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Question: Tell me about a time when you assisted a colleague in his work. What was the result?

Answer:

Sure. I really enjoy helping others on the team, especially when they’re stuck and not sure how to move forward.

S – Situation:
Once, someone on a neighboring team was struggling with a production issue for a few days. I noticed that he seemed frustrated and wanted help, but didn’t quite know how to ask.

T – Task:
After finishing my work early one day, I proactively messaged him on Teams and offered support. He was happy, but mentioned he wasn’t even sure how to describe the problem clearly.

A – Action:
So I sat down with him and tried to understand the issue. He told me that after one of his code changes went live, a dropdown component in our shared UI broke — its layout was completely messed up, even though his change didn’t touch that component directly.
I helped him debug the issue step by step. After ruling out rendering or layout bugs, I noticed the problem was actually due to a CSS variable conflict — the styles weren’t properly isolated, which caused unexpected overrides.
Together, we fixed the CSS scoping issue and verified the dropdown worked as expected.

R – Result:
The bug was resolved and the fix was shared with the wider team via email, to prevent similar issues in the future. My teammate was really grateful, and after that, our collaboration improved significantly.

There's no single "best" way to prioritize a backlog, as the most effective approach depends on your specific context. However, here are some common methods and factors to consider:

Prioritization Techniques:

• Value vs. Effort: This method involves scoring each backlog item based on its perceived value to the user or business and the effort required to develop it.  Items with high value and low effort are prioritized for development first.

• MoSCoW Method: This prioritizes items based on urgency and importance.  MoSCoW stands for Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, Won't-have. Must-have items are critical functionalities, while Could-have are desirable but not essential.

• RICE Scoring (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort): This method assigns scores to each item based on factors like the number of users it impacts (Reach) and the level of confidence in its positive outcome (Confidence). This provides a more nuanced view than just value and effort.

Factors to Consider:

• Business Goals: Align your backlog with your overall product vision and business goals. Prioritize items that directly contribute to achieving those goals.

• User Needs:  Understand your user base and what problems they face. Prioritize backlog items that address the most critical user needs.

• Market Trends: Consider current market trends and how your product can stay competitive. Backlog items that capitalize on new opportunities might be prioritized.

• Dependencies:  Some backlog items might be dependent on others being completed first. Factor in these dependencies when prioritizing.

• Technical Feasibility:  Consider the technical feasibility of each item. Highly complex items with high risk might be de-prioritized in favor of more achievable tasks.

In my early days as Program Manager, I managed a project for one of our main customers. This project had a very tight schedule and I promised to deliver the first EVT samples in 3 months.

It was my responsibility to ensure everything would be completed on time, and achieve the quality standards defined by the program and inside the budget approved by leadership.

Unfortunately… when I started to deep dive into the project and analyze all the technical details, I realized that it was not possible to get the prototypes ready on time. I missed the deadline by 2 weeks. I felt bad at that time because I failed, so I immediately started to work on a new feasible schedule trying to mitigate the problem. In addition, I arranged a daily opening and closing meeting with the core team to monitor all activities. The root cause of the problem was a delay in some component's delivery and I also ignored one of the Reliability tests defined by Engineering.

So I highlighted the problem to my manager and I shared with him my new plan. I explained the situation to him and I shared the new timeline that I could meet. Then we worked together to commit to the new delivery date. So I learned a lot from that situation, now I’m always adding some buffer to my project schedules and I work more closely with core team members. But the most important learning was, how important is to be honest and raise your hand on time if something goes wrong.

What I hope to achieve in my product management career is creating lasting value for the planet. I hope to have a significant opportunity to create technology and release innovation that improve's the quality of people's lives, the efficiency in which we move, exist and advance humanity as a whole.

I was having a team member, who was technically strong, but when it came to gelling with the team members, he was having problems. His comments/feedback for the technical artefacts, or for ones understanding of a problem, was showing people in a bad light. Team members were apprehensive, working with him. People started to unplug themselves while that person was around. I could sense that, the team’s engagement had started to wane. If that had continued, we were at risk of losing that person from the team.

I initially un-plugged him from the team discussions and meetings and started to have a daily sync-ups with him. Sensitised him about working as a team and how successful teams thrive in the organisation. Made him enrol for some trainings like - Seven habits of highly effective people. Recommended that training mainly because of the focus it lays on - personal change, collaborations with the team etc.

Then he started to show empathy towards the team members, started to mingle with team, started to give constructive feedbacks for the technical contributions and started to show respect to the fellow team members. The bridge that was created, started to disappear. And we finally made him part of all the discussions and meetings and today, he is one of the go-to person in the team.