1.

When making hiring decisions within a remote working environment what factors do you use to
determine whether a candidate will be a good fit for your organization or not?

Select one:

a. Technical abilities, good communication skills, coaching ability, and willingness to learn

b. Good team player, good communication skills, coaching ability, and willingness to learn

c. Good team player and good communication skills

d. Great technical abilities

Question Title
* 2. How do you deal with underperformers in your team?

Select one:

a. Coach them on a daily basis with an improvement plan then terminate them if the person does not
meet expectations or is unwilling to be coached

b. Terminate them immediately

c. Ignore underperformers because they are usually just going through a bad patch in their private life

d. Accept under-performers because we cannot have a completely great team

Question Title
* 3. If your team is presenting you with blockers they are facing to complete a project, how do you
handle the situation in the first instance?

Select one:

a. Ask them to go and re-plan and come back the next day with a solution

b. Personally review the detail and conduct daily reviews to ensure the team is unblocked

c. Bring in more professional people and change the team

d. None of the above

Question Title
* 4. Which of the following does NOT qualify as a good goal to set for your managers?

Select one:

a. Improve customer satisfaction

b. Increase NPS from 15 to 60

c. Deliver 100% of all releases with 100% quality and on time

d. Decrease detractors from 50% to 45%
Question Title
* 5. Which of the following do you consider least relevant when defining goals for your team?

Select one:

a. Goals must be clear and easy to understand

b. Goals has to be easily achievable

c. Goals must be measurable

d. Goals completion must generate business value

Question Title
* 6. At the beginning of the quarter, you have assigned to a manager the goal to have a release
containing 50 bug fixes. Mid-quarter you learn that he is reporting 40 of them fixed, but QA has
verified none. What do you do?

Select one:

a. Ask for his plan for testing the bugs and see if progress is as he planned.

b. Set a goal for your manager to pass verification of 50 bugs by end of quarter as this will provide the
complete picture and allow for progress on resolving bugs

c. Ask the manager to report bugs only when fixed and verified

d. Nothing particular to do, as doing verification prior to release is common to ensure they actually
work for the release candidate
Question Title
* 7. The engineering group you just took over is going through a crisis period due to recent releases
that resulted in a number of customers being dissatisfied. You are asked to take action on this by your
SVP. Which of these options are least likely to help you address the above issues?

Select one:

a. Set individual goals for each of your managers to increase the quality of their products and hold them
accountable

b. Set a rule in place that any new release requires your sign-off for the time being

c. Ask the business what kind of issues they see and want to be fixed as a priority. Set goals for your
managers to eliminate those kinds of issues.

d. Set a short-term goal for all your managers to review all customer issues opened in the last few
weeks
Question Title
* 8. The project you just took over is running dramatically behind schedule - you have 1 month to
complete work worth 2 months based on current pace. Which of the following would you do first?
Select one:

a. Bring more senior developers into the product

b. Set a daily 1h call with your managers and analyze their work priorities and results and address
issues you find

c. Identify what is the company process to apply a change of scope or date

d. Ask your predecessor to explain why the project is progressing slow and use that information to fix it
Question Title
* 9. You learn that a product you just took over has major issues with uptime and availability.
Discussing with the SaaSOps counterpart, you understand that the issues are related to instability. The
SaaSOps team blame the over complicated and hyper distributed architecture that does not support load
balancing. Your lead engineer confirms that load balancing will remove all issues, but it takes 3 months
to do it. Which of the below actions is what you would do first?

Select one:

a. Understand the project funding process and work on getting the budget

b. Check if such work is planned on the product roadmap and defer for the moment if it is not

c. Ask the engineering and SaaS teams to meet and define a solution

d. Ask your lead engineer or manager to run a root cause analysis on each past outage. Delay any action
until you go through this
Question Title
* 10. You are asked to consolidate a team of 100 QA engineers and managers that used to work within
various product teams into a single centralized testing team that services all development teams across
the organization. Before consolidation, the 100 person team was, on average, able to execute 100 tests
per week per person. You are asked to commit to a plan that triples productivity in one quarter as your
first assignment. What do you do?

Select one:

a. Ask each manager to build a plan for their product, review and publish it

b. Make it clear that tripling the number of closed tickets is not possible without sacrificing the quality
of work or incurring costs for over time. Based on this start pushing the team to reach the target

c. Analyze requests that take the longest time. Based on this push out requests when they are likely to
take too much time

d. Define uniform work processes and have the entire team follow it immediately. Fix one issue every
day
Question Title
* 11. Which of these actions have an immediate impact in increasing code quality?
Select one:

a. Fix all open bugs

b. Set up CI/CD for the product

c. Institute mandatory code review policy

d. Train your team - have the product technical documentations built and shared
Question Title
* 12. Which of the following statements is true when comparing SCRUM and KANBAN?

