Leadership Self-Assessment (full)

This page contains the full version of the assessment. It has 67 scenario-based, multiple-choice questions. Answering the questions needs focus, and it usually takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours. If you prefer, you can take the mini assessment instead.

You can only submit the assessment when you’ve answered all questions. If you’ve answered some of them and need a break, you can leave the page open and return to it later. However, note that we don’t save your partial answers, and if the page is closed, you may have to start from scratch.

This assessment is not initiated by a coach and won’t share your answers with third parties. When you reach the end of the form on this page, the result will be shown immediately, and you don’t have to submit your email address or provide any other extra information.

The assessment starts below this line. Good luck!

You’re managing a team of 8 people in a project. Your team has been working on a deliverable for 17 days now, and you forecast it to finish in 2 days. However, the project manager has sent you a new deliverable to build urgently. The estimate is that this deliverable would require 20 to 30 days to be finished.

What would you do?

I’ll pause work on the current deliverable and have the team switch to the new, urgent one.
I’ll have the team finish work on the current deliverable and then work on the new, urgent one.

In a meeting with the project’s customer, a customer representative gives you a sarcastic remark that seems completely sexist and racist. The sexism and racism of the comment seem to be intentional. That makes you very angry, and no matter how much you try, you can’t calm yourself down. What would you do?

As calmly as possible, I’ll stand up and say, “I believe this meeting is done here. I’ll contact you tomorrow to talk about what happened.” Then I’ll leave the room. I’ll follow up on it the next day when I’m not so angry, or even later, if I need more time to calm down.
As calmly as possible, I’ll explain how unacceptable their comment was and that I expect an apology and a guarantee that such a thing won’t happen again in the future.
I won’t say anything, but I’ll contact that person’s manager after the meeting to complain about what happened.
I won’t say anything, but I’ll contact my manager after the meeting to discuss the issue and see what can be done about it.
I’ll ignore it because that’s the best way to make it go away without hurting me more.

You’re the manager of a construction project. One of your teams is involved in many of the electric designs in the project. According to the company procedures, they have to send every design document to the electric department to be reviewed by one of the experts and approved by the head of the department. The manager of that team has come to you, saying that the approval procedure delays their work significantly.

What do you think?

All project work must be done by the project team and not by external people such as those in the electric department.
This is an example of bureaucracy and its negative impact on the project’s progress. We need to be more flexible and practical.
This is fine; it’s natural for the heads of department to be involved in approvals.
Let’s check with the head of the department to see if it’s possible to adjust it without causing quality problems.

You’re the manager of a project for building a multi-functional building for an external customer. You are building everything based on the designs that the customer has given you, but you still have an internal architect to make sure everything is fine. One day, your architect comes to you and says the following:

“I’ve noticed that the building has no wheelchair-accessible entrance. It’s always possible to have a portable ramp ready if someone needs it, but it’s not perfect and shows that the design was not inclusive enough. My suggestion is to add a ramp to the entrance for accessibility.”

The comment seems right to you. While the two of you were still talking about it, the customer representative came to your office unannounced, and the three of you started discussing the idea of adding a ramp. Because of the extra cost and time involved in adding the ramp, the customer representative rejects the idea.

What would you do?

I accept it and move on, as they are the customer, and we’re supposed to make them happy by building them what they want.
I’ll send an email to the representative with a summary of why it’s a good idea to add the ramp along with its impact on time and cost, and I’ll ask them to accept or reject it by replying to the email.

You’re a program manager. One day, the manager of one of the projects that work underneath your program comes to you with a proposal they’ve received for a key procurement item. Because of its importance, you’re the person who should accept or reject the proposal. However, the project manager is more involved in the area related to that proposal and has technical team members who are qualified to judge the technical aspects of the proposal.

You’ve just received the proposal, and you’ve not read it yet. How would you respond to the project manager?

What do you think about the proposal? What do your technical team members think about its technical aspects?
Please allow me a minute to read the proposal before telling me your opinion.

A new regulation will take effect in 3 months, and your company has just realized that one of your major products is incompatible with the new regulation. So, a critical project is defined to adjust the product and make it compatible. This project is so important that it has a virtually unlimited budget because 83% of the income of the company depends on that product, and if it’s incompatible in 3 months, you won’t be allowed to use that key product anymore.

You’ve been selected as the project manager, and you’ve started initiating (preparing and planning) the project when one of the executives in the company comes to you and says the following:

“Please stop wasting time! We don’t have a minute to spare, and we must work as quickly as possible to meet the deadline.”

What would you do?

I’ll continue initiating the project.
I’ll skip project initiation because it’s an urgent project and also because the executive has asked me to do so.

You’re the manager of a team in a project, and 8 engineers work for you in that team. One day, you see one of them standing next to the window, staring at the street. You go there and ask how they were. You talk a little, and you realize that the real passion of that junior engineer was to be a designer rather than an engineer, but because of the pressures in the family, they had decided to study engineering.

There’s a design department in your company, and they need a new junior team member. You consider introducing this person to them. What would you do?

I consider it my responsibility to offer this opportunity to them.
I’ll offer the opportunity, but I don’t consider it my responsibility to do so.
I won’t make such an offer because I should not get involved in my team member’s personal lives.

You’re the manager of a small project. One day, the customer comes to you and asks for a change. What they want takes nearly no time to implement. What would you do?

