How to interview a project manager
Mike O’Connor Mike@haven.com www.haven.com We’ve all relied on project managers to get important things done “on time, on budget and meeting our needs”. But this may be the first time that you as a Y2K community organizer type person have ever had to actually find out how a project is going. Are you having a little trouble getting comfortable with the answers you’re getting from the project manager types? This is a problem that leaders and customers of project managers have faced for a long time. I would hate to have been the person leading the project to build the pyramids – I have the feeling those project review meetings may be where the phrase “kill the messenger” came from. I decided to write this up after sitting through a Y2K public hearing recently. After it was done, I realized that I hadn’t asked all the questions I should have. That feeling you get when you think up the perfect thing to say, 10 minutes after the conversation is over. I hope that this little list of questions becomes a part of your toolkit if you are a community activist trying to get accurate information about the Y2K efforts of an organization that delivers critical services to your locale. This interview is intended to give you a set of questions you can ask this person when your intuition tells you “there’s something fishy going on”, and you want to probe beneath the happy talk you’ve been hearing (or reading). These questions are not in order, nor should you ask them all. Rather, they are here to stimulate your thinking when you know you’re puzzled, but are “stuck” on how to get to the bottom of things. Good project managers will have answers to these questions (or honestly state that they need to get back to you with information they don’t have with them at the time you’re meeting with them) and will be truthful when they say “that’s a darn good question”. Good project managers will also thank you (perhaps through gritted teeth) for speaking their language and will welcome the chance to tell you what’s up. Bad project managers (or the PR/executive person who’s representing the project manager) will waffle, or launch into technical bafflegab, or try to tell you that this stuff is “pretty complex”. Don’t you believe it –you’re the customer, it’s their job to set you straight and you have the right to hear their answers in the English language. This document has too many contributors to name, but special thanks goes to Steve Chelstrom who asked me some of these questions a long time ago and kept me out of a lot of trouble by so doing. Please feel free to distribute this gizmo. All I ask is that you preserve the title and my contact info at the top. Please contact me if you’re reading this document and have some more questions for the interview. Mike O’Connor September, 1998 St Paul, MN
1) Are you really the project manager? Or are you somebody else, who’s representing the project manager? 2) What are the things you’ll deliver with this project when it’s complete? Is that list of things pretty clear? Has it changed at all since the project started? 3) What’s the approach you’re taking? Are you using a predefined approach to this type of project (sometimes called “methodology”)? Or are you inventing your work steps from scratch? If this is a subproject of a larger effort, where does it fit in to the overall scheme of things? 4) Has the scope of the project changed)? What’s the current definition of “out of scope” (or “not included”)? If project scope is growing and your team is responsible for delivering more stuff, do you have the resources (people, money and things) to get the new larger job done? If the scope is narrowing, why – and what is happening with the things that have been taken out of your project? 5) Do you have review and approval problems? Are you getting the attention of the higher ups? Are things slowing down because decisions aren’t being made quickly enough? What are you doing about that? 6) Will target dates be missed? How do the target dates you’re presenting today compare with the dates set forth when the project started? Are they slipping? Are you still going to make your critical deadline dates? 7) Are there problems with estimates? When projects are planned, estimates are made of resources, dates, deliverables and so forth. How are those estimates holding up? Were they accurate? Overly optimistic? Too conservative? 8) Are there technical problems? Has this project suffered technical “surprises” that (favorably or unfavorably) impact cost and schedule? 9) Are there resource problems? Are you able to get the people you need, when you need them? What about equipment and parts? What about money? Are there other resources that are acting as constraints and slowing you down? 10) How well is the team holding up? Are people in good spirits? Are they working together smoothly? Are they well rested, or “burning the candle at both ends”? Have you had a pretty stable team or has there been a lot of turnover? Are these people employees or contractors? 11) Are there any readiness issues? Is your organization ready to take on the project? If it isn’t (or wasn’t) ready, have you taken any steps to help people get ready? How about people and organizations outside of yours – are they behind you, or ho-hum about this project? What have you done to get them ready?