Program Management:
Planning, directing and coordinating the activities of designated programs to ensure that goals and objectives of the program are accomplished within the prescribed time frame and budget parameters, by performing the following duties personally or through subordinate supervisors. All contract items in the SOW (Statement of Work) to include team members’ mandatory government training, clearances and attendance.
Desired skills:
Entry level:
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering or business administration.
- Preferred: 1+ year of experience in Project/Program Management, 1+ year of experience in Project/Development Engineering.
- Experience with analyzing and managing data on product, category and market performance.
Mid-level:
- 2 + years’ relevant of Client Management experience.
- 5-7 years’ of industry experience.
- Proven track record in business P&L management, financial concepts and contract law.
- Experience in developing executive level customer relationships including good negotiation, presentation and communication skills.
- Experience using multiple project management approaches/disciplines including Waterfall and Agile or Scrum, and a strong understanding of the PMI principles and PMBOK(Project Management Body of Knowledge).
Senior level:
- Bachelor’s degree (B. A.) in Engineering or closely related field AND MBA – both are a must.
- 5+ years of project management experience.
- Agile development expertise.
Preferred Requirements
- Project Management Certification (minimum of working towards completion of PMI certification).
- Proven experience managing ERP implementations in a client facing role (Dynamics- AX, GP, SL, NAV, CRM; NetSuite, SalesForce, Oracle, SAP, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Ross, BaaN, QAD etc).
License or certification: PMP, Program Management Professional (PgMP), Management Institute (PMI) Certification.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
- How would you resolve conflict and ambiguity in a project?
- What are the most common reasons that projects fail? What is your definition of project failure?
- When having to monitor different projects, how do you prioritize them?
- If you were assigned a program with a 6-month deadline, how would go about planning and delivering outcome?
- Imagine you’re halfway through the completion of a program when there’s a change in the company’s business strategy or objectives. How would you handle this?
- What does a program manager do that project managers don’t?
- What’s the role of technology in program management?
- Which metrics do you use most frequently?
- What’s your experience with program charters?
- Are you familiar with the PMI code of ethics?
- What would you use Six Sigma for?
- Why is change management important for this role?
- How do you avoid scope creep?
- How do you keep up with industry trends?
- Tell me about the biggest challenge you’ve faced while managing a team of project managers.
- How did you measure the success of deliverables in your last program? How did you choose the best metrics?
- Have you ever had to deal with a program that was falling behind schedule?
- Have you ever faced a communication problem while managing a program? Who with and how did you resolve it?
- Tell me about a time you found it difficult to negotiate with a sponsor/stakeholder. What did you do?
- What is your Risk Strategy? / What Are Your Problem Solving Techniques?
- How do you deal with Ethical Dilemmas?
- What are the advantages of grouping projects under the program?
- How do you manage your Sponsors?
- How do you budget for a Program?
- What creative problem-solving techniques do you use?
- What are project constraints? Give a few examples.