Tricky Team Lead Interview Preparation Guide

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Please share your answers.

Please share your answers.

A team lead role can be defined as follows...A person with good communication and interpersonal skills. The main responsibility of a team lead is to co-ordinate the team members during the life cycle of various projects. Communication skill is important because a team can consists of a number of individuals with various ideas and skills. In order to drive them to a common goal, the leader should be able to communicate with the team as well the higher management.
A good team lead is naturally a good communicator and a good communicator can be a good team lead. If he is not able to communicate the achievements of his teams to the management, then the team starts disintegrate. At the same time, if he fails to communicate the management visions to his subordinates, there could be problems due to unawareness. He should effectively communicate to stake holders and mangers about the possible problems which can be or faced by the team such as work-load etc. So effective communication skills makes him a good negotiator as well and hence he would be able to get the trust of the team members

Not everyone has a same perspective. If a team lead is new to the orginization, he is definately treated with respect. However if a person from same orginization is been promoted, his nature of work, his overall attitiude is already know. To gauge the above question, I would spend quality time with team members asking questions about their work, and other issues related to office and try and build a approachable attitue within team members.

I am able to work constructively as leader if I am able to align my Team's Goal with that of the company's and organizations goals. This is done effectively if I could manage the Business front ( By ensuring all SLAs are met and Billing and revenue generating targets are met by regularly monitoring the team performance, identifying the gaps and managing them effectively)
Apart from this as a Leader I have to take care of the people front. By playing as a mentor and a role model also taking care of there personal and professional needs and issues.

To Influence others means you need to convince others with your idea. This idea can be genuine or forced one (which you yourself not agree to, generally posed by management).

In both the cases you need to understand others view, way of thinking, their background ultimetly you have to be in their shoe and think how you will going to accept this idea with their school of thought.

We need to find out the root cause for conflict. Most of the reasons would be related to both parties emotiations like ego, jealous, insecurity, negative compitition etc. After finding out the root-cause, I will discuss with person who had affected with emotions. We need to explain him who to view the sitatuion in that particular situation. I will not hurt his self respect but will try to support him to change attitude during that time. At the same time, for the 2nd person, I will explain him about the sportiveness and make him to understand the opponent mental status and stability. With this - both people will understand the ground reality and will work as a team otherwise - two people will become two groups and common objectives will be effected with these people approaches.

Prepare reports and maintain records of work accomplishments and
administrative information, as required, and coordinate the preparation,
presentation, and communication of work-related information to the supervisor.

Report to the supervisor periodically on team and individual work
accomplishments, problems, progress in mastering tasks and work processes, and
individual and team training needs.

Intercede with the supervisor on behalf of the team to inform the
supervisor of performance management issues/problems and to recommend/request
related actions, such as assignments, reassignments, promotions, tour of duty
changes, peer reviews, and performance appraisals.

Coach, facilitate, solve work problems, and participate in the work of the
team

Observe training needs and relay training needs and requests to supervisor

To know team members temparament and treat them accordingly.

As a Team Lead my first priority for my group will be to make my team understand what are their KPI's and how they have to achieve it. Secondly, if they have to grow in organisation then they have to work hard to achieve their KPI which is not possible without a team work. And for this their cooperation is required.

Ofcourse the situation will be unique.

1) Well this totally depends on the type of process. If you have a team of 4 members and 2 are asking for marriage leave, then first of all look the dates of their
marriage. Because you cannot deny to give them the leaves for the marriage.

2) If you have a team of 4 members then its quite possible that it was being taken into consideration that one or 2 members may ask for the leave, so the team should be able to run with 3 members .

3) Make everyone aware about the scenario and let everyone know that they need leaves for the
marriage. If the marriage dates have slight difference then its good for you.
Then you can actually ask the members also if they can shorten the time-span of the leaves.

4) Moreover if the process is a backend process where you your self are trained, Then I dont think that you should be ashamed of helping others 2, and if needed then can request others to work little longer than the normal hours.

There is no direct answer to this question.

If you think of it then it is a flamboyant style that usually would distinguish a leader from the team. However, at the same time flamboyance has to be complemented with actual knowledge of the technology/issues being addressed by the solution.

