Tell me about a project you were running that fell properly behind. Walk me through the recovery.
Why this works
Recoveries expose what a candidate thinks schedules are made of. Weak ones add pressure and optimism to the same plan; strong ones diagnose the real constraint, change the plan itself — scope, sequence, staffing — and reset expectations once, honestly, rather than in weekly slivers.
Follow-up probes
- What was causing the slip, underneath the surface reason?
- What did the new plan drop or change?
- How did the people waiting hear about it?
- Did the recovered date hold?
What good looks like
A diagnosis before any fix, a recovery plan visibly different from the original rather than the same plan pushed harder, one honest reset with the people waiting, and a new date that held.
Red flags
The recovery was everyone working harder on an unchanged plan, stakeholders met the slip at the original deadline, the date reset repeatedly in small increments, or "done" got quietly redefined so the project could declare victory.
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