Tell me about a time when you experienced a conflict with a project manager.

Remember to select a scenario in which the conflict had a professional aspect to it. While personal conflicts happen within the workplace, it is best to focus your response on conflicts based on topics such as budgetary constraints, conflicting business needs, timing issues, etc. Also, remember to demonstrate your ability to empathize with the parties involved. Technical program managers often represent the needs of others and bridge disparate groups together. Companies value candidates with the soft skills necessary to understand the needs of all sides and facilitate valuable solutions.

"I once managed a project to integrate a scheduling and operations system with our financial ERP system. The goal was to feed customer purchase data into the billing module so that we could avoid duplicative data entry and further automate the billing process.

The team I managed followed scrum mixed with several custom practices that made sense for our team. The PeopleSoft team we were partnering with followed waterfall. The working and management styles of our two teams were very different and we needed a way to bridge our teams together.

The program manager for the PeopleSoft group demanded that we handle our project under their methodology. She had never used an agile approach before and refused to consider it. The project manager from their side was more open to the idea, so I met with him to discuss how we would blend our two approaches to iteratively develop our solution and deliver the final product. I agreed to mentor their resources on the process while providing the status and financial reporting that their PMO required.

We presented the idea to his program manager and her senior management along with support from our customers and my management. They appreciated our thoughtful proposal and valued the collaborative mentoring opportunities it offered. The project was a major success, and the financials teams began transitioning some of their projects to agile and hybrid methodologies as a result. The program manager who was initially against the idea thanked me for not openly challenging her and for developing something that honored both sides."