They had a project manager for the Duomo and Pantheon

I shared this article with the team the other day. I quote the abstract

This paper narrates the project management of the construction of the Florence Duomo by Filippo Brunelleschi in the fifteenth century. This was the most significant dome project in Europe in 1300 years, and possibly the most significant, innovative and complex project of the Renaissance era (Colombo and Lanzavecchia, 1997). It still stands as the largest brick dome ever built. In order to achieve what seemed technically impossible at the time, Brunelleschi researched and adapted the construction and project management of the Pantheon in Rome in the second century. The paper allows us in turn to learn both product and process innovation from this case study, both of which are essential to contemporary project management practice. The case is valuable in understanding key drivers of project management success, and illustrates the substantial potential for learning, and therefore knowledge transfer, from previous historical projects and experiences.

So I am a project manager as well, I deliver change. But even so, I cannot imagine project managing something like this.

this is the Pantheon. Well, the painting is better…the photographs don't show a good perspective. Massive structure. While I was there, I was dumbstruck…what an amazing building

And then the Duomo, I haven't seen this but its on my list, what an extraordinary building as well.

Now these architects and project managers are some to look up to! brilliant. One day I will deliver something like this I hope when I grow up!

Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think

So true.

the lessons learnt are golden, project managers should print this off and stick it on the wall in front of their desks.

1. Stuck to the schedule, even after the merger
2. Resisted changes to the project’s scope
3. Broke the project into discrete modules
4. Assembled the right team, including It experts from both companies, outside experts, and vendors
5. Prevented turnover among team members
6. Framed the initiative as a business endeavor, not a technical one
7. Focused on a single target, “readiness to go live,” measuring every activity
against it.

Specially #6.

Delusion and Deception in Large Infrastructure Projects

managing project costs are an integral part of project management. I've handled projects which are fairly large, up to 2bn in size and yes, you may expect costs to be straight forward.

but when you are talking about multi year horizons, zillions of factors, tons of unknown unknowns and known unknowns and even bad estimation of known knowns (nod to rumsfeld), you usually go off piste very easily. the first estimate usually is low to get it approved and then the snowball happens..typical..people expect me to have a crystal ball to know costs exactly. when i talk about estimated costs for projected benefits, they turn around and say, deliver the same benefit for 20% of the costs. No, you only get 20% of the benefits for 20% of the costs but lets start..

so when I read this article, I wasnt surprised. I quote the conclusion

Large infrastructure investments are a vital component of any public or private
institution. Unfortunately, cost overruns, delays and exaggerated benefits are the norm
rather than the exception for roads, bridges, stadiums, concert halls, new plants, etc.
Although large infrastructure projects occur frequently across the globe, any
individual project is often a once in a career decision for a public or private executive.
Thus it is difficult for executives to learn from their own prior mistakes. It is rare for
executives to deliberately learn from similar projects other have attempted. Typically
executives to adopt an inside view of any particular problem – where they focus on the
specifics of the case at hand. Without the opportunity to learn from rapid and
unambiguous feedback regarding their estimates of costs and benefits, executives can
hardly learn from these unique decisions and avoid making similar mistakes in future
projects. In such situations, inside view thinking leads to numerous cognitive biases that
result in optimistic delusions.
These, often individual, optimistic delusions are confounded, sometimes even
dwarfed, by the magnitude of strategic deceptions among the different actors in the
system. On several occasions, however, decision makers have attempted to justify their
deceptive behavior by arguing that the decision was in the public interest. On one hand, it
can be argued that public-sector executives may decide to deliberately underestimate
costs in order to provide public officials with an incentive to cut costs and thereby to save
the public’s money. According to thistype of explanation, higher cost estimates would be
an incentive for wasteful contractors to spend more of the taxpayer’s money. Empirical
studies have identified executives and planners who say they deliberately underestimate
costsin this manner to save public money.67 Merewitz endorsed and summarized this
viewpoint as “keeping costs low is more important than estimating costs correctly”

