Project manager interviews focus on estimation, risk, and the uncomfortable conversations — with the team and with the client. Below are the most common questions with model answers. Junior: core theory, definitions, and simple practical cases.
Scrum works in fixed-length sprints with a committed scope and ceremonies around them. Kanban is continuous flow with work-in-progress limits and no sprint boundary. Scrum suits work that can be planned two weeks ahead; Kanban suits support and anything where priority changes daily. Calling a board with columns "Scrum" is the common confusion.
The longest chain of dependent tasks — it decides the earliest the project can finish. Delaying anything on it delays the whole project; delaying something off it may cost nothing. That is why the answer to "can we speed this up" starts with which path a task is on rather than with who is busy.
A risk might happen, an issue already has. Risks get a probability, an impact and a mitigation; issues get an owner and a resolution date. Teams that track only issues are managing surprises rather than preventing them, which is the difference between reacting and planning.
It names who is Responsible for doing the work, Accountable for the outcome, Consulted before the decision and Informed after it. Its value is in forcing exactly one Accountable per item — the moment there are two, the decision has no owner and it stalls.
Planning decides what the sprint takes on, the daily surfaces blockers rather than reports status, the review shows working software to stakeholders, and the retrospective changes how the team works. The daily is the one that degrades first — when it becomes a status round for the manager, it stops doing its job.
The shared checklist that makes "done" mean the same thing to everyone — tested, reviewed, documented, deployed, whatever the team agrees. Without it, done means "the developer stopped working on it", and the remaining work reappears later as unplanned effort.
In a real interview you speak under pressure. Cam asks these same questions, scores every answer, and shows exactly what to fix.
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