I’ll do it immediately to show the customer how responsive and supportive we are.
I’ll document the request, check it completely, and then proceed from there.

There’s a deadline in 50 workdays. For that, you have 200 work items to finish, and you’ve already finished 20 of them. It took your team 8 workdays to finish those items. What would you do?

Nothing special; we’ll just keep going.
I’ll ask the team to work on weekends and stay two hours longer each day. That way, we’ll be able to meet the deadline. After that, I’ll compensate them with more vacations and bonuses.
We’ll separate the most important items and focus on them, to make sure at least those are finished before the deadline.

You’re a program manager, and the portfolio manager has asked you to track and report the number of person-hours you’ve used from each of the three categories of expertise they have defined in the organization.

How would you respond?

I’ll ask them to explain its purpose.
I’ll accept because my superior has asked me.
I’ll reject it because tracking hours is a traditional control mechanism that’s rejected many years ago.

You’re the sponsor of a fixed-price project for building a complex for the Olympic Games. Something unexpected happened, and your project manager forecasts a two-month delay because of this issue. The project manager, along with key team members, had a workshop to find different recovery options, and they could compose only two possible options:

Option A: We can lower quality to the minimum acceptable level, which will make some of our activities easier and faster, and we’ll be able to finish the project on time.
Option B: If we increase the budget of the project by 30%, we’d be able to hire a few key people and buy certain equipment, which together would enable us to finish the project on time.

Which option would you choose?

Option A, because the project is fixed-price and we can’t increase its budget.
Option B, because we should never sacrifice quality.
Either A or B, depending on our justification for doing the project.

You’re a team manager in a project with a team of 12 engineers. One of them comes to you and says that the self-monitoring system of the project’s storage system indicates that most of the hard drives are in a high-risk state, all at the same time.

What would you do first?

First, I’ll ask the engineer to prepare a report on the problem and its impact.
First, I’ll make sure the problem is added to the list of the program’s follow-up items.

You have a meeting with your team to discuss an issue and use their input to make a final decision. During the meeting, you notice that one of the team members seems upset. You ask that team member what they think about the discussions and whether there’s something they’d add, and they give any opinion.

What would you do after the meeting?

I’ll have a private conversation with the team member to see what’s going on, and if there’s any problem, we can solve it together as soon as possible.
I won’t do anything about it because it might have been a personal issue, and above that, I already gave that person the chance to share their opinion.

You’re a project manager in a large company. Another project manager comes to you one day, complaining about their sponsor:

“My sponsor sent me an email a few days ago, asking me for some information. After receiving the email, I went to the sponsor’s office and said I wanted to explain what they were looking for. The sponsor got a little upset and told me that it’s best to send the information via email. I said that it usually works best when people have face-to-face meetings, and the sponsor simply said ‘No, that’s not right. Face-to-face meetings are very time-consuming and should only be used when needed. In a case like this, I expect you to take your time, think about my email, and offer me the information I need in a few written sentences instead of taking half an hour or an hour of my time in a face-to-face meeting.’ Do you believe that?!”

The project manager was confused and unhappy and asked you what you thought about the conversation they had. What would you advise?

I’m afraid I agree with the sponsor. Nothing works better than clear, concise communication. It can be time-saving and also leaves a traceable history behind.
The sponsor appears to be old-fashioned. The world has moved from written communications and reports to just-in-time, face-to-face meetings, status updates, and social media.

You’re a project manager. In a group meeting with team members, you’ve asked one of your team managers to prepare the minutes of the meeting. At the end, you realized that they’ve recorded the meeting on their laptop and used a piece of software to automatically create the minutes of the meeting.

How would you react?

I’ll tell them that what’s created is a “summary of meeting”, but what we really need is the “minutes of meeting”.
I’ll let the team manager know that I’m happy with their automation. Automation is key in having higher performance in the team.

Your team is going to do something in the project. This task requires about 20 different steps, and it’s important not to forget any of those, do them in the right order, and not miss any of the details in any of those steps. This is the second and last time they have to do it, and while they did it last time, they didn’t document its process, and therefore, they have to think of the steps again.

What would you advise them about its documentation?

I’ll ask them to write down the process first, resolve its issues on paper, and then run it in reality.
Since this is the last time they have to do it in the project, a documented process won’t be useful, and it’s better to focus on doing it rather than documenting it.

You’re a program manager. A relatively junior project manager is appointed to a non-sensitive project that’s being run underneath your program. The project is about building a small, detached guest house at the corner of a cultural center. The project manager is supposed to prepare a hierarchical decomposition of the scope of the project. They come to you, saying that they have two options and wondering which one is better:

Option A:

The house
- Earthwork
- Foundation
- Walls
- Roof
- Windows
- Electricity
- Air conditioning
- Piping
- …
The garden next to the house
- Dividers
- Plants
- Drainage
- Watering system
- Lightings
The stepping stone path to the main building

Option B:

Ground
- Earthwork of the house
- Foundation of the house
- Dividers of the garden
- Stepping stone path
Building
- Walls
- Roof
- Windows
Electrical
- House
- Garden
Piping and mechanical
- House
- Garden

Which one is better?

Option A
Option B

You’re the project manager, and there’s a business analyst working on your project. At this time, the business analyst is gathering requirements, and they are asking you who to go to for that. What would you respond?

