Robert Svilpa

I would also add - promote information sharing - integrate fun activity and events into the weekly routine - promote mentoring and helping folks to achieve their career and stretch goals Being human and empathetic while promoting productivity is a winning combination that builds strong teams now and for the future.

Sometimes its best to work with an experienced coach who can help you prepare with specific questions - I myself have built a document containing many of the top level questions interviewers use and access in their company's interview question bank. Being able to tell your stories and stay on track without deviating and sidetracking is most important - communication is a qualifier for most jobs at any organization, and being crisp and clear in your message is needed to present yourself as being a master of comms.

Discussing architecture of a set of services or APIs that I participated in developing is how I would kick things off. Either a payment gateway module in Java I developed or some Python code used to develop training modules for AI/ML projects and how the object structures in the hidden layers were created. As a TPM it's important to be able to not just understand the very high level concepts, but the logic behind the designs along with dependencies the design has.

Depending on how much experience you have and how senior a TPM you are, answer this using a relevant story from your past. Keep it short and to the point, let the interviewer ask the questions that let you dive into the deeper details. It's very important to use your own experience to answer these questions - it demonstrates your readiness for the role you're applying for.

By the time you realize you're running out of time for the commitments you've made, it's too late to return to your original estimates & make changes. Now is the time to do critical analysis - refine/add tasks to existing stories in your backlog, in conjunction with executing a milestone post mortem - identify what went wrong & define concrete actions that will reduce the likelihood of it happening again. Then meet with your stakeholders & be transparent about the issues. Review your findings from the post mortem as well as the determinations of how to avoid this in the future. Provide 2-3 options depending on how firm the delivery date is, & recommend one that everyone can agree on. Accountability & transparency is key to success.

Learning from mistakes, and taking ownership of the project and the results. When things crash and burn regardless of everything you try to do to salvage value, doing an honest retrospective/post mortem and identify the missteps and failures not just that the team and stakeholders made but what you did or didn't do and hold yourself accountable for them, and call out the lessons learned is a trait interviewers explicitly want to hear about. Taking responsibility and being accountable also is indicative of strong ownership - holding yourself accountable and expecting more from yourself than those around you is a strong indicator of leadership and highly desirable.