Technical Program Manager Interview Questions
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Technical Program Manager interview questions shared by candidates
What is the hardest thing in moving a team to Agile?
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It's the people. Getting them to understand the Agile concept, then utilize it. Some developers never get "Fluid Requirements". They want final requirements and that's it. Less
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1. Communication. Frequent communication from the developers to ensure problems are raised and solved 2. Team needs to learn how to ship products with low-pri bugs Less
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- New team (everyone is still forming, norming, storming) so hard to estimate and collaborate - Distributed team members (works best if teams are collocated) - Strong, individual performers. Agile is about team work. - Not having a product owner - etc. Less
Estimate the number of spark plugs in the state of California.
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In fact the number is much larger than that. The average number of sparks per vehicle (in CA) is probably closer to 5.5. Four-cylinder vehicles are the norm in Europe, but in the US is common to see a higher percentage of V6 and V8 engines. For every gas (not diesel, as noted previously) vehicle in CA, working or not, you could estimate ~5.5 sparks. In addition, you have to account for all stored (i.e. not necessarily installed in vehicles) sparks. So if there are, say, 20k car shops in CA and each of them holds 100 sparks in stock, that's another 2M sparks. How about motorbikes? Probably 2.5 sparks on average? Any spark factories in CA? Finished product would count too. How many unsold/retired vehicles? I'd say the final number is well north of 100M. Less
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Cars, lawn mowers, edgers, and many other engines. Only going by cars is a huge underestimate. Less
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This is a fermi question. assuming there is one sparkplug per vehicle, and the number of sparkplugs used in other machinary pales in comparision to the number of vehicles in california, then you just need to get the ball park figure for the number of vehicles.. here's my shot at it.. CA population is roughly 40 million. I would estimate roughly 1 car per family.. so lets say about 15-20 million cars in CA (taking into account children). so ball park figure of 20 million. lets add 10 million more for commercial vehicles, motorcycles,trailers etc.. . I would estimate a total of 30 million spark plugs in the state of California. Less
what was most innovative technical work you have done
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We have developed Virtual Music Instruments for A.R Rahman. These are musical bands worn to hand and these generate midi tones and sent over Air (two variants Bluetooth, UWB). A third variant is again demonstrated by A.R.Rahman in many concerts, with technology based on camera. All of these variants are used by A.R Rahman in various concerts. Less
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We have developed Virtual Music Instruments for A.R Rahman. These are musical bands worn to hand and these generate midi tones and sent over Air (two variants Bluetooth, UWB). A third variant is again demonstrated by A.R.Rahman in many concerts, with technology based on camera. All of these variants are used by A.R Rahman in various concerts. Less
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We have developed Virtual Music Instruments for A.R Rahman. These are musical bands worn to hand and these generate midi tones and sent over Air (two variants Bluetooth, UWB). A third variant is again demonstrated by A.R.Rahman in many concerts, with technology based on camera. All of these variants are used by A.R Rahman in various concerts. Less
Q: Describe a situation where you disagreed with a superior about a project direction? How did you handle it?
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A: I picked an example and described how I would meet with the person directly to find out reasons for the opposition, discuss compromises and ultimately come to some type of resolution. I hate this type of question. I get it. They want to see how you work/think during certain situations. But seriously, this is inane. Less
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No coding questions. System design only at a very high-level.
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Actually, in our school in China, the IB DP Coordinator usually is the one assigned as the overall head in any school activity/program celebrating traditional Filipino or Chinese culture. There are times that problems/challenges arise during its preparation. Although the general instructions for the preparation were given, the general outcome does not coincide as planned because other homeroom classes had their own way of doing it not completely following, her general instructions. I had experienced that and the DP Coordinator called for my attention and she had a talk with me in her office. She even reprimanded being her immediate subordinate and a faculty member of the IB DP group in our school. During the time that she was talking and explaining, I kept silent and listened to her. Then after her, I completely and carefully explained my side and interpretation of her general instructions. The result was having an understanding of each other's side that showed respect to one another. Because we both do believe that we are both professionals when it comes to performing our tasks and responsibilities as teachers. How I responded to the situation to our misunderstandings of listening to my superior and airing or expressing my own interpretation showed that whatever challenges that may occur during the process of performing our responsibilities can be handled in a professional manner. I practice the attitude of listening and respecting other's views but at the same time presenting my own interprestion thru a clear and careful explanation of everything. Less
What is the difference between a risk and an issue?
