A client wants a fixed price and fixed date, but your team works in agile sprints and the requirements are still unclear. How would you set up and run this project?

What the interviewer wants to hear

• Clarify vision, outcomes and high-level scope early
• Fix time and cost, flex scope with a prioritised backlog
• Contract terms that allow trading scope, such as change-for-free clauses
• Early discovery and frequent demos with the client
• Track with burnup and release forecasts
• Manage risk and escalate trade-offs early

Model answer

I would first run a short discovery to agree the vision, the outcomes that matter and a high-level backlog with rough sizes, so the fixed price is based on something real. Then I would make the contract fix time and cost but treat scope as the variable, with clauses that let the client swap items of similar size without a formal change, and a clear minimum viable scope. We would order the backlog with the client so must-haves come first. During delivery, we would demo working software every sprint so the client sees progress and can steer. I would track a release burnup showing done work against total scope and forecast ranges from velocity. When new items appear, I would make the trade-off visible straight away: something else moves down or the date or budget changes. Risks like integrations would be tackled early to reduce uncertainty.

More hard Project Manager questions

• You take over a project that is three months behind schedule and the team is demotivated. What do you do?
• Tell me how you would handle senior stakeholders with conflicting goals for the same project.
• How would you lead a project team spread across India, the UAE and Europe?
• Have you ever had to recommend stopping or changing a project? How would you approach it?
• A critical vendor has failed to deliver and your go-live is at risk. Walk me through your response.
• How do you give a reliable delivery forecast to executives when there is a lot of uncertainty?
• You join a program where every report is green, but you suspect it is in serious trouble. How do you find the truth and what do you do next?
• Your organisation is very traditional, with heavy governance and annual budgets, but leadership wants to become agile. How would you help a first project succeed?
• A regulator has set a deadline that cannot move, and your project is already behind. How do you make sure you comply on time?