They should go to the customer, as they own the output of the project, and we should see what they want that output to be, not anyone else.
We should first create a list of the customer and other stakeholders and then collect all the implicit and explicit requirements.

You want to make one of your team members responsible for doing a task, and you don’t want to be a micro manager. So, you tell them “This is your task. Feel free to get it done in any way you want, and consult anyone you want along the way, _____.”

and pretend that I don’t exist until you’re done with the task.
and only make arrangements with me if the decision is worth more than €10k.

You’re the sponsor of a project for improving the way documents are managed in your large company. The project is being initiated (prepared and planned). Toward the end of the initiation, right when it’s time to decide whether to run the project, you realize that someone else in the company is initiating a project for improving workflows. What would you do?

Nothing. My project was initiated first, and its soon-to-be execution will be announced publicly. So, if needed, they should contact me.
I’ll contact the sponsor of that project to see whether there are any conflicts between our projects or any opportunities we can exploit together.

You’re sent 420 years forward in time, where there’s a lack of good leaders. You’re in a spaceship in an area they call the Delta Quadrant. Your science officer explains that their dilithium crystal mining system, which is required for regulating the matter-antimatter reactions of their warp drives, has a problem and is producing crystals with 5% efficiency! You ask them many questions, and they keep explaining, but you can’t understand any of it!

The science officer says, “We have to fix the mining issue as soon as possible, but we don’t know how yet. However, the 5% efficiency wastes a lot of raw material, and since the existing miner doesn’t seem to be repairable, we’re considering decommissioning it immediately and then looking for a replacement mining system. Shall we proceed?”

Since you don’t know the context well, you can’t decide for them. Facilitate a session with all the highest-ranking officers in the spaceship to vote on it.
What the science officer says makes sense. Let’s approve it.
Ask the science officer to form a team and prepare multiple end-to-end solutions before suggesting a first step.
Delegate the decision to the science officer and leave the bridge.

You have a medium-size European investment company that gives loans to people who want to renovate their houses. You have many applications, and you can only give a loan to about 10% of them. So, you want to select the best 10% with the lowest risk. However, there are just too many applications, and reviewing them takes a lot of time and costs you significantly. So, you’ve initiated a project and developed a piece of software to fully automate the process and select the top applications for the loan using artificial intelligence (AI).

You’ve been using this software for about a year, and suddenly, you’re sued because, according to Europe’s AI Act, which you didn’t know anything about, such an application is considered high risk and may not automate the process without oversight and without other conditions such as transparency and traceability. If you’re found guilty, you will have to pay €8,500,000, which would cause serious problems for your company or even cause you to go bankrupt.

How would you react, apart from getting a lawyer as soon as possible?

I’ll have to accept the fault and try to minimize the damage. In the future, I must find a structured way to stay informed of all related regulations.
They can’t consider us guilty because we didn’t know about that new regulation. No one knew, and there are so many pieces of software developed every day without considering that!

You’re a team manager on a project. It’s been a few days that one of your teammates seems unhappy. You ask them if everything is okay, but they say that everything is okay and don’t talk about any problems.

What would you do?

I’ll consider it closed for now because I’ve shown that person that I care and that I’m willing to listen to them if they want to talk later on.
I’ll leave it for a few days, and if that person still seems unhappy, I’ll invite them for a coffee and chat, hoping that they will open up and talk about their problem.
I won’t do anything else because I have to respect people’s privacy. I’m there to facilitate work, not to become a key part of their personal lives.

Your not-for-profit organization has funding from the government to improve project management across the country because it has a great impact on improving the quality of life for the citizens.

You’ve become the sponsor of this program and initiated a key project to create easy-to-understand, practical, localized, self-paced training based on one of the known project management methodologies.

Midway through the project, your project manager informs you that since that methodology was proprietary, they’ve set a new rule that for each person who gets trained in their method, a fee must be paid to them for the method, and the trainee must also take their exam, which is relatively expensive. Originally, the idea was that the training would be free for everyone so that all potential candidates would be encouraged to use it.

What would you do?

Let’s switch from that methodology to a libre (non-proprietary) one.
Let’s continue; the target audience can probably get grants to pay that organization and take our courses.
Let’s continue; the market will probably react and force them to change their mind.
Let’s have a workshop to list all possible options.

Your team builds a piece of software that will be used to provide a critical service to a sensitive industry for 10 months. Keeping that service up is difficult, and according to your contract, you will have to pay €100k for each hour of downtime. Your investigation suggests that a normal product like what you’re building has an average of 1 hour of downtime per month.

You’ve had multiple workshops with your team, and you could come up with the following solutions for reducing downtime:

Solution 1: It costs €100k to €300k and reduces 30% to 50% of potential downtimes.
Solution 2: It costs €500k to €800k and reduces 60% to 70% of potential downtimes.
Solution 3: It costs €400k to €1,300k and reduces 60% to 95% of potential downtimes.
Solution 4: It costs €800k to €1,600k and makes downtimes almost impossible.

Which one would you choose?

Nothing; I’ll accept it as it is without implementing any of those solutions.
Solution 1
Solution 2
Solution 3
Solution 4

You’ve been recently hired at a company and immediately appointed as the manager of a sensitive IT project. The team members, however, are not happy about your appointment because you only have experience in managing non-IT projects. You explain to the team that you believe that you can be a great manager for them and ask them to give you a chance.

