Technical Program Manager Interview Questions

Harshita G. - "Is the "idea" I'm trying to sell something new or built off an existing service/product we offer? Interviewer: Let's assume new. Assuming it's a proper sit-down meeting with senior management to go over the proposal, here is what the slide deck would contain. Introduction/Description of the problem I'm trying to solve: Before proposing a solution, it is important to first identify the problem we're trying to solve. This section would contain the description of the problem/pain poi"See full answer

Shashikant A. - "I followed STAR format"See full answer

Arshia I. - "General response: Apple’s approach to delivering seamless, personalized experiences through data, while upholding a strong ethical commitment to privacy, resonates with my own values. I want to contribute to projects that optimize user engagement and create meaningful interactions on a large scale, and I believe Apple is the ideal place to make that impact. Tailored to the team: Talk about the product, its impact internally, and the customer."See full answer

A R. - "I liked the role of a TPM due to the opportunity to contribute to the multiple dimensions of software product development. As a TPM I need to collaborate with multiple teams like Engineering, Product, and other business functions, but I also get the opportunity to contribute to the technical aspects of the program/project. I can use my sharp analytical skills to identify/anticipate problems, and leverage my problem solving skills to unblock the teams. I orchestrate multiple teams effort to del"See full answer

Srini K. - "performance issues and sudden spikes on input requests by scaling techniques and optimization."See full answer

Scott S. - " Functional Requirements Content Ingestion\: Ingest news articles from various sources (websites, social media, etc.). Handle different types of content (text, images, videos). Content Analysis\: Extract and preprocess text from articles. Analyze the content for potential indicators of fake news. Model Training and Prediction\: Use machine learning models to classify content as fake or real. Continuously improve models with new data and f"See full answer

Push S. - "STAR story weaved around the project 0 to 1 execution with all the technical tradeoffs, issues, and success metrics involved."See full answer

Aswath B. - "basic drew the diagram"See full answer

DM - "Clarifying my assumptions first, i.e. "Technical contributions are not just writing or reviewing code". Answer : My contributions to any program I lead as a TPM are as follows : Inputs towards design, architecture review, mapping requirements to the proposed design, reviewing the implementation strategy w.r.t scalable solution, Writing core user-centric test scenarios, Validating proposed design vs implementation estimates vs initial planning. etc... Example : Situation: We are a"See full answer

Saket S. - "Agile processes have been a game changer for Software development projects from last 2 decades. But there are situations where Agile practices don't work very well and demand a workaround. Some of those scenarios are mentioned below: No Project Plan or Status reports: Agile Project team does not produce formal project plans or status reports unlike Traditional SDLC Projects. Sometimes it is hard to represent project status to senior executives who are interested in the overall status and risk"See full answer

Shiva K. - "Increasing a development team's productivity by 25% requires a multifaceted approach that addresses various aspects of team dynamics, processes, and individual performance. Here's a structured approach to tackle this challenge: Assess Current Productivity Levels: Before implementing any changes, it's crucial to understand the current productivity levels of the team. This can be measured through metrics such as velocity (for Agile teams), time-to-market, defect rates, etc. **Identify Bo"See full answer

Shasleen I. - "Clarifying Questions Who are we? Traditional elevator company or a new age tech startup Assumption: New age tech based elevator company Any constraints: Budget, etc. Assumption: No What kind of a skyscraper building: Assumption: Commercial. Includes office spaces as well as others Any particular goal with respect to building this elevator? Design best in class elevator providing the best user experience for passengers User needs - Users have the following needs when"See full answer

Adib M. - "(1) Discovery: Get to know the stakeholders, PM, Engg team via 1-1. Attend project status meeting where either you are introduced to the stakeholders or actually run it with the goal being to introduce yourself and that you will be catching up on the state of the project in time of the next meeting Understand the Goals of the project and its impact on team and enterprise (2) Planning: Based on current velocity/ burn-rate, estimate what % of the project would be complete at 100% resource uti"See full answer

Shuchi A. - "A few months ago I joined a micro-services platform engineering team as their manager, at that time my team was struggling to deliver towards an upcoming production deadline for a customer facing product. Production date had been moved 5 times already and there were about 40% of product features which were remaining to be tested and signed off to move to production . I was made responsible to deliver the release of this product within the deadline and turnaround the software delivery throughput."See full answer

Scott S. - " Project Overview: Real-Time Risk Management System Objective The goal was to develop a real-time risk management system capable of processing and analyzing large volumes of trading data to provide near-instantaneous risk assessments. This system was crucial for enabling traders to make informed decisions while managing their exposure to various market risks in real-time. Complexity Factors 1. \\Data Volume and Velocity\\ \\High Throughput:\\ The system needed to ha"See full answer

Anonymous Capybara - "using a relational database isn't a good choice for this system! we need more availability here than consistency (CAP theorem)"See full answer

Amit A. - "When I look to join a company, I think of long term association. Hence, I put a lot of focus on the team that I am going to work with, the culture, the value that I will add to the company & the opportunities for me to learn & grow. Microsoft is one of the pioneers in the tech industry touching the lives of many corporate and consumer clients and helping them to achieve more. To answer your question specifically, i would say -: Microsoft will provide me a platform to work with some of the sma"See full answer

Tanu M. - "I always look at the project from three angles, Scope, Schedule, and Cost. To measure the success of the project we also have to look at the other factors, other than the scope, schedule and cost. Here are some of the factors I look at while measuring the success : Metrics : While defining the Goal of the program, we also define the metrics. To assess whether the goal is getting achieved or not, we need to measure the metrics i.e whether the metrics of the program are getting hit or not. For e"See full answer

Balaji G. - "My Answer. Please let me know your feedback. I have led many projects throughout my career. So, whenever I lead the project, I first try to clarify the goals and values delivered. For example, I was in charge of Data Analytics projects at my employment at a Startup. The team’s goal was launching the MVP. First, I discussed with the CEO to define the clear goal and scope for each of the projects. Next, I identified all the key stakeholders and received their inputs on the project's different a"See full answer