1. Explain what are vital Contingency plans a team lead must take care?
Vital contingency plans are -- resource allocation plan: what if a resource is absent -- who will replace.
in case more time is needed to complete the work -- how to handle the project support contingency risk budget - how much
2. How to conduct the team appraisals? Outline the process and parameters?
For team appraisals first the following needs to be done :
clarification of roles and responsibilities
constructive feedback to team members
discovery of unknown and unresolved issues
development of individual training plan
estabilishment of specific goals for future.
then a feedback as a standard form should be taken from individuals of the team:
recognition and rewards for the desirable behavior, team efforts etc
3. Tell me what are the communication methods you followed within team and to client?
Within Team:
Team meeting,
Email,
One-on-One meeting,
Free talk
To Client:
Conf meeting,
IM,
Email
Assign the tasks to the team members. Ask then to break the task into sub tasks so that each sub task's completion time is round a day or two and ask him to estimate the time. Once they have estimated sit with the team members and review the task/ sub tasks time and review the time lines and make adjustments if needed. Once this is done, you can meet every morning for 10-15 minutes to track the tasks/sub tasks. Since the tasks are now granular the tracking of the tasks completion are easy. Even if you are slipping and if there are any bottle necks it is easy to track it very early so that you take appropriate action/decision.
One of the good quality of a leader is to search the leadership qualities in his team, if he find the qualities in one of the team member then it should not be kept within himself but to exposed to other higher authorities, some of the points which he needs to taken care while explaning the qualitites to authorities. The team lead should test the memeber in all situation, all the recognization should be on paper and if the authority ask to prove his talent or give the scenario were he has explicit himself on document, that is the reason that documents are very important.
6. What is Self-managed team leadership?
Self-managed team leadership is different from traditional leadership and provides an alternative to traditional leader's role. Self-managed team leaders lead without positional authority. Self-managed team leadership is moving inside one's subordinate work group to lead. Self-managed team leadership defines a different role for the leader. The leader is not responsible for making decisions, developing action plans or giving orders. In these situations, the team is given the responsibility, authority and accountability for managing a defined area of responsibility. When the work group is given control over one or more defined areas of team responsibility, it is the leader's role to use self-managed leadership skills and systematic processes to help the team to operate effectively and efficiently.
Well in such case if you have taken many one to one meetings with that rude guy to make him convince to work property.
Then next step is to talk with him as a friend and try to get the matter because of which he is behaving like this. If the you can get the problem that why hi is behaving like this then there may be a many solutions. If his reason of behaving like this is correct then you can try to resolve the issue according to him.
But the reason you get by the rude guy is not proper or correct then you can explain him the draw backs of his behaviour. If it is his tendency to behave like this then you can explain him about his future with this attitude.
And finally if he is not able to understand your language...then warn him once or two and after that just sit with him against the managing team and try to get the solution from management regarding his rude behaviour.
8. Explain what are the weakest qualities or attributes a team leader should avoid definitely?
The team lead must avoid these attributes of his/her personality:
He/she always have greater understanding of project they should never ask about the project plan or anything which they are supposed to know because this degrade them in eye of other Team members.
This is basic fact that all leading position doesn't matter he is project manager or team lead are very sensitive there are always other people who want to jump on those positions so be always loaded with extra knowledge, skills and discipline.
During lack of right person in team (let's say QA) the team lead should be able to work instead.
Be critical about your performance before somebody else become.
9. Tell me how can a team lead keep the team organized to meet deadlines or goals?
Team members have to be provided access to the bigger picture. This not only assists them in attaining their goals but is also a moral booster when they realize the overall impact of their contribution.- Periodic feedback to members allows them to gauge their progress and mitigate any issues before they go out of control- Nip it in the bud: conflict resolution skills are vital. Organize the team to ensure that sub-teams members respect each other i.e do not have personality conflicts
10. How you are going to be a or become a role model of you team?
You can be a role model for your team by following the 4 basic principles i.e :-
1) Responsible: Be a responsible person.If you say that you will get back to a team member on a particular topic then make sure you do it.
2) Be Calm: You might have many problems but your team is not responsible for that. So make sure you maintain your calm.
3) Honesty: No need to stress on this point. You lose your right of leadership once you lose your honesrt.
4) Be humble with everyone in the team regardless of their designation/ranks.
In this case importance to be given to the one which can be resolved in less time. So that you can answer to the superiors and give some confidence that the other will also resolve quickly even though the other will take more time at least you can reduce the stress of alone engineers to concentrate on the other.
In case of critical issue if no one in the team can resolve the issue.... then here the role of team leader starts.
As a team lead he first need to understand what the issue is about. If he can able to get the problem then of course he must have several options to resolve problem.
In most cases what happen we cannot understand the problem and working hard to get answer or solution.. which is of course not up to the mark.
In such condition once team lead understand the issue his first responsibility is to explain it to the other related peoples in the team. Instead of finding solution alone there is always beneficial that to take other peoples to get the solution. Everyone has its own knowledge and issue solving techniques. So every one can get the answer in their different ways and solution will find easily.
RCA is problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediate symptoms.
14. What is service quality? How do you improve your team member's service quality?
Well!!! Service quality is not the individuals task. Service is related to the outcome of a group effort. To provide a good service a complete team need to work accordingly to get the desired target withing time provided by client.