Select one:

a. SCRUM supports release planning through sprint plans whereas KANBAN has no built-in concepts
to support release plans

b. SCRUM does not allow changing the sprint scope whereas in KANBAN you have full flexibility

c. SCRUM focuses on measuring sprint velocity whereas KANBAN focuses on measuring cycle time

d. SCRUM support cross-functional teams while KANBAN is designed for teams of people having the
same functional role
Question Title
* 13. You are asked to take an existing team and grow it to 200+ cross-functional team members.
Which of the following actions delivers least measurable output to achieve this?

Select one:

a. Foster teamwork

b. Define the responsibilities, inputs and outputs of each function

c. Measure your service's success based on your customer feedback

d. Measure individual productivity of each team member (dev/qa/etc)

Question Title
* 14. How do you resolve a persistent quality issue on one of the software products you are responsible
for?

Select one:

a. Bring in the experts to provide a recommendation and act on the recommendation

b. Increase testing

c. Get personally involved in the detail to find out why there are issues and work with the team to
resolve them
d. Assume the teams are great and will resolve the quality issue anyway
Question Title
* 15. How would you define security compliance work which needs to be done by engineering?

Select one:

a. Security work should take precedence over anything else done in engineering and be the number one
priority to ensure that business risks are minimized

b. Security team should understand the business goals and plan work in a way which would still enable
the business goals to be met while minimizing risk

c. Security is just overrated and there for people to keep themselves in a job
Question Title
* 16. How would you keep improving an IT Engineering team?

Select one:

a. Create a weekly feedback loop between teams based on objective measures of quality and
productivity

b. Create a rigorous HR program to motivate teams through annual salary increases tied to performance
reviews

c. Create a rigorous HR program to motivate teams through quarterly salary increases tied to
performance reviews

d. My teams will eventually reach top quality and productivity where further gains cannot be made

e. Motivate the team through meet ups, events, and sending freebies
Question Title
* 17. How would you manage an overload of work on your engineering teams?

Select one:

a. Create SWAT teams to address customer specific issues

b. Escalate to the business immediately and ask for more budget to add resources and reduce overload

c. Improve productivity by upgrading team talent, simplifying and documenting the process, and using
automated tools

d. Spread all resources across all business projects in parallel to keep all business stakeholders happy
Question Title
* 18. Which management style do you prefer in your decision-making processes?

Select one:
a. I need to have all the information available before making a decision. In this way, I ensure that I am
safe and I always make the right decisions

b. I will take decisions based on the information at hand and accept that later on, we may need to revise
it and change direction

c. I need to have all the information available and ensure that my team also agree with my decision. I
will not proceed without having complete team buy-in

d. If I don’t have all the information available I will escalate it to my manager for a decision to be taken
Question Title
19. What best represents your opinion on mandatory CI/CD strategy for a 100 product portfolio?

Select one:

a. It should be militant in its prescription so that product quality cannot be compromised

b. Individual teams should optimize the CI / CD strategy for each of the 100 products

c. CI/CD is great for some products, but not great for others

d. It should be general enough to satisfy the needs of all 100 products and should not specify to a
detailed level
Question Title
* 20. What is your view of Work-in-Progress in an IT engineering team?

Select one:

a. It is needed to keep teams busy and increase team utilisation

b. I see no issue with having lots of work in progress in a queue

c. Work in progress queues should be eradicated and kept to a minimum since they slow down delivery
to the business
Question Title
* 21. Which of the following most closely represents your view on Metrics to drive process?

Select one:

a. Metrics may be one of the tools to use to measure teams and take decisions however they are
subjective and subject to interpretation

b. Metrics may be used as a key driver in objective decision making

c. Engineering teams cannot really be measured by metrics since they are creative people and need to
be free to take decisions as they work
Question Title
* 22. Which statement do you agree with when working with a rapidly growing organization making
numerous acquisitions a year?
Select one:

a. Our teams and processes should be flexible and adapt to the various companies we acquire

b. We should have simple teams and processes to keep a simple business model as we grow; changes to
the processes should be minimal

c. Each company we acquire should have it’s own set of processes

DONE

1. When making hiring decisions within a remote working environment what

factors do you use to determine whether a candidate will be a good fit for your
organization or not?

