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IntermediateSITUATIONAL
You’re given responsibility for coordinating a cross‑functional initiative with a tight, non‑negotiable deadline, but the people you rely on from other departments do not report to you and are already overloaded. How would you plan, prioritize, and influence them to hit the deadline, and how would you respond if a critical dependency starts to slip?
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Sample Answer

Situation: At my last company, I led a 6‑week cross‑functional rollout involving Ops, Finance, and IT, all at 120% capacity. Task: Deliver on a regulatory deadline with a $250K penalty for slippage. Action: In week 1, I ran a 2‑hour planning workshop to define a shared critical path, RACI, and a visual Kanban board in Jira. I negotiated scope trade‑offs, cutting 20% of non‑essential features, and set twice‑weekly 20‑minute standups with clear blockers and SLA agreements. When a key IT integration slipped by 4 days, I triggered a mitigation plan: parallelized testing, added a temporary contractor, and implemented a read‑only MVP for launch. Result: We launched on time, avoided penalties, reduced rework tickets by 30%, and cut overtime by 15% compared to the previous rollout.

Keywords

Create a shared, visual critical path and RACI across teamsNegotiate scope and priorities using data and business impactUse short, regular check‑ins to surface and remove blockers earlyHave predefined mitigation options for slipping dependencies
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