputes.
Q25. According to you, Why Does a Project Manager need to be Proactive?
Proactive administrators have better chances of recognizing the threats and introducing strategies to mitigate them. Being constructive will let them have more leverage over their activities and services. They work on introducing incremental changes and enhancements for more excellent quality and performance. Also, they keep a closer track of all projects and queries. They organize regular developer workshops to discuss their challenges, propose ideas, exchange best practices, etc. Moreover, they keep track of the real expenses and the time spent on weekly activities.
Q26. Working From Home has Become the New Normal in the Post-COVID-19 World. How Well Are You Prepared to Manage a Remote Team?
Project managers in the modern world frequently pick their employees from a multinational workforce and are required to control projects centrally. You should have the experience and expertise to collaborate with the team members remotely. It requires a particular methodology in management. Your answer to this interview question regarding the project manager’s role should specifically explain the approach you can use to handle people and resources in a remote area.
Q27. How Should a Project Manager Communicate Failure to his Team?
As a project manager, how you treat loss represents the real leader inside you. When the team has been working hard on a project and has reached a roadblock, they are likely to be frustrated. Yet as a manager, it’s your job to make sure mistakes don’t damage the team’s morale. It will help if you reassure the team that the failure was a joint liability instead of accusing a single individual or a community. Note that you are working with the team members to learn from the failures they faced in this project and not to repeat them in the future.
Q28. What is your Strategy for Dealing with Internal Conflicts Among the Team Members?
Through these project manager interview questions, the interviewer wants to understand your negotiating experience and how neutral you are in conflict settlement. It will help if you speak for both sides by knowing both viewpoints. Your approach should include encouraging all sides to reach a consensus that fits well for the present initiative and delivers a win-win scenario. It would also be better if you describe how you guarantee that both parties are not gaining anything by going against each other.
Q29. What is the Pareto Principle Analysis?
Answer: Pareto is a mathematical decision-making method. It is used primarily to identify a small range of tasks that can have a significant overall impact. This theory fits the Pareto Principle, which suggests 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the actions. It helps to prioritize the job, especially in large projects with several tasks.
Q30. What is RAID in Project Management?
RAID is a vital weapon for any project manager. It stands for fear, intervention, problem, and decision-making.
To describe it, RAID is a method project managers use to organize and monitor risks, activities, challenges, and decisions. When addressing the project manager interview questions, you can also consider throwing light on these four terms.
Q31. How will you Manage an Overconfident Member of your Team who Always Wants more Responsibilities but isn’t that Efficient while Working on Them?
As project managers, we must channel positive energy in the right direction and always try to save the project from shortcomings. An overconfident team member who takes responsibility and cannot fulfill it poses many challenges for the team in the future. To deal with this, a project manager could use the following ways:
- Their shortcomings should be communicated to them immediately
- Be patient with the problem but do not oversee the problem.
- Never lose your calm while dealing with such team members.
- Set a few boundaries and communicate the consequences of such actions.
- Appeasing such team members may lead to even bigger disasters.
- Always try to give them constructive feedback to reflect upon.
- While giving a chance for an explanation, counter their arguments with a positive approach.
Q32. If you Suddenly Notice a Traffic Drop on a Website, How Would you do the Root Cause Analysis?
Root cause analysis or RCA is the systematic process of finding out the main problem or the event and how to resolve them in a project. . In order to do the RCA to understand the traffic drop on a website, we can do the following:
- Check the google search console for any irregularities in the traffic. Analyze the start date for the traffic drop and site analytics to narrow it down a little further.
- Check the authenticity of the tracking data and analyze if there is anything abnormal there regarding the tracking data.
- Check for any changes in the Google algorithm that may have resulted in the traffic drop on your website.
- Losing inbound links may result in reduced traffic as well. Check whether there is a drop in the referrals.
- Site redesign issues may lead to reduced traffic.
These steps will narrow down the root cause for the traffic drop on the website and help you work on the solutions.
Q33. How Do you Plan Effective Quality Assurance for Your Project?
Quality assurance ensures that the project deliverables are at the highest quality mark and align perfectly with the project requirements.
Some of the ways that can perfectly plan effective quality assurance for your project are as follows:
- Define and commit to the quality that you desire from the project.
- Be consistent and updated with the project requirements.
- Manage and perform quality assurance practices to keep the project on track and on par with quality standards.
Q34. What are the Different Types of Issues Faced in a Project?
