You're given a chance to pick a failed project and do it over. Walk me through your plan for success.
There is a multitude of reasons a project fails. In this question, the interviewer is assessing your ability to remove yourself from a situation to analyze it thoroughly. When positioning your response, think about how you would remain objective in your analysis. A successful answer should illustrate that you don't take failure personally and can instead focus on self-improvement.
"I would pick a previous project that failed because of the lack of prioritization. At the onset, leadership told us that this was going to be an open-ended pet project. They also had a few creative ideas for us to explore. I would assign team members tasks, but those tasks kept getting pushed down to prioritize other projects that were more profitable for the company. It finally got shoved after several months. In retrospect, I should have put my foot down at the beginning and asked for an ROI analysis to see if it was worth starting the project at all. There was no business case or clear goals. The problem was that I was too new to the company that I didn't feel very confident in asserting myself. I've since learned to bring up any disagreements I had with leadership, as long as I'm able to justify my position using facts."