On the other hand, a second explanation in terms of public interest covers the not
uncommon situation where project promoters believe their venture will benefit society
and posterity. They feel that they should do anything possible to make the project happen,
including cooking forecasts of costs and benefits. Both types of public-interest
explanations see the end (project approval) as justifying the means (estimates of costs and
benefits that show the project should be approved).69
However, these arguments overlook an important fact. Underestimating the costs
and overestimating the benefits of a given project results in artificially high benefit-cost
ratio, which in turn leads to two problems. First, the project may be started despite the
fact that it is not economically viable. Second, a project may be started instead of another
project that would have yielded higher returns had the actual costs and benefits of both
projects been known. Thus, for reasons of economic efficiency alone, the argument that
cost underestimation saves money must be rejected.70 As a case in point, an ex post
benefit-cost analysis of the Channel tunnel between France and the UK showed that the
actual net present value of the project to the British economy was minus US$17.8 billion
and the actual internal rate of return minus 14.45 percent. The study concluded that “The
British Economy would have been better off had the Tunnel never been constructed”.71
Because delusion is often accompanied by strategic deception, this study’s
prescriptive advice has been broken into two parts. First, we focused on best practices to
diminish strategic deceptions (e.g. P-A issues) in the specific context of infrastructure
projects. Next, we examined how executives can adopt an “outside view” of problems by
using reference class forecasting. This statistical procedure uses both a forecaster’s
intuition and historical data to mitigate the two types of errors and arrive at a more
accurate estimate. The American Planning Association has recommended this procedure
for large infrastructure projects. Its widespread use would surely produce more accurate
estimates of large infrastructure projects and projects like Toll Collect and the Channel tunnel would be profitably and happily foregone by the vast majority of the public. Ultimately, accurate reference class forecasting, proper incentives and budgets are the way to go.

All I can say to this article is, hahahahahahahahah

dream on.

Also see this rather interesting paper on planning of large infrastructure projects.

Tunnel vision? Brunel's Thames Tunnel and project narratives

This is a fascinating paper. How large projects are viewed. And when we talk large, I am talking very large, heading into the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of revenues and/or costs. How you look back at them is fascinating. But the abstract first

Looking at historical projects has much to offer our understanding of project management, for both research and practice. However, there are important challenges in how alternative narratives about such projects are reconstructed and related to each other. To explore these challenges, this paper uses the example of the Thames Tunnel project, completed under the direction of Marc Brunel in 1843, and reputed to be the first tunnel to be built under a major river. In telling the story of the project, we focus on five alternative discourses: technico-rational; practice; networks of people, things, and ideas; politics; and society. The common response to such variety is either to attempt to construct an overarching meta-narrative, or to explore the differences as a way of highlighting the localized and contingent nature of knowledge about projects, or adopt some intermediate position somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes. Instead we seek a different route grounded in a sociology of knowledge that
acknowledges simultaneous, provisional, and contested processes of division and stabilization in the ways that epistemic communities constitute knowledge through their own narratives and practices. These have implications for the stories that are told about project management and,
crucially, the activities and interests that both shape and are shaped by such narratives.

when one is leading these, the narrative is very important, one has to have control over the narrative. the impact of these projects live very long on and if they go belly up, then the organisation will rarely do any more of these.

This article talks about one of my hero’s, Isambard Brunel and his father and how they used the first tunnel excavation machine to build the Thames tunnel. I wont go too much into this, but some lessons learnt for me. Keep an iron grip on the overall architecture of the project, without the methodology in place, the project dribbles away and dies. The methodology is what keeps the business benefits on stream, these come on board much after the project has been completed. People will forget the project manager but the benefits keep on accruing long after, but if the architecture is wrong, then it will go wrong very quickly.

Second is that shit happens. Very frequently as Brunel found out. And one has to balance these frankly minor blowups against the overall architecture. If conceptually the architecture is fine and its just a minor blowup then one goes ahead…people will drop off, resources will be reduced or increased, stuff keeps on happening..

fun times but one has to be insanely confident to keep driving this, keep the big picture in one’s head and keep driving..

High Performance Teams

This is an interesting graph. This purports to be a way to create innovation strategies. But here’s one thing that I disagree with, this isnt the way to get high performance teams. Given that I am a project manager, I have to usually create high performance teams very quickly and get them to start delivering very quickly. Innovation is a very woolly subject, but to create it? this kind of simplistic modelling is a challenge although I suppose some simplistic chaps might be taken in. So I get the question? How to get innovative?

ha! as if I knew. But look at the nodes, nothing other than basic management theory. Quite how that will suddenly produce innovation is not explained.

Four requirements for change

Dear Son
here's an excellent way to think about change. As you know, my job at the moment is to deliver change at the firm. Of course its a bit more complicated than what this article makes out, but its a good starting point to know if there is a place for change. Now why would you want to know this? Well, its not just for project managers like me, it can be for entrepreneurs who are interested in launching a new product or somebody wants to introduce a new service or improve a product or what have you.
Interesting way to think about change and then think about how to get to a place where you can deliver the change. Remember the cost of change is a function of the amount of work to be done, the quality of the work to be delivered, the time you have to deliver this and the amount of money you have. Any change in any of these 4 factors will force a change in one or more of the other three factors.
Or easier is to get a girlfriend or mother or wife or sister or some or all of them. You have no choice then but to change.
Love
Baba

Four requirements for change
Posted: 21 Sep 2011 01:17 AM PDT
The major requirements for a person or an organization to change can be summarized with the following formula

D * V * P > C

Here, D is the dissatisfaction with your current position, V is the vision of the new position, P is the plan, and C is the cost of changing. Incidentally, I so hate it when mathematical equations is abused to explain concepts because it leaves an unwarranted impression of precision.

