Have you ever had to recommend stopping or changing a project? How would you approach it?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Monitor the business case, not just the plan
- Gather evidence on benefits, costs and risks
- Ignore sunk cost; focus on future value
- Present options to the sponsor or governance
- Close properly and capture lessons
Model answer
Yes. On one project, a new regulation made a large part of the planned system unnecessary halfway through. My approach is to keep checking the business case, not just the schedule. When I saw that the benefits had dropped, I gathered evidence: the updated benefit estimate, the cost to finish, and the risks. I made the point that the money already spent is a sunk cost and the real question is whether the remaining spend is worth it. I presented three options to the steering committee: continue as planned, reduce the scope to the parts still valuable, or close the project. They chose to reduce scope, which saved a large part of the remaining budget. We then closed the removed parts properly, reassigned people and recorded lessons learned. Stopping work can be a success.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
More hard Project Manager questions
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- A regulator has set a deadline that cannot move, and your project is already behind. How do you make sure you comply on time?