Just before go-live, you discover you missed an important requirement. What do you do?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Take ownership and raise it immediately
- Assess impact and possible workarounds
- Present options to the project manager and sponsor
- Update documentation and tests
- Learn and improve the process
Model answer
First I would take ownership and raise it right away with the project manager and product owner, rather than hoping nobody notices. Then I would quickly assess the impact with the team: which users and processes are affected, whether there is a legal or financial risk, and how much effort a fix would need. I would also look for workarounds, such as a manual step or a temporary report. With this, I would present options, for example delay go-live, go live with a workaround and fix in the next release, or go live for a limited group first. The sponsor decides. Afterwards I update the requirements, traceability and tests, and in the lessons learned session I look at why it was missed, maybe a stakeholder group was not involved, and improve my approach.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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