Up to some extent team leader has the responsibility to make a team or to manage a team in such a way that every one in the team work as a responsible person. If everyone in the team know his responsibility and fulfill them then automatically the output will be desired and service will be good one.
Team lead must have the one to one correspondence in a team. He must know his team members capabilities and behaviours... then only hi can assign the task to them accordingly. Team leaders main responsibility to achieve the desired target with in deadline without stressing the team members. He has to decide who can in his team perform which task successfully and with responsibility and without having much stress to complete the task. If he can do so then it is sure that he is a good team leader and the service will be up to the mark.
15. Please explain how to resolve team conflicts in your team?
Team conflicts are of different types. Some based on the knowledge like two senior analyst giving opposite opinion to each other then this kind of conflicts can be resolve by Collaborative method.
If the conflict arise by the group of person and they can support the results of conflicts then this can be resolve by Competitive method.
Some br compromising and so on...
16. What tactics you apply to develop the leadership skills?
Actually both the below answers are good but they miss a key point which is to ensure that you are communicating the vision of your management and orginisation properly to your team at the same time you should understand what your employees want from the orginisation and try to help them achieve it in a proper method this shows them that they can trust you and that you will look out for them.
Deligate more responsibility to the team.
Be an active listener to problems and suggestions.
Develope professional and personal rapport in the team.
Do not forward the pressure to the subbordinates until you explain to them why such pressure is needed and what is the benefit to the company and themselves..
Gain their confidence on you
1. Never think that x no of people are working under me. they are never under you. instaed develop a thinking that those employees are working with me for the same goal.
2. Try not to be biased to any one in team. Act neutral.
3. Active listening.
You should involve in testing the application by yourself. Because, at the end you will be responsible for code developed by your team/team member. If you are not in development then testing the app will give you one more avenue to know what was done in the back-end.
This (testing) noway degrades your job, depending on howmuch effort you are putting on testing the app, prior to the code goes to QA.
The main 2 reasons will be
a) That member is not interested in the work that he/she is doing.
b) He/she is not happy with the immediate supervisor.
Best way to solve this is by face to face talk. Always it should be a gain - gain situation for anyone who is working.both the individual and the project should be benefited by the work that he/she is doing.
Another reason can be personal. A good lead should be able to identiy this too. It should be like professional at work and personal friend.
19. How to Test Estimation for the Project?
Well I would give this to the team and ask them to give estimates to the given test cases and then I will evaluate whether the estimates provided by them are correct or not.
If a tester gives, more estimates from other tester try to find why his estimates are more than other may be he is doing the detail downstream testing.
Usually if its a function test cast it will not take more than 5 min to each test case which includes +VE, -VE, border, special character testing.
If it is a downstream testing, it will take 20 min to execute each TC.
20. What are the challenges you face while leading the team?
- Team attitude problem.
- Different views
- Cultural problems
- They understanding problems and so on...
All these challenges can be handled if we get friendly with them and try to undertand there problem.
The ability of a team lead to convince a team member that thing A is of more priority than the other thing B entirely depends on his/her quality of communication.
One of the possible ways to do this would be arrange the sequence of events in a manner that would emphsise the occurence of A before B. For instance, one might say - "But don't you think that if A were to happen before B we could be able to achieve B in a more efficient manner?..."
Make it an open question and let the team member ponder over this...At least while s/he thinks this through, the team lead will buy time to get the higher priority thing done!
22. How should a team lead handle a team member who always gives defensive response?
In that case where team member is defensive, the lead can take following steps:
1. Teaching him meaning of team work.
2. discussing minutely his actions while he was supposed to perform something and he didn't and something wrong happened.
3. Be very sharp and specific don't generalize his/her responsibility.
4. Sometimes it seems that Team member is defensive but actually he was going through a genuine problem.
5. The best aproach is to make a diplomatic balance like if he is defensive for something wrong done by him, them appraise something which he has done good in past or in present and very professionally make hime realise that he shouldn't be defensive and should improve for future.
23. Explain what are the attributes that make a good team leader?
A good team leader has to have
1. Good knowledge of the project (s) he is leading
2. Genuinely interested in the success of project AND individuals.
3. Helping and problem solving team members
4. Open to suggestions from team members
5. Has to be responsible for whatever decision a team member has taken
6. Not afraid of failure
7. Nice to have: technically sound so as to replace any of the team member
24. What are the approaches or methods by which guidance to team members is given by team lead?
public speaking or you can term it as common addressing....
another one is run time training....
third and the most imp is that Tl should lead by example
25. How to resolve if there is problem between your Team member and get work done?
When team members are at odds, I ask them to review what our task is. The answer should be "to achieve our target". I ask them to remember that we are not required to like each other, but we are required to work together with respect and that nothing less will be tolerated. The team members in question are then asked if they can work out their problem by themselves or if they need a third party to intervene. If they feel they need a third party, I ask them who that party should be: me, the department director -- maybe Human Resources. Then I make it clear that the issue is to be resolved today, or at the latest tomorrow, that their dissention is putting the project at risk and that is not acceptable.
At all times, I make every effort to not lay blame on either team member unless the situation is extreme. (If the situation was extreme, there would be little or no discussion -- we would go directly to HR.) Whatever the problem might be, I make it clear that we will work it out and we will work it out now.
