Describe a time when you had to work with a challenging stakeholder.

Remember to focus on the operating or business impact on your program and how you improved your stakeholder relationship in your response. Interviewers are aware that personal conflicts between program managers and stakeholders can occur, but these examples should be excluded from your response as they might be poorly received by the interviewer.

"I was asked to step into a program manager role for a program of work that was perceived as failing. The goals had been defined previously and the program sponsor was convinced that the technology teams were not aligned and would not meet their goals.

My first step was to meet with the technology project managers and the previous program manager to understand the history of the program. It turned out that they were lacking expertise in a major solution area for the program, and they decided to work first on an area that they understood while they picked up the knowledge they needed to take on the rest of the program. Most of that work involved developing the infrastructure for integration with other products that would not be needed until much later in the process. They indicated that the sponsor did not understand why this made sense and that he was mad that it was taking so long to get the working product out.

I then met with the sponsor and his management team to get their perspective. They echoed what the tech teams had shared and said that they were unaware that they would need to invest so much to get so little in return. I let them know I understood why they would feel frustrated and asked if they knew why things were being developed in this way. It turned out that the communication between these groups was poor, so I explained the thinking behind the original plan. They did their best to understand but stood behind their opinion that the program was failing. The sponsor let me know his confidence was lacking, but his team would offer any resources I could use to help us collectively deliver on time.

I scheduled a series of meetings to reevaluate the product backlogs for the technology teams. We held high-level user story mapping sessions to reprioritize the backlogs in a way where the teams could quickly deliver something of use to our customers. I also set up a steering committee meeting series with the project managers, the technical leads, the sponsor, and the managers in his area. I committed to regular communication of progress, transparency of any delays, and facilitation of collaboration across subject matter experts. The sponsor indicated that his team felt heard, and they appreciated having greater insight into the development process.

With the new release plan in mind, we were able to incrementally deliver valuable and working pieces of the product for the sponsor's team to use and test while we worked to get everything else up and running. I made sure we continued to properly communicate and mitigate risks as we continued. We ended up delivering the mobile and web versions on time and the sponsor was very appreciative that the concerns of their team were heard and addressed."