Describe your approach to prioritizing project work.
This is an important question aimed at understanding how a project manager views demand, value, and order of operations. This question may be asked in an interview because the ability to formulate an intelligent strategy that properly prioritizes competing needs is imperative to success.
Stakeholder and client requirements experience high rates of change and require flexibility. Remember to include a variety of factors to consider within your response and indicate that you understand the importance of each is relevant to the specifics of the situation involved.
"One of the first things I consider when prioritizing project work is the alignment of the requests to the goals of the initiatives I am working on. Items that serve more than one goal or have a large impact with minimal effort move to the top of the list.
Additionally, there is an order of operations that needs to be considered and dependencies must be taken into account. For example, I cannot release a solution that is dependent on the work another team has not yet completed.
I have encountered less frequent considerations such as stakeholder happiness, or customer support issue resolution, but the overarching deciding factor in determining how to move forward in any of these situations relies on understanding the value stream of the business and the impact any proposed changes would have."