After a few months, you call the team members to a meeting and ask them about their experience with you as their project manager. They seem very happy, and when you ask them if there’s anything they’d like to see differently, no one gives any opinions.

What would you do?

It’s great that they are happy with me. The fact that we had this meeting also shows them that I respect their opinions, which would make them happier. I’ll thank them and end the meeting.
I’ll tell them that the first person who gives an idea on how I can be a better project manager for them will get a bonus!
I’ll ask each person to take a piece of paper and write 3 things they think can improve the way the project is managed. I’ll also ask them not to write their names on the papers.

You’re a portfolio manager. One day, one of the IT experts named Cruz comes to you and tells you about their idea. If their idea is implemented, the probability of cyberattacks will be reduced significantly. You ask them about the number of attacks you’ve had before, and they say that the company has never had an attack before, but that’s only because you were lucky. You ask Cruz about the opinion of the director of the IT department. Cruz says that the director didn’t like the idea and, therefore, didn’t bring it to the portfolio management system. That’s why Cruz has come to you directly, hoping to convince you to talk to the director and give the project a chance.

What would you do?

I’ll ask Cruz to prepare a simple report for me with the approximate time and cost of implementing the idea and the probability and impact of cyber attacks with and without the implemented idea.
I’ll tell Cruz that it’s not a good idea to come to me behind the IT director’s back, and given that the director knows about these things more than me, the fact that they rejected the idea is enough for me to consider it rejected as well.
I’ll arrange a meeting with Cruz and the IT director to discuss the idea and come to a conclusion.
I’ll explain to Cruz that I’m the portfolio manager and that the topic is not related to portfolio management to be influenced by me.

You’ve been hired in a small company to improve the management of their project ecosystem. The company was founded four years ago by three friends. Soon, you realize that there’s a little tension between two of them, and almost everyone in the company is split into one of the two camps, and each camp tries to win more power.

What would you do with this information?

I’ll try to find a way to eliminate the split or limit its impact.
I’ll join the stronger camp to gain more power.
I’ll join the weaker camp to help balance power in the company.
I’ll stay out of it and focus on my real responsibilities instead.

You’re the manager of a medium-sized project. Azar and Monet are two of your team managers who have had conflicts with each other recently: Monet says that Azar gets involved in the details of what Monet’s team does and undermines Monet’s authority, and Azar says that Monet’s team produces low-quality deliverables that cause problems for Azar’s team.

Now, Monet has come to you, saying, angrily, “I can’t work like this anymore; I would only continue working here if Azar is not a team manager in this project anymore.”

Azar hears the conversation and shouts, “For once, I agree with Monet! It’s either my place or Monet’s. Please select one of us.”

What would you do?

Since there are only two options now, I’ll pick Monet.
Since there are only two options now, I’ll pick Azar.
Since they dare to talk to me like that, I’ll fire both of them to establish my authority.
I’ll list all options first and then select the best one.

You’re the manager of a research project. One of your team members who’s a specialist was showing the client what their team has recently done for the project. The client representative got very angry because what was done was based on a serious misunderstanding of the client needs and so had delayed the project significantly. They left the meeting, and called you a few minutes later, saying, “I’m very unhappy with this person. Please send them to my office to have a talk and see whether they can stay in this project.”

How would you respond?

I’ll do as requested by the client representative.
I’ll apologize for what has happened and then send that person to the client representative.
I won’t send that person alone. We’ll go together to the client representative.
I’ll go to the client representative myself instead of sending that person.
I’ll reject the client representative’s request.

You’re the manager of a large program. One of your project managers comes to you with a serious problem: they’ve signed a contract with a third party to supply them with equipment needed in the project for a price of €60K. The third party has supplied the equipment, but they are demanding €700K instead for some technicality in the contract, and they don’t take the equipment back for some other technicality in the contract.

When the project manager told them that their demand didn’t make any sense, their response was that it’s in the contract and anything in the contract would be legally binding.

What do you think?

That’s correct; if it’s in the contract and the project manager has missed it, we’re responsible for it. The only thing we can do is to consult an expert lawyer to see whether it really means what they claim it means.
That’s not correct. If it’s not common in the industry to purchase such equipment for such a high price and the potential for the high price is not made clear in the contract, it may not be considered binding in the court.

Your project is estimated to cost €800K, and you can earn a total of €1300K when it’s done. Your progress is 80% now, and your plan shows a budgeted cost of €350K for now. Your actual cost has been €700K. Your estimated revenue is unchanged.

What would you do as the sponsor of the project?

I’ll cancel the project immediately.
Everything is fine. We’ll continue.
Since we already have 80% progress and we’ve spent so much money, I’ll continue and finish the project.
I’ll let the project manager decide.

You’ve been recently hired in a small company to manage their projects. There was an in-progress project to develop an application for a bank that you took over as your first job, and it’s almost done. It’s time to archive its documents when the person responsible for IT support comes to you and says that they have an account in one of the famous cloud storage platforms and they archive all their project documents there.

How would you respond?

If that’s the standard procedure in the company, it’s important to respect it and stay compatible, so let’s archive it in that platform.
Check with the IT person to see what security measures are in place to ensure confidential files are safe in that platform.
Reject it because project documents should be archived locally for security and accessibility reasons.