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An issue is an actual problem which is (negatively) impacting your project. A risk is an unknown or potential future event -- can have negative OR POSITIVE impact (yes!) and may or may not occur. Less
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The key difference is an “issue” already has occurred and a “risk” is a potential issue that may or may not happen and can impact the project positively or negatively. We plan in advance and work out mitigation plans for high-impact risks. For all issues at hand, we need to act immediately to resolve them. Less
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This is classic project management professional terminology, which I knew. But since I'm not a PMP I didn't know the precise definitions so I didn't try to bluff it. In the real world the two things are so different that you can't really point out what the differences are. I was left doing a goldfish impression - mouth opening & closing. Less
A vaguest ion that was asked in a very general way, but which the interviewer clearly had specific answers he was looking for: "what are four components that are included in every specification doc". That sounded a lot like a thing you would find at Microsoft and similar large companies where process is more strictly defined. I answered poorly, I think, perhaps because I haven't worked with that kind of spec in a very long time, and not on any projects that worked out well. Smaller orgs/programs/projects (startups and incubators, for example, where the outcome is always in flux, as I am accustomed to working with) can have poor specs, specs that are centered on marketing, planning documents that are made up of wireframes and time-based stage gates. In any case, I choked a bit, and the interview kind of skated around and became more specific as we went along. I don't think that is inappropriate, though, because Amazon does value and expect the ability to deal with ambiguity.
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"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 Less
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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. Less
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What do you mean of Sepc ? If you mean a document which will be used for developing a feature of software i.e Use case sepc, user story, backlog item, It should contain at least following components : 1- Who is Actor / Role 2- What action will actor/role will take ? 3- Goal. Why actor do that ? what the software will provide for user. You may add acceptance criteria to the above list. Less
If you had to float an iPhone in mid-air, how would you do it?
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The correct answer is : "How long would it need to float for? What is minimum required distance from a fixed stationary object that the iPhone would need to meet or surpass for the requirement of "floating" to be satisfied? Are there any dependencies or blockers that you are aware of initially? By when do you need it to float by, and how many engineers will you be able to grant based on project plan sizing?" Its a critical thinking exercise, I do not believe they are looking for you to truly engineer a device to make iPhones float... Less
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Use airflow like the old beach ball on the end of a vacuum cleaner. Forget the string... they said "float". Less
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Magnetics, acoustic waves, transparent string with anti-reflective coatings...
Explain how you would design and implement a asking algorithm using Java.
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The interview question was "Explain how you would design and implement an algorithm for load balancing across a network using Java without the usage of a Centralized load balancing server." Less
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What is an a asking algorithm?
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add a field to the messaging for average load/latency/serving time, have each server advertise it's load by a moving average formed over the last several transactions with clients. Have that algorithm age off old data on a sliding timebase of 10s of seconds for heavy load to 4 hours or so for a light load, such that light usage over the longest time results in the lowest load score... Less
how would you trouble shoot a slow download of content on a Kindle device?
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* Client side * Reset device to see if problem persists * Use another device to check user's download speed. If no problem then: * Download another item or two on the client to compare speed. If all items are slow then: * Server side * Investigate average speed by device, area, cluster * Investigate logs Less
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1. Work with ATT to find out whether ATT has download issues. 2. Ask Amazon IT group to see whether Amazon servers have loadbalance issues. Less
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0. see if you can browse the internet with normal speed 1. check internet speed by speedcheck to see whether 3g or your wifi is working properly 2. check amazon servers is working properly. do a cluster check so see if nodes in cluster are down or not 3. see network usauge on kindle to see whether there is another process consuming too much bandwidth Less