• How many projects do you handle simultaneously?

4

• What was the largest project you have worked on in terms of people and duration?

10 team members, 1.5 year

• What is your preference Agile or Waterfall?

Agile (Kanban)

• Any experience working with a startup company?

90% of all projects that I did were startups

• Any experience working with a SaaS/ product company?

Only as a software development outsourcing vendor

• Why did you choose Project Management as your career?

I'm good at solving problems

• What do you do as a Project Manager day to day?

  • I do:
    • Gathering requirements, deliverables, and timeframes from stakeholders
    • Agreeing on priorities with clients
    • Planning resources
    • Producing reports for management (e.g., performance metrics)
    • Communicating frequently with sponsors and stakeholder
    • Planning around your team’s skills to ensure end success
    • Adhering to the critical path and having a plan to mitigate issues

• What makes a good project manager? Give examples

  • 3 examples: PM is good if\when:
    • you ask any teammate "do you know what the goal of the iteration is?" and they respond "yes"
    • you ask his client (stakeholder) "what is the team doing the next 2 weeks? and 2 weeks after that?" and they respond "Feature X and Feature Z because they are on of our prioritized product backlog"
    • you do not have to ask everyone what they're working on at the moment because a task board is regularly updated by every teammate

• What is good communication? Give examples

  If both sides of a conversation reach a meeting's goal, this is good communication.

  Techniques to use to make a meeting effective.

  Listening:

  • mirroring
  • paraphrasing
  • clarifying statements and questions that you didn't understand well
  • not interrupting in the middle of a speech
  • making notes and minutes
  • ask open-ended questions, not close-ended

  Being listened to:

  • in the end of every statement re-confirm if it makes sense for your interlocutor (check in on whether they're following or fell asleep)
  • observe one's body language in reaction to what you're saying (eyebrows, eye movements, cheeks, forehead, lips)

  Two marker-phrases to check if you're communicating on an issue: when one says "that's right" - they do agree with what you're saying, when "you're right" - can be translated as "you are completely wrong but I don't want to argue so I'll nod like I agree with you".

• What is bad communication? Give examples

  • one-way communication - only one speaks, everybody else only listens, no feedback from and to speaker, no opportunity to speak out or bring a constructive idea to the discussion
  • when giving critique, it goes only in one flavor, negative.
  • getting personal
  • passive aggression
  • chatting with somebody in your laptop while at a meeting
  • when nothing changes in behavior of all people engaged in a meeting after it is completed

• What failures have you had in projects you’ve run, and what have you learned from them?

Once, discussing next phases for a roadmap of one of my projects, I and my client started to discuss a deadline that was of utter importance for him which he couldn't underscore more , but I failed to notice that emphasis and kept saying "no, meeting this deadline is not possible, we can complete this scope only a month later, and there are no other options to make our team meet this unrealistic date".

Lesson that I learnt is simple: always give options, at least 3, because there are no unsolvable situations with only one inevitable end.