A few qualities that can make a good team lead:
1) Due diligence - A cliched term, but makes a lot of sense when one is leading a team of highly qualified technologists. Delving into the details of what each team member is involved in helps in constant monitoring of activities. It is a merry go round but is useful.
2) Reach the next level - communicate what the team is upto and what the achievements of the team have been to the next higher level. Gives visibility to the team as well as the lead
3) Personal outreach - common human beings (which means everyone except superman-m.h.r.i.p and Paris Hilton) are surrounded by pressures which can restrict thought flow at critical junctures. A good team lead can provide a reassuring pat on the back to team members who are under pressure. To do this you have to be able to identify with the team member and be able to give thoughtful advice (DO NOT discuss such issues with anyone - breaks the trust bond).
4) Encourage independent thinking - Reduces a lot of design and implementation problems.
5) Take the team out for a team-building session once in a while. Make sure the team gets "face time" with higher management. Invite higher management of course.

If Team Lead knows the capabilities and deficiencies of his/her team member, then it is easy for him/her to assign the task based on the capabilities. And he can also work on the team members deficiencies to over come it, so the team member can work efficiently. This is only possible when Lead has good people management skills. If he wants to get his work done then he has to keep the team happy. So, if team is happy they'll be motivated and work efficiently.

Firstly, to be recognized you need to prove yourself that you are here for them. So,
- Understand the Team and its dynamics
- Understand Individual pain points
- Bring value by focusing sometime in resolving the pain points.

Eg: The team has been relentlessly working on projects and delivering them on weekly basis irrespective of the criticality. Putting a Requirement Goverenance would streamline the work, priorities thereby turning weekly delivery to monthly deliverables which reduced the stress.

If a unhappy lead wish to have word with the manager I feel like there is nothing wrong how ever he has to follow the the hirearchy of management.

The agent has to sit with the immidiate sup. and discuss the matter may be a possibility that the sup. will be able to give one of the best solution of his unhappyness. because most of the time the reason of unhappyness is either the monotonous work or money or something personal.

In my opinion, you don't need to give a demo at the time of intrview. The best way ofcourse is to bring the intrview panel slowly towards dicussing what problems you faced at the time you were managing at your present Co.
For eg. there might have been a mutiny amongst the team members. How you coped with that severe thing. Tell them how you managed them separately.

As per my understanding we need Time and Motion study for a particular process, which would provide us with AHT (Average Handling Time) for a particular transaction.
If we have sub-processes than we need to have seprate T&M study with seprate AHT. Then we need average voulme for all sub-processes which would give us avg. volume for entire process (by adding vag. volume of all sub-processes).

So with all these data we can easily calculate the FT required and total time need for deliverables.

One of the way is the buy time. Also ask the client what are the other questions related to the subject.

Analyse the client requirement and think calmly and respond to him with either 1 or 2 options (produce data analysis and supportive documents if necessary). By this way even the client is happy that all his queries are answered in one go.

I think if someone is having a talent to become team lead, then you should be more happy. You can train them or teach them what you can do so and allow him to become team lead. Talent is what matters to the company.

To measure the project success.

Every company has a set of standards and its lead / manager role to tracer that those standards are being followed by the team.

These are the few steps you should take to motivate the team

1) Don't even think of selling the credit of a team member on your name. Give the credit to individual in team and encourage him/her for the same verbally.

2) In case of some bad reputation comes to your team, try to shield the team members from losing their morals, but do not forget to take or suggest preventive steps to let happen same thing again.

3) Start work by self on some of the tasks which are boring though required (like documentation) before asking team members to do the work.

There are lot many tips like this one, but these few will help get hold of the team.

Performance of a team can be assesed by client satisfaction with the deliverables be it reduction in defects , meeting SLA's and deadlines. It can also be assessed from monetary point of view if the man hours required to complete a specific task is less compared to estimated , this leads to addition in project revenue .

Other parameters to judge the performance could be willingness of the customer to do more business with the same team , more openings for new resources

In this case I would see the following things
1) Output of task assigned to team member
2) Communication skills
3) Self initiative or not
4) Flexibility
5) Technical skills
6) Responsibility

Attrition is something which software companies have to deal with regularly. If a person has decided to leave, little can be done about it. But a project lead should try to minimise the effect of this on other team members. He should talk to other people in team and find out how they are feeling. Necessary steps should be taken to retain those who are in the team by showing recoginition to work, meetings with those who are showing signs of displease.

Make understand the team members that this is new functionality for the team and arrange KT session for this with the person who were already expertise in this. Then organanise these knowledges as per the process which were already followed by previous experts of this new functionality.

In case if the functionality is entirely new and if our team is the first going to handle this, then with the selected top performing resource and team lead should arrange for the training sessions with the clients and other stack holders and then bring a process and have frequent reviews till this new process being implemented successfully.