However, the multiplication aspect is somewhat warranted for the sole reason that if one of the variables on the left-hand-side is small, the entire left hand side is small. Yet, it does not imply that one half D and two V is the same as one D and one V. The important message the first sentence of this paragraph plus (Argh!) that it takes a combination of all three variables being somewhat large (see my post on S-curves) for change to happen.

If dissatisfaction is lacking, obviously no change is going to happen. If there is no vision, change is not going to happen and if one has the dissatisfaction and the vision but no plans or ideas for how to change, change is not going to happen either. Finally, there is the issue of (often perceived) cost. If the cost is too high, change is not going to happen either.

Changemongers thus have four variables to play with.
1. Increase dissatisfaction with present situation.
2. Strengthen vision of future situation.
3. Build a plan to get from the present to the future.
4. Lower the cost of the plan.

The funny thing here is that I suspect many are not consciously aware of which variable is their limiting factor. In fact, I do not know it either, and thus I try to split my posts between the four (at least when averaged over a time scale of months; right now I mainly seem to write about 1 and 4).

What is your limiting factor?

God Like Project Managers

You must have seen this parable before.

One day a man was having a conversation with God when his whole life flashed before his eyes as a series of footsteps on the sands of time.
He saw that there were two pairs of footprints, but during the most difficult periods of his life there were only one set of footprints.

He asked God "You said you will be with me throughout this journey, but why have you deserted me during the most critical times of my life??".

God answered "Son, I did not desert you, I was always with you...you see only one set of footprints because during those difficult times in your life, I was carrying you in my hands"

I am usually neck deep in project managers and I am one myself. Well, I deliver change, broadly speaking :). So this take on the above parable appealed to me.

Another day I was having a similar conversation with my Project Manager (PM) when my whole project flashed before my eyes as a series of footsteps on the sands of time.

I saw that there were two pairs of footprints, but during the most difficult times in the project there were only one set of footprints.

I asked my PM "You said you will be with me throughout the project, but why have you deserted me during the most critical times of the project??"

PM answered "Dude, I did not desert you, I was always with you...you see only one set of footprints because during those difficult times, I was sitting on your head!!"

Poxy buggers are always on my head, lol. Well, I am also a nagging poxy bastards so many times, but there you go. Nice one. Although perhaps the humour might only translate to people who have either been project managers or have been sat on by one, lol. Never you mind! :)

10 signs that your project is about to be cut

very true!!

I quote:

#1: Project sponsors and stakeholders disappear

#2: Changes in management are rolled out

#3: Money woes abound

#4: Your project is a “black hole”

#5: Management keeps discussing project cancellation

#6: Your project becomes a tool of office politics

#7: Poor leadership casts a shadow on the project

#8: The project is successful, but the product fails

#9: Your project has low visibility

#10: It truly is a bad project


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Agile, RAD, Extreme Programming.....

Come on tech guys, lets not blind people with science. I have been hearing so much about Agile programming and how it will change the world. In a word, bollocks.

See here for example,

# Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software
# Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
# Working software is the principal measure of progress
# Even late changes in requirements are welcomed
# Close, daily, cooperation between business people and developers
# Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication
# Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
# Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
# Simplicity
# Self-organizing teams
# Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

Are you seriously telling me that this will be used for any serious application development? Or that you will get great customer service? or documentation? or testing? Or that you wont have close daily cooperation between me and you developers? Or that projects are not built around trusted individuals in other methodologies?

You guys do not make life easy for yourself. Read the wiki article for yourself. Utter rot. In my opinion, as soon as somebody talks Agile, that sort of means that they are (1) going to ask for more money; (2) are not going to deliver what I want; (3) are going to pile on a large pile of brown organic matter.

Do not throw jargon at me, basic good software development can be boiled down to, listen to what I want, tell me what can and what cant be done, how much would it cost, how certain you are on the cost, time and quality and finally what would be the usability and running experience. Once you burrow down, you will see that all this Agile business is just a buzz word. So are you going to produce words or code?

Technorati Tags: Technology , Management , Project Management

10 signs that you are not cut out to be a project manager

It is my firmly held belief that every person working in a firm, and specially in a financial institution and very very specifically in an investment bank is both a salesman and a project manager, besides whatever else your job is. It is your job to sell the products, the bank for potential recruits, the industry, anything. You have to be a salesman.

Besides this, you have to be a project manager. In every employee's job, change is an integral process. Whether you are writing a document, or preparing a pitch or launching a new product, or upgrading a system or checking a failed transaction or what have you, you need to manage a project.

