TPM Questions

What To Expect In A Technical Program Manager Interview?

Having “outgrown” working the more technical aspects of a job, program-management candidates are ready to take on broader responsibilities. In short, they need just enough technical knowledge to understand how to make sound judgments regarding project estimates, resources, and risks, but they shouldn’t get so far into the weeds of technology that they’re mistaken for engineers or developers.

Job expectations often depend on the seniority of the role itself and the size of the department or organization. Still, there are basic questions common to TPM candidates, regardless. These might include:

“Can you walk me through the process of designing an e-commerce platform?” “Can you describe a time when you made a decision that affected the architecture of the system?” “Share your best experience with regard to problem-solving. What was your involvement?” “How will you define milestones and communicate them to all stakeholders?” “How will you identify risk, and how will you mitigate it? What are the different ways of identifying risks?” “What would you do if a specific project is failing or if it won’t meet the deadlines?” “How would you update 10,000+ servers in a real-world scenario without impacting the end customers?” “What are the important elements of each project phase?” “How will you kick off a new project?”

Example program management questions asked in TPM interviews

1. General / End-to-end questions

   Tell me about a time you had to manage a technical program from end-to-end
   How would you manage hypothetical project XYZ (e.g. replace discs in a data center)?
   What methodology do you use in your projects and programs?
   What makes a successful program manager?

2. Prioritization

   How do you prioritize your work?
   How do you make decisions?
   How do you deliver programs on a tight timeline and with limited resources?
   How do you prioritize and allocate resources when your team is too small?

3. Delivery

   What is a critical path in project management?
   How do you make sure you deliver quality outcomes in your projects?
   Describe and whiteboard a continuous deployment system. And a continuous build system.
   Compare the agile and waterfall methodologies.
   Imagine you find a critical bug in software the day before the release date. How do you handle the situation?

4. Kickoff / Sunset

   What's your process to kickoff programs?
   What's your process to sunset programs?
   You're joining a project with no timeline and which didn't have a kickoff. What do you do?

5. Planning

   How do you handle additional requirements in the middle of a project?
   How do you build a forecasting tool / document?
   How do you forecast a project with no history?

6. Risk

   How do you manage risks on projects?
   Tell me about a time you had to manage a significant risk on one of your programs?

7. Vendors

   How do you choose to build in house vs. to use a third party solution?
   What's your process to work with vendors on your projects / programs?

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