An issue can be as trivial as the simple unavailability of a resource. But, in the long run, it can still cause serious damage to the project and its efficiency. Here are some of the issues that are faced in a project:
- Lack of clarity in deciding the goals and objectives of the project
- Ineffective communication
- Lack of a precise budget for the project
- Inadequate skills
- Lack of accountability among the team members
- Scope creep
- Inadequate issue management
- Reduced efficiency due to lack of schedule management
These are only a few issues that may occur in a project. There are different issues with each project since each project is unique in its own way.
Q35. What Do you Know About Issue Management and Bug Tracking Systems?
The process of identifying and resolving any issue related to the project comes under issue management.
The bug tracking system, on the other hand, monitors the project and reports any bugs that will be encountered. With every bug, the analysis is done to identify the impact on the project, and based on it, the response is given.
The various benefits of using a bug-tracking system are as follows:
- Improved quality management
- Reduced cost of production
- Early detection of bugs to safeguard from damages
- Better service and customer satisfaction
Q36. How do you Create a Resource Breakdown Structure?
A resource breakdown structure is a breakdown of resources that will be required to finish the project. The resources are categorized based on their function and type.
For creating a resource breakdown structure for any project, the following steps are followed:
- Analyze every task in the project and identify each resource that will be required to fulfill the tasks.
- Gather information from other processes, including risk management, cost management, and schedule management to make sure that the task list aligns with every resource that will be required.
- The resource breakdown structure is a tree diagram-like structure in which the top level indicates the final deliverables. After that, the resource types and the teams that are finishing the tasks are represented on the leaf nodes.
Q37. What are the Advantages of Stand-Up Meetings for Your Projects?
The benefits of the stand-up meetings for any project can be summarized as follows:
- Stand-up meetings keep the meetings short, precise, and to the point which makes them more productive and less time-consuming.
- The attentive approach induces an active attitude within the team.
- The team’s involvement is increased.
- Stand-up meetings also make up for any shortcomings or roadblocks that may be troubling the efficiency of the project.
- Stand-up meetings make up for the health benefits that are gained from standing up during the meetings.
Q38. How will You Deal With the Bottlenecks During your Project?
A bottleneck is an area in the project where the work is held up and causing the delay. Similar to what we experience at construction sites on highways where the car has to slow down and wait for the vehicle in front of them to move first.
To deal with the bottlenecks in the project, we can follow the following steps:
- Identify and detect bottlenecks in a project by visualizing and monitoring the progress of tasks.
- A bottleneck can never be left idle, and we must reduce the strain on the bottleneck by adding more resources.
- WIP limits to manage the possible bottlenecks.
- Organize process work in batches to reduce time.
Q39. What are WIP Limits? How can You use WIP Limits for your Projects?
WIP or work-in-progress limits are a proj
ect management strategy to prevent project progress bottlenecks. By setting a limit on the total workflow verified and facilitated by the team makes sure that the resources are not overburdened.
WIP limits can help any project reduce the waste incurred in excessive meetings, context switching, rework, duplicate effort, missed deadlines, etc.
Q40. What are Milestones? How Can you Use the Milestones for your Project?
Milestones in project management terminology are used to mark an event. It is basically marking a specific event in the timeline, like a project kick-off meeting, project start date, project end date, or any other significant/insignificant event that must be highlighted in the project timeline.
To use the milestones effectively in our projects, we can do the following:
- Planning a schedule with project milestones to stay on track.
- Monitor the progress of the project with milestones.
- Create important events in the project timeline with milestones.
Q41. How to Manage Project Dependencies?
Project dependencies, if not managed efficiently, can jeopardize the whole project. You can follow the following steps to manage project dependencies effectively.
- There must be a clear understanding of what dependencies will affect the project.
- Creating a plan to manage dependencies in a structured all-around manner.
- Identifying and analyzing the dependencies associated with the project.
- Validate dependencies between both parties via meetings or proper communication channels to avoid miscommunication.
- Continuously managing the dependencies until the project goals conclude.
Q42. What Measures Would you take to ensure the Budget is not Affected?
Creating a budget for your project also needs to be monitored to check if the project is in fact, going as planned or if the budget might get affected or not. You can follow the following steps to ensure the budget is not affected during the project.
- The budget should be comprehensive with the details of everything that is included in the project.
- The instances where any budget cuts have been implemented must be highlighted in the project budget.
- Detailed information about any consequences that may be associated with the project due to the cuts should be considered.
- Progress mapping techniques like EVM to calculate if the project is going over budget to measure the project budget performance constantly.