So after your basic technical skills on financial products, IT, operations, or what have you, you should also develop your selling/presentation skills as well as project managemet skills. But here's an interesting note on 10 signs that you aren’t cut out to be a project manager.

They are

#1: You are a poor communicator
#2: You don’t work well with people
#3: You prefer the details
#4: You don’t like to manage people
#5: You don’t like to follow processes
#6: You don’t like to document things
#7: You like to execute and not plan
#8: You prefer to be an order taker
#9: You are not organized
#10: You think project management is “overhead”

As you will see, none of this is anything specialised. Given that change is an integral part of your job, what do you want to be? a person who manages change? or a person who is managed by change?

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

The Top 10 IT Management mistakes and how to avoid them

Last year, I was singularly unfortunate to have a line management IT job. But it gave me a fascinating view on how technology management works. One of the things which I noted was how many times people commit the same mistakes over and over again, specially when managing IT. I got a nice document from TechRepublic and there was a list of top ten IT management mistakes. I printed it off and carried it around till now. The paper is falling apart so I thought of writing it out before it totally disappeared into pocket lint.

1. Focusing on technology and not the business - IT managers must become leaders and turn their focus to supporting and enabling business improvement
2. Thinking "out of sight is out of mind" - the most powerful task an IT manager can do is an assessment to track progress and identify opportunities / threats
3. Thinking that the team has it covered - when leaders delegate a job, they must make sure that it is done right. Following up is not micromanagement
4. Not inspecting what you expect - managers need to form expectations around key projects, network performance & client satisfaction, and track performance.
   
5. Not creating partnerships with business management - IT needs to act in partnership with business executives, to influence peers and leaders
6. Burning out - long hours lead to lower productivity and disgruntlement
7. Not testing backup solutions - breakdown in hardware are inevitable, so backups need regular testing, including disaster recovery and simulation
8. Not asking for help - the key to success is finding and executing solutions as quickly and cost effectively as possible, using available resources effectively.
   
9. Not devoting time to personal development - IT managers should devote at least 30 minutes each day to personal development
10. Not finding a mentor or coach - Everyone should have a mentor or coach and should also be mentoring or coaching someone else.
    

Quite an interesting set of points here and pretty worthwhile to print off and stick it in front of your eyes. I have stuck it on my wall and make it a point to read it while my sweet machine boots up every morning. Quite useful, as it so happens.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Questions for a prospective Project Manager, Interview Tips and Tricks

Everybody is a project manager in a financial institution, every person is a change manager. So knowing how to manage and implement change is vital. So whether you are interviewing for a job, or wanting a project/change manager, or just wanted to review one's experience/expertise, these questions are great. Now I am sure everybody has faced these questions, but I found it brilliant to review! :) happy reading!


=========================
Whether you are getting prepared to be interviewed for a project managers position, or if you are the person who will be conducting interviews for open project manager positions, this list of questions should help you prepare.




