IntermediateSITUATIONAL
You’re halfway through a cross-functional initiative and a key dependency (from another team or vendor) slips by two weeks, threatening your deadline. What concrete steps would you take in the next 24 hours to re-plan, communicate, and protect the project’s core objectives?
Custom Role
General

Sample Answer

Situation: Midway through a data-integration rollout (Snowflake + Salesforce), a vendor slipped delivery of an API connector by two weeks, risking a regulatory reporting deadline. Task: Replan within 24 hours to protect the go-live date and compliant reporting. Action: In the first 4 hours, I ran a fast impact analysis in Jira, re-mapped the critical path in Smartsheet, and defined 3 scenarios (scope trade-offs, phased release, overtime budget). I aligned with engineering and compliance on a phased launch: core reporting first, low-priority dashboards later. Next, I negotiated with the vendor for a partial sandbox build and daily check-ins, and updated execs and stakeholders with a revised timeline and risk log. Result: We hit the regulatory deadline, delivered 80% of scope on time, recovered the remaining 20% within 10 days, and avoided ~$120K in potential penalties.

Keywords

Immediate impact analysis and critical-path re-planning within 24 hoursScenario-based options (scope, phasing, budget) with clear trade-offsDirect vendor negotiation and tighter cadence to reduce further slippageTransparent, data-driven comms to maintain trust and protect core objectives
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