- Reassign resources and use technologically advanced software for effective project management.
- Review similar projects and plan for similar failures or shortcomings with contingency plans.
Q43. How Would you Create the Budget for the Project?
Making a budget for any project can be summarized into the following steps.
- First of all, you will need to break down the project into smaller tasks and milestones.
- Analyze each item in the task list.
- Add your budget estimates together.
- Add contingencies and taxes.
- Get approval from the concerned authority.
With these simple steps, you can create a budget for your project. However, several tools and practices can be used to analyze or create estimates for your project.
Q44. What is Project Portfolio Management?
Portfolio management prioritizes, selects, and controls an organization’s programs and projects. The goal here is to maintain and establish change management initiatives without any effect on business, ensuring a constant return on investment as well.
The various types of project portfolio management include active, passive, discretionary, non-discretionary project portfolio management, etc.
Project portfolio management is often needed at organizations to brace for any impact that could come with unprecedented changes in the organizational structure, goals, etc.
Q45. How Would you Close the Project?
Closing the project is the last stage of the project management lifecycle. You can follow the steps below to make sure you have documented everything related to the project and the deliverables.
- Transfer all the deliverables to the client.
- Verify project completion, taking into account every stakeholder.
- Review the documentation related to the project requirements.
- Release the resources associated with the project.
- Conduct a retrospective review of the project.
- Archive the project documentation for future reference.
- Celebrate the accomplishment with the teams to boost their confidence.
Q46. What are Fast-Tracking and Crashing Techniques?
Fast-tracking and crashing in project management are schedule compression techniques in project management.
Fast Tracking – In fast-tracking the overall timeline is compressed and the project schedule is shortened. This happens by performing the tasks together at the same time, instead of approaching them sequentially.
Crashing – On the other hand, crashing basically shortens the project schedule by reducing the time for a few of the tasks. This happens by adding more resources to the project to reduce the time taken to complete it.
Q47. What is EVM? And how Would you Use it?
EVM, or earned value management, is basically a project performance estimation process where we use the project schedule, cost, and scope to predict the performance of the project.
To use the EVM method for your project. You will need the following:
- Planned Value – this is the budgeted amount for the current reporting period
- Actual Cost – the real costs to date
- Earned Value – a product of the total project budget and the percentage of the completed project.
After this, you will need to calculate the
- Schedule performance index – SPI = EV/PV, if less than 1, indicates that the project is behind schedule.
- Cost performance index – CPI = EV/AC, if less than 1, indicates that the budgets were higher than the budget.
- Estimated at Completion – EAC = Total budget/CPI. This will tell you how much the project will actually cost.
Q48. How will you Measure the Progress of your Project?
Managing a project involves monitoring its performance of the project. Here are simple steps you can follow to measure the performance or the actual progress of your project.
- The unit’s completed method can give a clear perspective of the actual performance and progress of the project.
- Incremental milestones for your project will tell you where you have reached in your project.
- The 50/50 rule or the start-to-finish rule
- The cost ratio involves the overhead, and cost can help the project managers calculate the project’s progress.
- Experience or opinion, where the expertise and experience of the project manager can be useful to measure the progress of the project.
- Weighted or equivalent units of various subtasks in a project to measure the project’s progress.
Q49. What is Scrumban Methodology? How Does it Help your Project’s Efficiency?
Scrumban is an agile project management methodology that is nothing but the combination of two other agile methodologies, scrum and Kanban.
Using the very best of the two methodologies, the Scrumban methodology provides the best of both worlds. Using the pull system in the workflow and structure with scrum tools for a more efficient project management experience.
The Scrumban methodology is best for projects looking for more flexibility in a scrum environment.
Q50. What Do you Know bout Gold Plating? How Would you Prevent It?
In a project, when the work was done after a point of time becomes irrelevant to an extent where neither the customer is happy nor the work put in yields any returns. This phenomenon is known as gold plating. It is basically where the team is putting in efforts in the project to the point of diminishing returns.
We can take care of certain factors during the project to avoid gold plating at any point of time:
- Establishing effective communication between team members to avoid any miscommunication.
- As a project manager, avoid any new tasks the team members start without approval.
Conclusion
I hope these sample project manager interview questions will help you ace your project manager interview for entry-level and advanced job roles. Remember that there can’t be a single correct answer for any of these questions. Use these solutions as driving methods, but consider your views, perspectives, abilities, and shortcomings before answering questions in any project manager interview.
To learn about the various project management methodologies, you should consider undergoing a project management course at Invensis Learning.
