Practice 30 Microsoft Program Manager interview questions covering cross-team collaboration, technical trade-offs, and product strategy.
Question 11 of 30
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Karrie Day is a certified career coach and strategist with a passion for helping her clients define and reach their professional goals. She offers career advancement services such as brand development, resume writing and critiques, job search strategies,
Microsoft program managers are responsible for the creation, maintenance, and communication of program roadmaps. Interviewers ask this question to determine if a candidate understands the types of information they will be responsible for communicating through these important deliverables.

Karrie Day is a certified career coach and strategist with a passion for helping her clients define and reach their professional goals. She offers career advancement services such as brand development, resume writing and critiques, job search strategies,
Remember to demonstrate your understanding that a strategic roadmap for a program of work is different than a roadmap for a product or a project. Program roadmaps synthesize the work of multiple teams and projects together to communicate the big picture.

Karrie Day is a certified career coach and strategist with a passion for helping her clients define and reach their professional goals. She offers career advancement services such as brand development, resume writing and critiques, job search strategies,
"I have worked with a number of formats for developing strategic roadmaps. They have all been a little different and fully customized to show the information that was the most valuable to the users of the document. However, in each case, I consider the same bodies of work and milestones for consideration when developing a roadmap.
First, I break down my roadmap by workstream. I typically have a mix of technology-driven streams such as infrastructure, cloud, mobile, app, and support. When relevant, I include lanes that represent product activities such as marketing campaigns, launches, live events, or partner events. I visually demonstrate the major bodies of work and the timeframe and progress for each. I also show when major releases are scheduled. This helps to communicate interdependencies between teams.
Finally, I list major milestones. These may be company, competitor, product, or team-related. The goal is to list any significant dates that the various leaders I work with need insight into. It is important for each group to know when major events happen and how their work feeds into the process."
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Written by Karrie Day
30 Questions & Answers • Microsoft

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By Karrie