1. How do you handle non-productive team members?
2. How do you motivate team members who are burned out, or bored?
3. How do you handle team members who come to you with their personal problems?
4. What are your career goals? How do you see this job affecting your goals?
5. Explain how you operate interdepartmentally.
6. Tell me how you would react to a situation where there was more than one way to accomplish the same task, and there were very strong feelings by others on each position.
7. Consider that you are in a diverse environment, out of your comfort zone. How would you rate your situational leadership style?
8. Give me an example of your leadership involvement where teamwork played an important role.
9. Tell me about a situation where your loyalty was challenged. What did you do? Why?
10. In what types of situations is it best to abandon loyalty to your manager?
11. In today’s business environment, when is loyalty to your manager particularly important?
12. Why are you interested in this position?
13. Describe what you think it would be like to do this job every day.
14. What do you believe qualifies you for this position?
15. What have you learned from your failures?
16. Of your previous jobs, which one did you enjoy the most? What did you like the most/least? Why? What was your major accomplishment? What was your biggest frustration?
17. Tell me about special projects or training you have had that would be relevant to this job.
18. What are some things that you would not like your job to include?
19. What are your current work plans? Why are you thinking about leaving your present job?
20. Describe an ideal job for you.
21. What would you do if you found out that a contractor was in a conflict of interest situation?
22. If I were to contact your former employee, what would he say about your decision-making abilities?
23. Give me an example of a win-win situation you have negotiated.
24. Tell me about your verbal and written communication ability. How well do you represent yourself to others? What makes you think so?
25. Give me an example of a stressful situation you have been in. How well did you handle it? If you had to do it over again, would you do it differently? How do you deal with stress, pressure, and unreasonable demands?
26. Tell me about a tough decision you had to make?
27. Describe what you did at your work place yesterday.
28. How would you solve the following technical problem? (Describe a typical scenario that could occur in the new position.)
29. What strengths did you bring to your last position?
30. Describe how those contributions impacted results?
31. What are the necessary steps to successful project management?
32. How do you plan for a project?
33. What is important to consider when planning a (your type of project)?
34. What are things that you have found to be low priority when planning for (your type of project)?
35. What distinguishes a project from routine operations?
36. What are the three constraints on a project?
37. What are the five control components of a project?
38. What qualifications are required to be an effective project manager?
39. What experience have you had in project management?
40. Name five signs that indicate your project may fail.
41. Tell us about a project in which you participated and your role in that project.
42. When you are assigned a project, what steps do you take to complete the project?
43. As you begin your assignment as a project manager, you quickly realise that the corporate sponsor for the project no longer supports the project. What will you do?
44. Your three month project is about to exceed the projected budget after the first month. What steps will you take to address the potential cost overrun?
45. Tell us about a successful project in which you participated and how you contributed to the success of that project.
46. You are given the assignment of project manager and the team members have already been identified. To increase the effectiveness of your project team, what steps will you take?
47. You have been assigned as the project manager for a team comprised of new employees just out of college and "entry-level" consulting staff. What steps can you take to insure that the project is completed against a very tight time deadline?
48. What is a "project milestone"?
49. What is "project float"
50. Your project is beginning to exceed budget and to fall behind schedule due to almost daily user change orders and increasing conflicts in user requirements. How will you address the user issues?
51. You’ve encountered a delay on an early phase of your project. What actions can you take to counter the delay? Which actions will have the most effect on the result?
52. Describe what you did in a difficult project environment to get the job done on time and on budget.
53. What actions are required for successful executive sponsorship of a project?
54. How did you get your last project?
55. What were your specific responsibilities?
56. What did you like about the project and dislike about the project?
57. What did you learn from the project?
58. Tell me about a time when you ran into any difficult situations. How did you handle them?
59. Tell me about the types of interaction you had with other employees.
60. Tell me of an accomplishment you are particularly proud of and what it entailed.
61. Do you have people from your past consulting services who would provide a professional reference?
62. What other similar consulting or independent contractor services have you rendered?
63. Discuss how you would envision working as an independent contractor or consultant for us.
64. What conflicting responsibilities will you have?
65. What would be your specific goals for this new role as a consultant or independent contractor?
66. What experience do you have that you think will be helpful?
67. This assignment will require a lot of [describe]. Will that be a problem for you?
68. This assignment will require interacting with [describe the types of people]. What experience do you have working with such people?
69. What would you like to get from this new assignment?
70. What are two common but major obstacles for a project like this? What would you do in the face of these obstacles to keep your team on schedule?
71. What is project charter? What are the elements in a project charter?
72. Which document will you refere for future decisions?
73. How will you define scope?
74. What is the output of scope definition process?
75. What is quality management?
76. Do you inspect or plan for quality ?
77. What is EVM? how will you use it in managing projects?
78. What is a project? and what is program?
79. What are project selection methods?
80. Which tool would you use to define, manage and control projects?
81. What is risk management and how will you plan risk response?
82. What are outputs of project closure?
83. What are the methods used for project estimation?
84. What methods have you used for estimation?
85. How would you start a project?
86. If you were to deliver a project to a customer, and timely delivery depended upon a sub-supplier, how would you manage the supplier? What contractual agreements would you put in place?
87. In this field (the field you are interviewing for), what are three critically important things you must do well as a project manager in order for the project to succeed?
88. What metrics would you expect to use to determine the on-going success of your project?
89. How are your soft skills? Can you "sell" the project to a team?
90. You have a team member who is not meeting his commitments, what do you do?
91. Companies have historically looked at technical skills, but more and more business managers are realizing that not have "people" skills tend to cripple projects.
92. How many projects you handled in the past? Deadlines met? On time/ within budget? Obstacles you had to overcome?
93. Do you understand milestones, interdependencies? Resource allocation?
94. Do you know what Project Software the new company uses and is there training for it?
95. Tell me about yourself. (To avoid rambling or becoming flustered, plan your answer.)
96. What are your strengths? (Make an exhaustive list and review it exhaustively before the interview.)
97. What are your weaknesses? (What you say here can and will be used against you!)
98. How would your current (or last) boss describe you?
99. What were your boss's responsibilities? (Interviewers sometimes ask this question to prevent you from having the chance to claim that you did your boss's job. Be ready for it!)
100. What's your opinion of them? (Never criticize your past or present boss in an interview. It just makes you look bad!)
101. How would your co-workers or subordinates describe you professionally?* (Remember, now is not the time for modesty! Brag a little bit.)
102. Why do you want to work for us?
103. Why do you want to leave your present employer?
104. Why should we hire you over the other finalists?
105. What qualities or talents would you bring to the job?*
106. Tell me about your accomplishments.
107. What is your most important contribution to your last (or current) employer?
108. How do you perform under deadline pressure? Give me an example.
109. How do you react to criticism? (You try to learn from it, of course!)
110. Describe a conflict or disagreement at work in which you were involved. How was it resolved?
111. What are two of the biggest problems you've encountered at your job and how did you overcome them?
112. Think of a major crisis you've faced at work and explain how you handled it.
113. Give me an example of a risk that you took at your job (past or present) and how it turned out.
114. What's your managerial style like?
115. Have you ever hired employees; and, if so, have they lived up to your expectations?
116. What type of performance problems have you encountered in people who report to you, and how did you motivate them to improve?
117. Describe a typical day at your present (or last) job.
118. What do you see yourself doing five years from now?
Source