You’re the manager of a project. You have a monthly meeting with team members to hear their ideas on how work on the project can be improved. One of them says that there’s a new standard published in a neighboring country for a similar type of work and suggests using that in the project. Another team member objects, saying that the said standard puts many limitations on what can be done and slows down the work.

What would you do?

Since it’s not mandatory for us to be compliant with that standard and it slows down the work, it’s better not to use it in our project.
Because it’s a standard accepted in a neighboring country with an environment similar to ours, it’s a good idea to follow it in our project.
Let’s appoint an external specialist to investigate the standard and report its usefulness; then a reliable decision can be made.

You’re one of the portfolio management team members. During the cyclic planning meeting, 3 new projects are identified as below:

Project A: investment of €400K with a return of €600K with an 80% chance of success.
Project B: investment of €500K with a return of €550K with a 100% chance of success.
Project C: investment of €800K with a return of €900K with a 90% chance of success.

If any of these projects fail, there will be no return on investment for it. You have enough resources to do only one of these projects. All of them depend on external events, and, therefore, you can only accept or reject them, but you can’t postpone them. So, which project would you choose?

Project A
Project B
Project C

You’re the manager of a small program. During a meeting with your project managers and other key team members, you collectively decide about something related to the program. One of the participants tells you that Fede, the director of the process department, may have some concerns about this topic, and we may have to ask their opinion. Fede is the type of person who always points out mistakes in any idea, no matter what. However, when the work is done, Fede would have no choice but to accept it. Moreover, Fede doesn’t have a lot of experience in this area and probably won’t be able to provide helpful comments. Because of all of that, some of your key team members believe that it’s better to avoid troubles by not involving Fede in this.

What would you do?

I’ll involve Fede.
I won’t involve Fede.

You’re managing a project that develops a web application that is supposed to work for at least 15 years. In the middle of the project, the team informs you that one of the famous providers of virtual servers has added new proprietary features that can help a lot in the project. If we use their servers, with those proprietary features, the remaining parts of the project can be done 30% faster.

What would you do?

No, let’s not lock ourselves into a proprietary service and build something that can work in virtual servers of any service provider.
Sure, a 30% reduction in effort is a great gain. Let’s do it.
Let’s check the cost of using their servers in the next 15 years compared to more affordable service providers and compare that with what we save by the 30% reduction in effort. If the savings are higher, we’ll do it.

Your small company offers process improvement services to pharmaceutical companies. You’ve been relatively successful in this domain and earn about €1.5m/year.

You want to select one of the following projects to be run next:

Project A: Adds the capability to offer process improvement services related to a new area in pharmaceutical companies. It will probably bring a €200K to €800K annual benefit to your company.
Project B: Adds the capability to offer process improvement services to companies in the biotechnology field. It’s a new industry for the company, so it would be difficult to estimate its benefits, but your best guess is that it brings 0 to €900K annual benefit to your company.

Each project needs an investment of about €100K on top of using the otherwise wasted time of the company staff.

Which project would you choose?

Project A
Project B
None of them!

You’re the manager of a project. Its client representative comes to your office one day and asks you to change something in the project. You ask for two of your key team members, and together with the client representative, check every aspect of that change and conclude that it doesn’t have any impact on project targets and, therefore, it would be fine to implement the change without any compensation.

You ask the client representative to send you the change request in writing so that you can immediately incorporate it into the plans. The client representative asks you not to delay the change and do it without unnecessary paperwork, given that it doesn’t have any impact on project targets.

What would you do?

That’s right; what was supposed to be done after receiving the written change request is already done in a meeting, and we have the conclusion. So, we can proceed without a written change request.
Ask the client representative to fill in the change request form anyway, but if they resist, ignore it and proceed without a written change request.
Fill in the change request form for the client representative, put it in front of them, and ask for their signature. If they resisted, explain that it’s the standard process in the project and no changes can be incorporated without a traceable decision.

There will be a project management conference in your city soon. You’ve checked the list of speakers and their topics. Unfortunately, the speakers don’t seem very experienced, and a few videos you’ve found online from their past presentations don’t seem very informative. On the other hand, the topics all seem to be following the latest trends instead of focusing on what can be helpful to the practitioners.

Would you go to the conference?

Yes, I’ll go, mainly to get to know new people and build relationships.
No, I should respect my time, and therefore, I won’t go to such a conference.

An old colleague of yours comes to you for advice. They say, “We have 32 programmers, architects, business analysts, and project managers in our company. We can’t hire more people because of financial concerns, but we have to develop as fast as possible because our market changes quickly, and we can’t keep up unless we’re really fast. So, we’ve carefully optimized each person’s time to work on 6 to 9 projects simultaneously so that they don’t have to wait for approvals or other delays, but they can move on to tasks from another project. While this works well on paper, in reality, they always start tasks sooner or later than expected and, therefore, add extra delays. What do you think we should do to keep them on track?”

What you’ve called an optimized plan isn’t realistic enough. You have to add buffers to it so that people have a chance to get back on track when a deviation happens.
It’s a common problem. Ask people to fill in a shared spreadsheet on how much time they are spending on each task each day. That way, everyone knows what’s going on, and people gradually sync with each other. If that doesn’t help enough, have a weekly sync meeting for everyone.
You’re probably losing a lot of capacity because of task switching and lack of focus. Let each person focus on one project at a time, finish it, and then go to the next.

