Recent Technical Program Manager Interview Questions

Adib M. - "Situation: introduced to a new technology that I have never used before. I have used many different packaged software, tools and technologies and I can grasp things quickly. Lets assume this new technology is a Planning tool for TPM (Planr) Target: To get familiar with Planr, its use cases, learn it well enough to be able to use it Action: Here are some of the actions I would take to learn Planr well (1) Find documentation on Planr = various use cases, see screenshots, watch demos,"See full answer

DM - "Situation - I had 2 projects in hand. 1st - My primary project under my direct line manager, and 2nd - Under a dotted line manager. I committed to my 2nd project based on my assumptions and planning of the primary project's scope & timelines. For both these projects, I was the key resource. Unfortunately, we got some new findings in my first project, and it happened to be a case where management made an overcommitment to our business without gauging the assumptions correctly. This put pressu"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

Kegomoditswe R. - "oracle"See full answer

Anonymous Crayfish - "Let me tell you about a time when I solved a problem at my previous company (one of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies). This was an internship and I was coming with almost 2 years of experience and 2 semesters of my graduate program. My experiences have mostly been theoretical or with startups. I've never solved problems at scale. The first week at this team was slow and relaxed, it was just onboarding. The real work started from the 2nd week when I felt like I was pushed into the ocean with n"See full answer

David P. - "delete"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

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

Praniti S. - "My mistake: I seemed to immediately suggest tools I am familiar with rather than walking through the process of identifying candidate tool sets and prototyping each one"See full answer

Ravi K. - "voice"See full answer

Surbhi G. - "I would start by understanding the project requirements and creating a detailed plan with clear milestones. I’d allocate resources effectively and use project management tools to track progress. Following an iterative development approach, I’d ensure regular testing and reviews. Finally, I’d deploy the solution, provide support, and gather feedback to make any necessary improvements." 4o mini"See full answer

Chozhls - "Product planning requires a strategic approach that balances customer needs, market trends, and business objectives. Here's a structured framework I recommend: Discovery:Understand the Market: Conduct in-depth market research to identify customer needs, pain points, and competitive landscape. Define User Personas: Create detailed user personas to understand your target audience's behaviors, goals, and challenges. Analyze the Problem: Clearly articulate the core problem your product aims to"See full answer

Divya K. - "Explain how you implemented your telemetry and observability in previous projects."See full answer

Divya K. - "You will need to start from Browser and go all the way up to Analytic systems and methods. Everything needs to be covered"See full answer

Adib M. - "Ask if the quality aspect is negotiable? Clearly hoping it is not. Then move on to explain nicely about the iron triangle - scope, time, resources. With scope and resources fixed, the time would need to be variable unless the project is considered cookie cutter, the exact project has been done many times in the past. (which is unlikely). If time cannot be relaxed, then the scope should be variable."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