Senior program manager Interview Questions in United States

Description of the current state, problems in the current state, Description of proposed state, advantages of proposed state.

"what are four components that are included in every specification doc" This question is insane, and I would hate getting an interviewer that asks such a question. Correct answer can be: "1. Title, 2. Author, 3. Requirements, 4. Version". If the title "requirements doc" is not there, maybe it is not a requirement doc. Specific sections are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_requirements_document

The toughest interviewer with the "4 components" question was a dev, in fact. The TPM screen was not so academic, more about challenges and solutions, philosophy, team fit, familiarity with the specific technology and business. That was definitely the screen that didn't go well, although he was wicked smart and wasn't just trying to mess with the candidate or anything.

Every interview is different so many responses can fit. It often takes many interviews at Microsoft to find a fit.

Anwer will vary from person to person. Describe an ideal/dream day at work: For me ideal day and dream day is the day when I get some recognization for my work or got a bonus or co-worker told me how I made the positive impact in their life and that makes me happy. Describe a time when you were and were not successful at driving feedback into the product group: This issue commonly in a project where the sprint backlog is not successfully or clearly transpired to the scrum team. A miscommunication can lead to wrong product or sometimes developers cooperation also makes it easy or hard to have a successful driving feedback into the product. For me sometimes team internal arguments on how the product should be built etc made me not successfully drive feedback into the product and that lead to one high value item missed to impress the customer. Finding a good techno-functional team is crucial. Do you think social media should be considered for gathering feature related feedback? Yes absolutely. the primary reason Microsoft acquiring linkdin is to gather that feedback liaison with top C-Level folks to deliver the products or features. I have seen companies like salesforce constantly take feedback from its forums and implement those to their products. have you ever been a feature PM in your past work experience? Yes I have been a MVP Most valuable employee in my company. That for my both technical work as well as PM work not just PM work. Its very difficult for a PM to feature inside a technology company where they feel technical folks are their assets. Google / Facebook etc need people who are technically sound to be a PM however traditional companies like HP/IBM they separate those roles. A PM need to be strong in PM and a Developer needs to be strong in Technology. Both methods has advantages and disadvantages.

A junior Product manager is the owner of a specific product feature (Highest Value Item) working closely with the external business and internal team members to make sure the feature successfully implementing the High-Value Item. As mostly junior product managers are the new hire with a strong passion to excel in the technical and functional field the only piece of advise they need is to have good listening skills and improve on communication skills to work on the matrix type organization. Mostly Jr. product managers will be working in a matrix organization where communication plays an important role.

Always know the 'Why' behind every feature (What) you set out to build and deliver. Knowing the Why sets you up with a vision and helps you see the best fit solution (How) much more clearly. And put you in the right mindset i.e. of the user for 'whom' you build the feature.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Microsoft HoloLens?

This is a tough question. I assume the question is "locomotion to own as a program manager" that means we gave you a train or bus or some type of locomotive to own what should you do as a PM. I would first ride the locomotion and see what issues it has. I will prioritize the high-value items and then will start working in Plan-Develop-Inspect-Adopt to implement the High Value Items. The high-value items could brakes not working well.

Never allowed the kiosk from being out of sync with the database. No orders even presented to user that could not be fullfilled

Kiosk losing connection to remote DB is not new it always happens due to various factors such as link down because of bad weather etc. The solution to this problem is to have a local memory or a personal db for each Kiosk that stores the information and try to sync with remote corporate db when the link is up. You see this type of issue common on big supercenters where cash register goes down because the POS computer can't make a remote connection to corporate db. People waiting in line are frustrated to have the items billed. The solution is possible if Kiosk vendors are willing to spend little extra for a robust application.

Question is about "set up kiosk when connection is lost", not "how to design kiosk to deal with connection lost event"

whats a TIP?

sorry, i commented in the wrong post :S

Time in Process

Working with Microsoft

I want to see growth in management areas may be director of Microsoft, then VP then CEO. Make sure you tell you want to grow.