A relatively young person comes to you for advice. They are happy in their current job, but they want to take a relatively expensive 6-month course for advancement in their job as well as for personal satisfaction. They have selected two courses they are most interested in:

Course 1: Algorithms and data types
Course 2: Advanced AI prompt engineering

What would you advise?

Imagine ten or twenty years later and ask yourself which course would be more useful to you then.
Search the current job advertisements and see which skill is more in demand.

A project manager in your company comes to you, enthusiastically telling you about the meeting they had with another company:

“It was like a battlefield! We were fighting over 7 items, and each of us wanted to win in as many of them as possible. Guess how many I won! All of them! We have all the advantages! It will be great. No one negotiates better than I do!”

How would you respond?

Congratulations! Negotiation is a key leadership skill, and you’ve shown that you’re good at it.
Well done! I’m glad you could win all 7 items. Just make sure the other party doesn’t see it as a battle because that would make future wins more difficult. Create a sense of collaboration and friendship instead.
I’m afraid what you’ve described is not ethical, and you’d better revise your behavior.
I’m afraid what you described may not be sustainable. Results are more sustainable when no party feels defeated.

You’ve been the sponsor of a critical project in your company that is supposed to adjust your main software product to comply with a new regulation.

The project team has designed a sophisticated solution and has been working on it for a few months. The project is about 85% done when suddenly, one of the team members comes up with an extremely simple solution to the original problem that can be implemented in only a few days. However, before implementing that, the changes already made by the project should be rolled back, which takes time.

You’ve asked the project manager to analyze the two options, and this is the result:

To complete the sophisticated solution, 1200 more units of effort are required.
To stop the current sophisticated solution, roll it back, and then start implementing the simple solution, a total of 1400 units of effort is required.

According to the project manager, these two solutions will have a similar outcome in the foreseeable future.

Which one would you choose?

Continue the implementation of the sophisticated solution.
Stop the project, roll it back, and implement the simple solution.

One of your team members makes many mistakes, and those mistakes are making it more and more difficult for the rest of the team to perform their jobs. This team member always arrives at the company on time and stays about an hour longer than expected. They also seem stressed from the mistakes.

What would you do?

I’ll ask them to leave the company on time and rest enough. I’ll also temporarily reduce their workload and guide them on how to focus on quality and double-checking their work. Based on the result, I’ll decide about the next steps.
I’ll ask them to stay two hours longer each day and spend those two hours double-checking what they have done during the day. They also have to prepare a short daily report for me, explaining how their quality has increased each day; that way, they get used to focusing on quality.

You’ve become the manager of a one-of-a-kind project. You’ve built a team of experts and decided you need to have a project management method and a quality control/assurance system as soon as possible.

How would you proceed?

First, we’ll investigate the existing project management methods and quality standards/codes/best practices to see which of them are usable in our project. Then, we’ll fill in the gaps.
Since the project is one-of-a-kind, the existing resources on project management and quality control/assurance won’t be usable. We have to design our own methods in this project from scratch.

You’re a program manager. The manager of one of the small projects that are being run underneath your program, who’s a relatively young person with limited project management experience, comes to you with a question:

“I keep explaining everything to my team as well as possible, but they still come back to me with questions all the time, which delays the work. They sometimes even do the wrong thing, and I have to explain it again and again. What should I do with them?!”

Don’t give them too much detail upfront, and instead make sure they understand the purpose of the task.
For each task, create a simple text document that describes what the task is about and what the acceptance criteria would be.
Instead of having one-to-one conversations with them, bring them together in a meeting and explain their tasks together.

You live in a country that doesn’t have proper social security, and there won’t be any support if you lose your job. You won’t be homeless if it happens because you can always borrow money from friends and family, but you prefer not to do so.

Your estimate is that you can get a new job in about 3 months if you lose your current job. You currently have enough savings to live normally for 10 months if you lose your job, which gives you an excellent safety margin.

You have a new investment opportunity that requires all your savings. In return, there’s a very good chance that it succeeds, and if so, it will double your money. On the other hand, there’s a small chance that it will fail, in which case, you’ll lose your savings. If you lose your savings, it would take you about 16 months to save enough to support yourself for 3 months of unemployment.

What would you do?

I’ll invest my savings.
I won’t invest my savings.

You’re building an office building, and there are 30 glass doors in it. You have to install the doors after plastering the walls and before painting them, because the doors have to be closed to prevent dust from entering and settling on the wet paint. However, the problem is that workers are still working in the building, and they may hit the doors with their equipment and break them. In that case, you’ll have to replace the doors.

The following is the historical information about the previous projects in your company:

40% probability of having no glass doors broken
30% probability of having up to 3% of doors broken
10% probability of having up to 7% of doors broken

To buy the glass doors, you’ll have to pay 100 units of currency if you buy less than 10, and 50 units of currency if you buy more than 20 doors. How many would you buy now?

30
31
32
33
34

One of the teams has been working on a deliverable for about 20 days, and their work is about 90% done. However, the remaining 10% is blocked. What would you advise?

Move on to another deliverable and return to the blocked deliverable later.
Transfer the deliverable to another team and start working on a new deliverable.
Bring extra help and focus on the deliverable until it’s finished.
Start a new deliverable in parallel and keep trying to finish the first deliverable.