Select one:
a. Technical abilities, good communication skills, coaching ability, and willingness to
learn
b. Good team player, good communication skills, coaching ability, and willingness to
learn
c. Good  team player and good communication skills
d. Great technical abilities

*2. How
Q do you deal with underperformers in your team?
u
e
Select
s
one:
t a. Coach them on a daily basis with an improvement plan then terminate them if the
i
o person does not meet expectations or is unwilling to be coached
n b. Terminate them immediately

T c. Ignore underperformers because they are usually just going through a bad
i
patch in their private life
t
l d. Accept under-performers because we cannot have a completely great team
e
*3. If
Q your team is presenting you with blockers they are facing to complete a
project,
u how do you handle the situation in the first instance?
e
s
Select
t one:
i
a. Ask them to go and re-plan and come back the next day with a solution
o
n b. Personally review the detail and conduct daily reviews to ensure the team is

T unblocked
i
t
l
e
 c. Bring in more professional people and change the team
d. None of the above

*4. Which
Q of the following does NOT qualify as a good goal to set for your
managers?
u
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. Improve customer satisfaction
o
n b. Increase NPS from 15 to 60

T c. Deliver 100% of all releases with 100% quality and on time

i d. Decrease detractors from 50% to 45%
t
l*5. Which
Q of the following do you consider least relevant when defining goals for
e
your team?
u
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. Goals must be clear and easy to understand
o
n b. Goals has to be easily achievable

T c. Goals must be measurable

i d. Goals completion must generate business value
t
l*6. At
Q the beginning of the quarter, you have assigned to a manager the goal to
e
have a release containing 50 bug fixes. Mid-quarter you learn that he is reporting
u
e
40
s of them fixed, but QA has verified none. What do you do?
t
i
Select
o
one:
n a. Ask for his plan for testing the bugs and see if progress is as he planned.
b. Set a goal for your manager to pass verification of 50 bugs by end of quarter
T
i as this will provide the complete picture and allow for progress on resolving bugs
t
l c. Ask the manager to report bugs only when fixed and verified
e d. Nothing particular to do, as doing verification prior to release is common to
ensure they actually work for the release candidate
*7. The
Q engineering group you just took over is going through a crisis period due
u recent releases that resulted in a number of customers being dissatisfied. You
to
e
are
s
asked to take action on this by your SVP. Which of these options are least
likely
t to help you address the above issues?
i
o
Select
n one:
a. Set individual goals for each of your managers to increase the quality of their
T
i products and hold them accountable
t
l b. Set a rule in place that any new release requires your sign-off for the time being
e c. Ask the business what kind of issues they see and want to be fixed as a
priority. Set goals for your managers to eliminate those kinds of issues.
d. Set a short-term goal for all your managers to review all customer issues opened in
the last few weeks

*8. The
Q project you just took over is running dramatically behind schedule - you
have
u 1 month to complete work worth 2 months based on current pace. Which of
e
the
s
following would you do first? 
t
i
Select
o
one:
n a. Bring more senior developers into the product
b. Set a daily 1h call with your managers and analyze their work priorities and
T
i results and address issues you find
t
l c. Identify what is the company process to apply a change of scope or date
e d. Ask your predecessor to explain why the project is progressing slow and use
that information to fix it

*9. You
Q learn that a product you just took over has major issues with uptime and
availability. Discussing with the SaaSOps counterpart, you understand that the
u
e
issues
s
are related to instability. The SaaSOps team blame the over complicated
and
t hyper distributed architecture that does not support load balancing. Your
i
lead engineer confirms that load balancing will remove all issues, but it takes 3
o
months
n to do it. Which of the below actions is what you would do first?

T
iSelect one:
t a. Understand the project funding process and work on getting the budget
l
e b. Check if such work is planned on the product roadmap and defer for the
moment if it is not
 c. Ask the engineering and SaaS teams to meet and define a solution
d. Ask your lead engineer or manager to run a root cause analysis on each past
outage. Delay any action until you go through this

*10. You
Q are asked to consolidate a team of 100 QA engineers and managers
that
u used to work within various product teams into a single centralized testing
e
team
s
that services all development teams across the organization. Before
consolidation,
t the 100 person team was, on average, able to execute 100 tests
i
per week per person. You are asked to commit to a plan that triples productivity
o
in one quarter as your first assignment. What do you do?
n

T
iSelect one:
t a. Ask each manager to build a plan for their product, review and publish it
l
e b. Make it clear that tripling the number of closed tickets is not possible without
sacrificing the quality of work or incurring costs for over time. Based on this start
pushing the team to reach the target
c. Analyze requests that take the longest time. Based on this push out requests when
they are likely to take too much time
d. Define uniform work processes and have the entire team follow it immediately. Fix
one issue every day

*11. Which
Q of these actions have an immediate impact in increasing code
quality?
u
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. Fix all open bugs
o
n b. Set up CI/CD for the product

