F26 PM Interview + Deliverable!
Background
As a PM, you will be functioning as the main point of contact for all communication with the client as well as developing the high level goals and roadmap of the project.
In this process, there are two main steps: understanding your client’s needs and how to address them, and working with your Senior Software Engineer to determine a plan of attack on building your final product. This deliverable will allow you to showcase your ability to accomplish both of these tasks.
Take a look at the PM Role Outline + Expectations to gain a better understanding of what makes a PM! Think about how you can showcase these skills in your deliverable.
Interview: Mock Initial Client Meeting
After receiving the initial project proposal, a PM’s very first responsibility is to meet with their client to clarify the project details and gather enough relevant information to construct a detailed plan (i.e. a timeline and division of tasks) for accomplishing the project goals.
The interview will simulate this initial client meeting, conducted for this hypothetical project (proposal linked here) on which you are the PM. The DOEs will role-play as:
- The client (specifically, the client organization’s main contact-person for the project), to whom you will be asking project-related questions to clarify the project details
- Try to be as specific and intentional as possible with your questions! Think ahead and try to cover all aspects of the project and any potential obstacles so that you feel ready to take the lead on such a project!
- This is your opportunity to make sure you understand what the client is asking for. Make sure everyone is on the same page in regard to plan and expectations!
- You should be able to create a clear timeline for your project after this meeting!
- Your senior SWE, who is a source of technical experience that can help answer any technical/difficulty-related questions about the project
- Can provide hints/suggestions as to how you might implement project to guide your questions!
As the PM, you will be leading the discussion in the “client meeting”. The information gained in the first client meeting is critical for developing the project plan and semester timeline, which is the focus of the post-interview deliverable, so make sure to study both the project proposal and the post-interview deliverable before the interview.
Come to the interview prepared with an agenda of questions, comments, and/or topics about the project to discuss with the client/your senior SWE. Focus primarily on the client; the DOEs are always available to answer technical questions as “mock SSWEs” outside of the interview. We’ll spend 20 minutes discussing the project and answering your questions; make sure to take notes, as this information will be helpful for you to complete the project plan/timeline as part of the post-interview deliverable.
If you realize you need more client-related information about the project after the interview, just Slack the DOEs and we’ll answer! But try to clarify as much as possible within the client meeting itself.
What else will the interview involve?
- Behavioral questions (5-10 minutes)
- Logistics (time commitment, next steps)
- Questions from you!
Post-Interview Deliverable: Project Timeline + Scenario
This is not a task that’s intended to take unreasonable amounts of time — no need to spend more than 4-5 hours completing the prompt.
Context
The goal of this deliverable is to see how you prioritize work on different aspects of the project, and make decisions around situations that might happen during the semester. This will test your ability to understand technical projects, break them down into reasonable chunks, and create a cohesive plan for execution that is clear to others. It will also test how you respond to unexpected events such as a non-responsive SWE, change in project direction, etc.
Instructions
Part 1
< 2 hours
You’ll be responsible for creating a semester timeline plan that details the development and work assignment throughout the semester. We’ve linked a simple project planning doc that could be how you format your timeline (although feel free to choose any medium you’d like).
Some helpful notes: you’ll want to understand the various components of the technical product (ex: what APIs would we need to build) and plan out a tentative timeline that will test your ability to understand technical projects, break them down into reasonable chunks, and create a cohesive plan for execution that is clear to others and has enough context to be clear to someone just by reading it.
- Try to be as detailed as possible.
- What goals do you hope to reach every week? What are some actionable steps you can take at any given week to make sure you are on track?
- This will help you long-term!
Also note: Week 0 is typically the week of Orientation Day, project onboarding, and completing simple starter tasks for the team, so don’t expect to get any significant work done in Week 0.
Part 2
< 1 hour
Along with your semester timeline, give a brief, high-level description of the choices you made while creating the timeline. This can be in the form of a short write-up attached to your timeline or comments/annotations added over your timeline. Some things you may consider:
- Justification for why you decided to prioritize/deprioritize particular pieces of work (i.e. pre-midpoint goals, post-midpoint goals, stretch goals, anything left out of the project scope)
- Justification for the way higher-level goals are divided into smaller tasks
- Justification for how tasks are assigned amongst SWEs (e.g. how many SWEs to assign to a task, what task a SWE should do after completing their current one)
- The feasibility of main tasks (how long do you think it will take? how many people should work on it?)
- Things you consider essential vs less essential and could be pushed back if needed
- Anything else you’d like to point out!
Part 3
< 1 hour
As much as we wish everything always went according to plan, they rarely do. As a PM, you’ll be constantly faced with unexpected changes in the project scope and timeline. Being prepared to deal with these situations is one of (if not the) most essential skills of managing anything. As such, in this final part of the deliverable, choose two of the following scenarios and describe (in a paragraph/bullet form) the concrete changes you’d make to the project plan to accommodate it:
- Your team consists of some first-time SWEs. They are either new to being a SWE or have little-to-no experience with your project’s framework. What does this mean for your timeline? for the client? State any modifications you might make to your weekly agenda to facilitate and encourage SWE learning. State any considerations you might want to keep in mind as well as useful strategies you may decide to implement within your team.
- You assigned a SWE to a pretty essential task but they’re struggling to complete it. The why is ambiguous — either they’re not doing the work or the task is actually really difficult for them. State your assumptions + how you’d go about finding out the cause and show what this means for the timeline. Describe what your next steps could look like.
- One of the tasks you initially allocated 1 week to do turns out to be a lot more difficult. It’s been >3 weeks, and it’s still not complete. What does this look like for the midpoint and possibly the project as a whole? Explain any important decisions you may choose to take and provide an example of how this could be communicated with both your team and client.
- After your midpoint, the client decides on a shift in goals: they’re willing to have a more naive user interface in order to get a more mature model. To accomplish this, they want to automatically pull the current outside temperature and humidity from a weather API and incorporate it into the model. This means the user won’t have to input it themselves on the frontend. How will you incorporate this into your timeline, given what you’ve already completed up to the midpoint? Are there any features you need to de-prioritize or sacrifice?
Bonus (we just want to hear your thoughts! completely optional!):
- What is one activity/routine you might incorporate into your team meetings/environment to encourage SWE engagement and/or growth?
- What do YOU think is the most important quality for being a good PM?
Submission
Send an email to engineering@t4sg.dev subjected:
[F26 Lead Application] - ROLE - First and Last Name - Submission