You work as a project and program manager in a reputable company focused on construction projects. One morning, when you go to your local bakery to buy bread, you see a poster about a local community that brings volunteers together and goes to old people’s houses for minor renovations. The bottom of the poster says that they are seeking a volunteer to help them as a project manager.

The poster explains that the project manager is needed for about 6 hours every weekend. You think about it, and you conclude that you have the time for that. But, is it a good idea to volunteer for that?

Yes.
No. I’ll donate some money to them instead.

You have a 16-month project with a non-negotiable end date and a €700K budget. There’s an equipment you have to order for the project which takes about 11 months to be produced and costs you €90K. When negotiating the contract with the supplier, it’s already 4 months in the project and, therefore, there’s not much room for delay.

If you can do only one of the following, which one would it be?

Insist that there should be a condition in the contract with the supplier that in case of delays, they will have to pay €5K per day, for up to €150K, in damages. Also, 80% of the payment for the equipment will only be done after the equipment is delivered.
There’s similar, second-hand equipment nearby that they are willing to sell for €70K. It can be used temporarily, but not as the permanent solution. Arrange an option with them: pay them €20K to keep the equipment for you for up to 12 months. After that, if you don’t want the equipment, they can keep the €20K, and if you want it, you can own it by paying the remaining €50K.

You have two top experts with similar capabilities in your team. There are 5 other people as well, but they are not experienced at all and can’t work without supervision from those experts. You’ve tried the following two setups:

Option A: Everyone works together on the same deliverables.
Option B: People are divided into two teams, each with one of the two experts. Teams work on separate deliverables without being involved in the deliverables from the other team.

In scenario A, they could finish 1812 units of work in 3 months. In scenario B, they could finish 1885 units of work in 3 months. Which setup would you choose as the permanent one?

Option A
Option B
I’ll ask the team to select one by voting.

You’ve asked a team of experts in your project to compose a checklist of all the steps everyone should take when reviewing a technical design. You’re hoping that it will help improve quality because sometimes engineers forget to do some of the steps.

However, the checklist that those experts have created has about 80 items, and you’re worried it might look overwhelming to the engineers and not be used as a result. What would you do?

I’ll create an implementation team to first train everyone on using the checklist and then supervise its use for 6 months. By then, everyone will be used to it, and they will continue using this comprehensive list.
I’ll ask the team to reduce it to the most important items that must not be forgotten at all, removing everything that can add value but won’t add major issues if not done; preferably, a list of up to 20 items.

You send many emails to your team members. You’ve noticed that many of those don’t work well, and either the other party has to ask questions in multiple email exchanges to understand your point, or they simply misunderstand the original message and do something that doesn’t match your expectation.

What would you do?

I’ll spend more time preparing my original emails, and I’ll write short but clear messages.
That’s an inherent problem with written communication. I’ll arrange short meetings instead of sending emails.

You should buy a special device for the project, and the only company that sells it in your region belongs to one of your close friends. What would you do?

I’ll get prices from a few other suppliers, and if my friend’s price was not higher than them, I’ll buy it from my friend because being closer to our location makes transportation easier.
I’ll buy from someone else to be sure no one thinks that I’m giving advantage to my friends.
I’ll analyze the options, and if my friend’s option is the best, I’ll send the report along with a letter that explains my relationship with that company to a higher manager and ask them to decide.

You’re the site manager of a construction project. You’ve noticed that some people don’t wear their safety hats when they go in the building, which is very dangerous. To solve the problem, you arrange for health and safety training for everyone in the project. The training helped reduce the problem to some degree, but not completely. So, you make one of the workers responsible to stay at the entrance and not allow anyone without a safety hat in.

This morning, one of the client representatives came to the site for a surprise visit. They wanted to go inside the building, but that worker didn’t allow them because they didn’t have a safety hat. The angry representative is now in your office, asking you for your response and threatening that they will officially complain to the project manager or the sponsor of the project and even ask them to remove you from your position if behaviors like this continue.

I’ll apologize, and I’ll explain to that worker that they should understand who they are talking to and adjust their behavior accordingly.
I’ll apologize and I’ll immediately fire that worker to make sure the customer representative is happy.
I’ll explain to the client representative that what that worker has done was correct and for their own safety. After the customer representative leaves, I’ll promote that worker.

You’re a portfolio manager, and one of the project sponsors comes to you with a question: I’ve been trying to measure the benefits of the product of my project since the project ended, but I’m not sure if it works. We sell its services to other businesses, and I see that we’re selling it to more and more businesses, but our profits don’t increase much!

What would you advise?

It’s natural; it takes time for the service to take off and generate real profit. Don’t worry and keep measuring!
You probably need to increase the diversity of the businesses you’re approaching for sales. You can do so by targeting businesses in different industries, businesses of different sizes, etc.
Don’t measure the number of sales. Think of the expected profit of each potential sale and the energy you have to spend on convincing them to buy, and based on that, decide whether to approach each of them.

You’re managing a construction project. What you’re going to build is next to a listed cultural heritage, and you’re worried that the vibrations caused by digging the ground might damage the listed building.

You discuss your concern with the relevant engineer, and they seem to be confident, but you’re not comfortable with their response. So, you ask an ex-colleague about it. They spend some time checking the plans and designs and tell you that the digging would be fine, but you probably need shoring: a temporary structure to hold the soil after digging until the new building is built.

