Make them explicit, dated, and owned by a named person on the other side. Get the commitment in writing with the exact deliverable and date, agree check ins well before it is due, and hold a fallback for anything on your critical path. The failure mode is discovering on the due date that your request was never actually in their plan.
Why interviewers ask this
Cross team dependencies cause most schedule slips in larger organizations, and this reveals whether you chase them proactively or find out late. Interviewers listen for a named counterpart rather than a team name, a written commitment, early check ins rather than a reminder on the deadline, and a genuine contingency for critical items. Relying on goodwill and a shared spreadsheet is the answer that fails here.
How to structure your answer
- Insist on a named person, an exact deliverable, and a date.
- Get the commitment in writing from them or their manager.
- Schedule check ins well before the due date.
- Ask what would stop this landing, not whether it is on track.
- Hold a fallback for anything on the critical path.
Example answer
The first thing is that a dependency on a team is not a dependency, it is a hope. I need a person's name, an exact deliverable, and a date, ideally confirmed in writing by them or their manager. Then I put check ins in well before it is due, because finding out on the due date is the whole failure mode. Usually two weeks out and one week out, and I ask what would stop this landing rather than asking if it is on track, since everyone always says on track. On my last program we had four external dependencies and I gave each one a named owner on my side who spoke to them weekly. For the two sitting on the critical path I also had a fallback: one was a stubbed interface, the other was a manual process we could run for a few weeks. We ended up using one of them.
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See how it worksFollow-up questions to expect
- What do you do when the other team simply will not commit to a date?
- How do you handle a dependency that keeps slipping by a week at a time?
- How do you make your own team a good dependency for others?
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