119. What is project management?
120. Is spending in IT projects constant through out the project?
121. Who is a stakeholder?
122. Can you explain project life cycle?
123. Twist :- How many phases are there in software project?
124. Are risk constant through out the project?
125. Can you explain different software development life cycles?
126. What is triple constraint triangle in project management?
127. What is a project baselines?
128. What is effort variance?
129. How is normally a project management plan document organized?
130. How do you estimate a project?
131. What is a fish bone diagram?
132. Twist:- What is Ishikawa diagram?
133. What is pareto principle?
134. Twist:- What is 80/20 principle?
135. How do you handle change request?
136. What is internal change request?
137. What is difference between SITP and UTP in testing?
138. What is the software you have used for project management?
139. What are the metrics followed in project management?
140. Twist: - What metrics will you look at in order to see the project is moving successfully?
141. You have people in your team who do not meet there deadlines or do not perform what are the actions you will take?
142. Twist :- Two of your resources have conflicts between them how would you sort it out?
143. What is black box testing and White box testing?
144. What's the difference between Unit testing, Assembly testing and Regression testing?
145. What is V model in testing?
146. How do you start a project?
147. How did you do resource allocations?
148. How will you do code reviews?
149. What is CMMI?
150. What are the five levels in CMMI?
151. What is continuous and staged representation?
152. Can you explain the process areas?
153. What is SIX sigma?
154. What is DMAIC and DMADV?
155. What are the various roles in Six Sigma implementation?
156. What are function points?
157. Can you explain steps in function points?
158. What is the FP per day in your current company?
159. Twist :- What is your company's productivity factor?
160. Do you know Use Case points?
161. How do you estimate maintenance project and change requests?
Source