T c. Institute mandatory code review policy

i d. Train your team - have the product technical documentations built and shared
t
l*12. Which
Q of the following statements is true when comparing SCRUM and
e
KANBAN?
u
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. SCRUM supports release planning through sprint plans whereas KANBAN has no
o
n built-in concepts to support release plans

T b. SCRUM does not allow changing the sprint scope whereas in KANBAN you have full
i flexibility
t
l
e
 c. SCRUM focuses on measuring sprint velocity whereas KANBAN focuses on
measuring cycle time
d. SCRUM support cross-functional teams while KANBAN is designed for teams of
people having the same functional role

*13. You
Q are asked to take an existing team and grow it to 200+ cross-functional
team
u members. Which of the following actions delivers least measurable output
e
to
s achieve this?
t
i
Select one:
o
n a. Foster teamwork
b. Define the responsibilities, inputs and outputs of each function
T
i c. Measure your service's success based on your customer feedback
t
l d. Measure individual productivity of each team member (dev/qa/etc)
e
*14. How
Q do you resolve a persistent quality issue on one of the software
products
u you are responsible for?
e
s
Select
t one:
i
a. Bring in the experts to provide a recommendation and act on the recommendation
o
n b. Increase testing

T c. Get personally involved in the detail to find out why there are issues and work with
i the team to resolve them
t
l d. Assume the teams are great and will resolve the quality issue anyway
e
*15. How
Q would you define security compliance work which needs to be done by
engineering?
u
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. Security work should take precedence over anything else done in engineering and
o
n be the number one priority to ensure that business risks are minimized

T b. Security team should understand the business goals and plan work in a way which
i would still enable the business goals to be met while minimizing risk
t
l c. Security is just overrated and there for people to keep themselves in a job
e
*16. How
Q would you keep improving an IT Engineering team?
u
e
Select
s
one:
t a. Create a weekly feedback loop d. My teams will eventually reach top
i
o between teams based on objective quality and productivity where further
n measures of quality and productivity gains cannot be made

T b. Create a rigorous HR program to e. Motivate the team through meet ups,

i motivate teams through annual salary events, and sending freebies
t
l increases tied to performance reviews
e
c. Create a rigorous HR program to *17. How would you manage an
Q
motivate teams through quarterly salary
overload
u of work on your engineering
e
increases tied to performance reviews teams?
s
t
i
Select one: o
a. Create SWAT teams to address customer
n specific issues
b. Escalate to the business immediately and ask for more budget to add
T
resources and reduce overload i
t
c. Improve productivity by upgrading teaml talent, simplifying and documenting the
process, and using automated tools e

d. Spread all resources across all business projects in parallel to keep all business
stakeholders happy

*18. Which
Q management style do you prefer in your decision-making processes?
u
e
Select
s
one:
t a. I need to have all the information available before making a decision. In this way, I
i
o ensure that I am safe and  I always make the right decisions
n b. I will take decisions based on the information at hand and accept that later on, we

T may need to revise it and change direction

i
c. I need to have all the information available and ensure that my team also agree with
t
l my decision. I will not proceed without having complete team buy-in
e
d. If I don’t have all the information available I will escalate it to my manager for a
decision to be taken
19. What
Q best represents your opinion on mandatory CI/CD strategy for a 100
product
u portfolio?
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. It should be militant in its prescription so that product quality cannot be
o
n compromised

T b. Individual teams should optimize the CI / CD strategy for each of the 100 products
i c. CI/CD is great for some products, but not great for others
t
l d. It should be general enough to satisfy the needs of all 100 products and should not
e
specify to a detailed level

*20. What
Q is your view of Work-in-Progress in an IT engineering team?
u
e
Select
s one:
t a. It is needed to keep teams busy and increase team utilisation
i
b. I see no issue with having lots of work in progress in a queue
o
n c. Work in progress queues should be eradicated and kept to a minimum since they

T slow down delivery to the business

i
*21. Which
Q of the following most closely represents your view on Metrics to
t
drive
u
l process?
e
s
tSelect one:
i
a. Metrics may be one of the tools to use to measure teams and take decisions
o
n however they are subjective and subject to interpretation

T b. Metrics may be used as a key driver in objective decision making

i c. Engineering teams cannot really be measured by metrics since they are
t
l creative people and need to be free to take decisions as they work
e
*22. Which
Q statement do you agree with when working with a rapidly growing
organization making numerous acquisitions a year?
u
e
s
Select
t one:
i
a. Our teams and processes should be flexible and adapt to the various companies we
o
n acquire

T b. We should have simple teams and processes to keep a simple business model as we
i grow; changes to the processes should be minimal
t
l c. Each company we acquire should have it’s own set of processes
e