You ask the project’s structural engineer, and they say that no shoring is needed in this project. You’re not satisfied. So, you go to that engineer’s manager, who’s the director of the civil engineering department, and ask their opinion. They tell you, “You don’t have to worry about it; it will be fine. If anything happens, I’ll bear the responsibility, not you.”

What would you do?

That answer is not good enough for me. I have to make sure there’s no danger.
Since the director has accepted the responsibility, it’s fine for me. I’ll just make sure that it’s documented, in case something happens in the future.

Your managers want to invest on a project, but you strongly believe that it’s a wrong decision and it will seriously harm the company if you invest on that project. You explain it to your managers, but they don’t change their minds and start the project. You will have a small role in the project as well. What would you do?

I’ll do my best to make it a successful project.
I won’t spend too much effort on it because I’m sure it will fail.

One of your team members did something brave and smart, which saved the project from a lot of trouble. You want to show appreciation for that behavior, but there’s not much budget, and all you can spend is an amount of money equivalent to 10% of that person’s monthly salary.

You’ve thought about the following options. Which one would you choose?

Pay that money to the person as a bonus and send an email to thank them.
Get a gift card for the money you can spend and together with a thank you card, give it to the person.
Spend the available money on buying snacks and have a small party in the office to appreciate that person.
Pay that money to a charity in that person’s name.

You’re a team manager in a project that builds a web application. The project manager asks you to add a feature to the application that collects extra personal information from users. You ask for the purpose, and they explain that such information is useful and the company may be able to sell them in the future. You say that it might be a violation of users’ privacy, and the project manager tells you to leave that to the company lawyers and implement the feature.

What would you do?

I’ll accept it.
I’ll accept it, but I’ll make sure that my objection and the project manager’s response are documented in case we run into problems in the future.
I’ll object again, and if needed, I’ll try to find other solutions, such as talking to the project sponsor or the CEO of our company about it.

You’ve called all the project team members for a workshop to discuss the recent technical failure in one of the pieces of equipment and find the best possible solution for it. A short while after starting the workshop, one of the participants was giving an idea when another participant interrupted the first one and started describing their own solution. The first person got angry, saying that the second person always does that intentionally, and a few other people got involved, siding with one or the other.

What would you do?

I’ll write down this issue and tell them that I’ll make my own investigations and then I may call them for another workshop to discuss that problem and find a solution. Then I’ll ask them to forget about that for now and get back to the main topic of the workshop.
To avoid making the discussion emotional, I’ll ask everyone to anonymously write down what they think about the issue described after the interruption on a piece of paper and hand it over to me. I’ll read them and then continue with resolving the conflict.
I’ll allow them to discuss it so that I can gain a more in-depth understanding of the hidden dynamics in the team.

You’re a project manager in a large company focused on building process plants. During a company event, you overhear one of your young team members telling someone else that the reason they wanted to be hired in this company was that they always wanted to become a project manager in large process plant projects.

The next day, you check and realize that the young person has an engineering position in the team. According to the manager of that team, the performance of the young person is not bad, but also not great.

What would you do with this information?

I won’t do anything about it. Also, it’s not a good idea to listen to other people’s conversations!
I’ll arrange with the team manager to give a few management tasks to the young person and gradually increase those tasks if they do them well.

You’ve been invited to go to one of the monthly meetings of a project manager in a different company. You notice that some of the team members did not show up in the meeting, some are playing with their phones instead of participating. There was also one incident where the project manager said something, one of the participants whispered something, and everyone started laughing at the project manager. The project manager stayed calm and tried to control the situation in a friendly manner.

What would you advise?

I’m glad you’re not an emotional person and stay calm and friendly when the situation is not suitable. I hope your team can appreciate you and collaborate properly, and if not, don’t worry and keep doing the right thing.
You’re being too soft, and that’s causing problems in the team and negatively impacting the project. Be more assertive, and if needed, fire one or two of the people who are causing the most problems.

You’re a program manager. One of your projects has a manager who has been very successful: the performance of their team is very high, the quality of their work is high, their processes are transparent, and team satisfaction is high as well.

The excellent project manager went for a short vacation for a few days, but there was a strike and they couldn’t come back to work for 10 days. While 10 days is not a lot, the project performance dropped significantly.

How would you diagnose this problem?

I’ll have a spare project manager handy and informed of what’s going on in the program so that when the manager of one of the projects is going to be absent, I can appoint that person as the temporary project manager.
From now on, when one of the project managers is absent for more than a day, I’ll have the manager of another project in my program appointed as their temporary project manager.
I’ll talk to that project manager and explain that he would be even a better manager if he could build a setup that works for at least a few weeks without its project manager.

You’re the sponsor of a project. It’s the beginning of the work, and the team is preparing and working on the initial planning of the project. After a while, the project manager sends you their plans for approval. In one of the documents, you see a list of stakeholders as follows:

Stakeholders:

Internal
- The project team
- Departments
Customer
Sub contractors
- Architecture firm
- Concrete workers
- Steel structure workers
- Painters
- Interior designers
Others
- Local municipality

How would you evaluate it?

Well done; it’s a good stakeholders list with the right amount of detail. Going into too much detail can make it overwhelming and difficult to use.
It’s okay, but I can think of a few stakeholders who are missing here. I’ll send you my list, so that you can add them to this.
This is a general list that applies to most projects of this type and having it doesn’t help anyone. I need you to create a proper stakeholder list.

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