Technical Program Manager Behavioral Interview Questions

Anonymous Aardvark - "Recently, I had to make a decision that I could automate a part of a process now and help the operations team reducing 9 hours of manual work to 60 minutes for one client. The second option was to fully automate the end to end process that would take 4 weeks of development, but fully automate the process and that could be rolled out across the board. The process was to change the member's paperless preference to paper when a sent email gets bounced 3 times in a row and inform her with a paper"See full answer

Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer

Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer

Ross B. - "I most want to communicate a few principals of conflict resolution that I believe were integral in this situation, which are mutual respect, a results orientation, an unwavering focus on the user. To that end, here’s how I’d like to structure this answer: First, I’ll tell you about the project we were working on, to provide some background for you. Second, I’ll describe the disagreement. Third, I’ll describe how we arrived at a solution, and finally, I’ll discuss how those 3 conflict resolut"See full answer

Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer

Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Ayinde B. - "I was working for my friend building streams at venues across the Chicago land area for FGC (fighting game tournaments), I adjusted and engineered his equipment to be set up permanently that's until covid came around at least. I used OBS to give visual appearances to stream watchers. So we're talking about subscribe, follow, and donation notifications and things of that nature for viewers to know they contributed in one of those ways. I set up proper sign-up scheduling for participants to lock t"See full answer

Malay K. - "For any project based questions, it is important to structure your response clearly, showcasing your thought process, technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and how your work added value. Besides the STAR method, you can also use this kind of framework: 1. Start by selecting a relevant project (related to the role) Give the project background and what specific problem it solved. 2. Align the project's objective and your role Be specific about your role: were you the le"See full answer

Shiva P. - "When customer is not worried about quality but only worried about delivery"See full answer

Ashley C. - "I follow a variation of the RICE framework when prioritizing how I ship product features. I start by looking at: Reach: Because the customer segmentation across our product portfolio is so similar, I tend to hold a lot of weight on product features that will maximize our customer reach with a minimal LOE. Impact: After establishing which customer segments will benefit from the product feature, I determine the urgency and estimated impact on each customer segment based on customer i"See full answer

Ilakiya R. - " Design & Architecture Overview: The system was a scalable, cloud-based web application built to manage customer data and automate service requests. Frontend: React.js: Chosen for its component-based architecture, reusable UI, and fast rendering using Virtual DOM. Backend: Node.js with Express.js: Selected for non-blocking I/O, scalability, and rapid API development. Database: MongoDB: Used for its flexible schema, scalability, and ease of handling unstructured data. Authentication: JWT"See full answer

Saket S. - "I will divide my answer in 2 parts: Process I use for managing risks in any Project I will explain a real life situation where a Risk occurred and how I managed it Process for Risk Management can be broken down into 3 parts: Risk Identification: Risk identification is a team effort and is an ongoing process that happens throughout the Project. Technical Risks are usually identified during design/build/testing stage. I maintain a Risk register document to capture all the risks identified"See full answer

Umang S. - "In my role as a Product Owner, I was developing a platform for a logistics company. As a PO and that too of a digital agency, my work was mostly before-end-to-after-end, it would start from pitching, strategy, product management, launch, funding deck prep. In mid of the product management cycle, the client starts adding pressure to deliver way before the deadline, as they had found the PE firm that conceptually was ready to start funding discussion, since this was not scoped before the start,"See full answer

Ra R. - "In my time at Snapp! I was in charge of communicating the product backlog to our CEO. We had a shared Jira board that he had access to and I made specifically for him. One day he saw me in the office and said he doesn’t know anything about our backlog and that’s because I failed to communicate with him. I got upset at first because of the fact that I made the dashboard exclusively for him. But I tried to ask questions to understand his point of view in depth. He then mentioned he doesn't have t"See full answer

Zakery K. - "Conflict is a GREAT opportunity to really demonstrate that you care about someone and, through effective conflict resolution, build stronger authentic relationships with the people you work with. When faced with conflict, I prioritize understanding all perspectives involved. I start by actively listening to the other parties: asking clarifying questions to pinpoint the source of the conflict, reflecting back what I'm hearing to make sure I understand them correctly, and ultimately identify"See full answer

Pramod V. - "Referring to https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/23/15-strategies-for-balancing-competing-stakeholder-priorities/?sh=7c82aa68262f Understand the conflicting priorities and align it with the goal/ objectives and the company mission. Start with the Least Common Denominator between the conflicting priorities to come to a commonality and start from there to objectively approach the next imp priority Always keep communication on and be transparent with 'equality' an"See full answer

Adarsh S. - "Thanks for the question! This is one of my favourite topics because it’s at the core of what we do as PMs DAILY: making the complex simple to drive alignment. I’ve got a structured way to approach this, and I’ll use it to explain payment aggregators - like Plaid - and how they enable Open Banking, with a twist about a technical hiccup I’ve seen in practice. Let’s dive in. I start by assessing the audience. Say I’m talking to a marketing manager at Transak - someone sharp but not techni"See full answer

Harshit J. - "In my organization, I was given a initiative to improve the time spent by users on web application so that we can improve the quality of engagement on the website. Overview of a business model: We are a research organization that delivers where users (B2B clients) consume research content in form of research reports. Clients has specifically subscription for a year and if clients engage continuously and they spend more time on research they will retain. Success metrics: Improve time spe"See full answer

Ben G. - "Situation - A time I dealt with conflict while on a team was while I was working at Shopify on physical and digital gift card refund point of sale solutions. The situation was that we were dealing with complex technical constraints including not changing particular UI components behavior to act as they should be intended. On the refund screen, the existing design was using a toggle on the same screen to bring up a modal for gift card selection to either select digital or physical options. Thi"See full answer