162. What are all the skills you will be looking at if you have to hire a project manager?
163. Why are you looking out for a job?
164. What is your current role and responsibilities? What did you like most in your current job?
165. How does your day normal look like? What are some of challenges you face on a daily basis?
166. What makes you exciting about Project management?
167. Why should we hire you as a Project manager?
168. How do you handle pressure and stress?
169. Your team is following agile practices. You have to hire a resource for your team. What are all the skills consider when you hire a new resource.
170. You are starting a new project, which includes offshore/onsite development. How do you manage communications?
171. Your project team does not have hierarchy. You have couple of good techies in your project that has same skills and experience. There is a conflict between two of them. Both are good technically and very important to the project. How do you handle conflict between them?
172. Have you done performance appraisals before? If yes, how do you appraise people? 173. How do you estimate? What kind of estimation practices do you follow?
174. Your customer is asking for an estimate. You do not have time do FP. But you do not want to give a ballpark estimate. What kind of estimation will you give?
175. Your company is expert in providing solutions for a particular domain. You are appointed as a project manager for a new project. You have to do Risk management. What will be your approach?
176. How do you improve your team's efficiency?
177. You are joining as project manager for a team, which already exists. How do you gain respect and loyalty of your team members?
178. You are going to be the project manager for a web-based application, which is targeted towards Insurance. Your gut feeling is that it would take 5 resources and 8 months to deliver this application.
a. What kind of resources you will hire for this project?
b. If you are asked to deliver the project in 6 months. Can you accelerate the development and deliver it in 6 months? What will be your approach?
179. What kind of release management practices do you follow?
180. Your application is in testing for the last 2 weeks and you are supposed to deliver the application at the EOD. Your testing team has found a major flaw in your application in the afternoon. You cannot miss the deadline and your developers cannot fix the bug in couple of hours. How do you handle this situation?
181. You have a resource that who is not happy with his job and complains all the time. You have noticed that because of that the team morale is getting spoiled. How do you handle that resource?
182. Your team is into the 6th Iteration of 8 Iteration project. It's been really hectic for the team for the last couple of months as this project is very important for your customer and to your company. You have started noticing that some of your key resources are getting burnt out. How do you motivate these resources?
183. Yours is a dedicated team for a customer and it's been a dull period for you and your team. You are not actively involved in any development activities. Your team is providing support to the application, which you have delivered earlier. Your team is getting bored as the application stabilized now. Due to budget issues, customer is not going to give you work for another 3 months. How do you motivate the resources?
184. There was a situation where more than one-way to accomplish the same task. Your onsite tech lead and offshore tech lead has different opinions about doing this and the feelings were very strong. Both are very important to you. How do you react to this?
185. What are the practices you follow for project close out? Assume you are into a product customization for a customer and the application has gone live. How do you close this project?
186. Your team is in between iteration. Your customer wants few more items to be delivered in that iteration which you are working now. How do you react to your customer?
187. You are at the customer's place and your application is in UAT/stabilization phase. Your customer comes up with a change request and says that it's a minor one and he wants to see it in the next release. What will be your response/approach to your customer?
188. What is velocity? How do you estimate your team's velocity?
189. What is earned value management? Why do you need it?
190. Describe the type of manager you prefer.
191. What are your team-player qualities? Give examples.
192. How do you prioritize your tasks when there isn't time to complete them all?
193. How do you stay focused when faced with a major deadline?
194. Are you able to cope with more than one job at a time?
195. In your opinion, why do software projects fail?
196. Your customer wants a bug to be delivered at EOD. You have got the BUG/CR information in the morning. It will not be possible to develop, completely regress this issue and deliver it at EOD. How do you approach this issue?
197. You are following Waterfall as your development methodology and you have estimated X days for design phase. Your customer is not ready to accept this. How do you convince your customer to have X number of days for design phase?
198. You have to sell agile practices (XP/Scrum) to your organization. Your management is very reluctant to change. You are sure that if you do not change to agile, it will be very tough to survive. What will be your approach?
199. How do you set and manage expectations (with customers, your managers and your team)?
200. For some reason you've encountered a delay on an early phase of your project. What actions can you take to counter the delay?
201. What is Function point analysis? Why do you need it?
202. What is the difference between EO and EQ? What is FTR?
203. You are estimating using Function point analysis for a distributed n-tier application. How do you factor the complexity for distributed n-tier application? Does FP Provides support for it?
204. You are getting Adjusted Function point count. How do you convert it into Effort?
205. How do you manage difficult people/problem employees?
206. How do you build your teams morale?
207. How do you estimate your SCRUM/XP Projects? How do you define velocity for the first couple of iterations? What is a load factor?
208. What is team building? What are the stages in team building? Do you consider it as an important thing? Why?
209. What are some of your lessons learnt with your previous iteration delivered? How do you use your lessons learnt in your iteration planning?
Source


210. Can you describe this position to me in detail, why you believe you are qualified for this position, and why you are interested in it?
211. Can you describe this company to me as if I were an investor?
212. How do you get your team working on the same project goal?
213. What do you do when a project is initiated and given to you and you have a gut feeling the scope is too large for the budget and the timeline?
214. What formal project management training have you received, where did you attend, and what have you learned from it?
215. We are very siloed, can you explain how you operate interdepartmentally?
216. Consider that you are in a diverse environment, out of your comfort zone. How would you rate your situational leadership style? Give me examples.
Source


217. You may also be presented with a couple of case studies. For instance, 'What if a key employee falls sick at a critical time of project delivery?' and etc.
218. My favorite questions are the "Tell me about a time when..." questions. Make sure you have stories about projects you participated in or managed. Especially share stories of those that had a difficulty to overcome (eg: budget or time constraint blown) and how the difficulty was managed in order to bring the project to a successful conclusion, or how the project was closed down before damaging the stakeholders.
Source


219. How stakeholder expectation is managed?
220. How internal and external project risk is managed (quantitatively if possible)
221. How organizational change is managed (involving the stakeholders that will experience change in their lives as a result of the project),
222. How 'scope management' is done, when the project has not been scoped properly - this is not scope creep I am talking about, merely the fact that the user, client and management learns what they really want as the project progresses nine times out of ten - incidentally, glib answers like 'We use RAD, spiral models, prototypes only indicate that the candidate knows of such things, and not that they know how to use them,
223. What needs to be reported to stakeholders, when and how the data is collected - I normally focus on financial management techniques here - does the PM know how to use the GL, does the PM understand signing powers, how is overtime managed and used, etc.
224. How does delegation work - you don't want a PM that does technical work(domain specific work) - the PM should manage the project (not always practical, but it sounds nice anyway),
225. How does the interface between line management and the Project work - Can the PM negotiate with Middle and Senior resource managers when interests conflict,
226. How is project progress measured - Anyone that tells me that the %complete calculation function in MS Project works is ignorant!! - I can prove to anyone who is interested that the algorithm is faulty, and
227. How project team communications, stress and conflict is managed.
228. Describe a time when you had to give bad news on a project to a customer. There are a lot more approaches to this than you would think, and answers can be insightful.
229. What did you learn from your first job (like flipping burgers at McD's)? The idea here is to see if they can glean useful information out of simple situations, can they reflect and learn from any situation. I think this form of continuous learning is key for PMs.
230. How good are you at MS Project (or whatever tool you use)? This is almost a trick question from my perspective. I believe that most of a PM's job is people, so if someone knows a piece of software forwards-and-backwards, they probably don't have the people skills required to do the job.
231. Describe how you motivate and manage a matrixed team--where the people on your team do not work for you. Since this is often the mode, they must be able to do it.
232. How would you go about organizing a project that had enterprise wide implications?
233. What is your approach to managing projects and how does it vary based on the size and complexity or the project?
234. Who should lead projects?
235. Who should be accountable for the project's outcome?
236. What was the budget for the largest project you have managed?
Source

237. What is the project management structure in your project? Is a PL assigned to the project?
238. How do you know that a particular individual is the project leader (or) how do you know that you are the Project Leader?
239. What and where are the policy statements for software project planning?
240. Explain the various activities you do (as a PL) when the project is started up.
241. How do you know what you need to deliver or do in your project?
242. How do you create the Software Project Management Plan (SPMP)?
243. What training have you undergone in project planning?
244. How do you ensure that your project plan is available for others to see? Where will you find the plans of other projects executed (in the past or currently) in the center?
245. How did you choose the appropriate lifecycle for your project?
246. What are the documents that you will refer to create the plan?
247. How do you estimate the effort for your project? Where is the estimation procedure documented?
248. What procedures do you follow to arrive at the project schedule?
249. Where and how are the risks associated with your project identified and documented?
250. When you come in to the office, how do you know what you have to do during the day?
251. How do you report the status of your project?
252. How are team members kept informed about the current status of the project?
253. How do the audits cover planning activities?
254. How does the senior management review your project's progress?
255. How do you track the technical activities in your project? How is the status of the project communicated to the team?
256. How do you track the size or changes to size of the work products in your project?
257. When do revise your project plan? When do you know you have to revise your project plan? Where is the plan revision frequency documented?
258. How do you ensure that you and all the other team members in your project have the required technical skills to execute the project?
259. How do you assign tasks to your team members?
260. What is the document that should be consulted to know about your project, the activities you do, your schedules and milestones?
Source


261. How do you handle disruptive team members?
262. How do you handle non-productive team members?
263. How do you motivate team members who are burned out or bored?
264. How do you motivate people?
265. How do you handle team members who come to you with their personal problems?
266. How do you start a project?
267. If you are teaching the ropes to a new Project Manager, what would you say are the most important things he needs to look for?
268. What would be the key artifacts needed in a project?
269. How do you manage change?
270. How do you manage conflict in the project team?
271. How do you deal with a difficult team member?
272. What qualifications are required to be an effective project manager?
273. What is the difference between a project plan and a project schedule?
274. What do you include in a project schedule?
275. How do you track a project?
276. How do you track risks? Tell me about the risks that your last project had.
277. What is the difference between a risk and an issue?
278. How do you define quality in project management?
279. What would you say if a team member asks why project management is needed? Why do we have to do all this documentation ahead of the real work?
280. What have you learned in obtaining your PMP that you are using in real-life projects?
281. What do you do if a team member presents a work product that you know for a fact is flawed or incomplete, but the team member insists it is completed and sound?
282. What would you do if a manager whose resources you are using keeps saying that all the documentation required by the project is getting in the way of actual progress?
283. What was your role in your last project?
284. What was the most interesting role you played in a project?
285. What do you do when a team member does not complete his/her assignment and has gone to another project?
286. Have you used Microsoft Project? How do you like it?
287. How do you verify that the requirements identified for a project are actually included in the final delivery to the users?
288. How do you verify that the requirements are correct and that they reflect what the users want?
289. What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses in the Project Management areas of knowledge?
290. What are the risks you had in your last project?
Source


291. What are the main objects of a project manager?
292. How do you perform Function Point Analysis?
293. What are project management tools? Mention some of them?
294. What are the main attributes to be possessed by a project manager?
295. How must the project manager react under pressured projects?
296. In what percentage or ratio must a project manager possess technical and managerial skills?
297. How often is learning process important for a project manager and why?
298. Explain the managerial features that must be possessed by project manager?
299. Mention some of the steps to be taken by project manager to reduce stress in the project and among.
300. What are the induction processes a project manager must plan for team members?
Source