Spend the first week finding the truth: read the plan, then talk to the team individually, because real status lives with the people doing the work rather than in the report. Establish what is genuinely done, what the true remaining effort is, and what the sponsor believes they are getting. Then re-baseline once, publicly, with options, and be strict about not doing it again.
Why interviewers ask this
Recovery work is senior work, so interviewers use this to gauge level. They want investigation before action, individual conversations rather than a group status meeting, and the discipline of a single public re-baseline. The detail that impresses most is checking whether the sponsor and the team share a definition of done, since misaligned expectations, not schedule, is what makes many projects red.
How to structure your answer
- Spend the first week establishing actual status, not reported status.
- Talk to delivery people individually rather than in a group.
- Check the sponsor's expectations against the team's understanding.
- Re-baseline once, publicly, with options and a recommendation.
- Refuse to re-baseline repeatedly.
Example answer
Week one is finding the truth, because a red project usually has a reported status and an actual status and they are not close. I read the plan, then I talk to the people doing the work individually, not in a group, because that is where the real state is. I want to know what is genuinely complete rather than what sits at ninety percent, what the remaining effort actually is, and separately what the sponsor thinks they are getting, because those two have often drifted apart badly. Week two I re-baseline once, publicly, with options and a recommendation, and then I am extremely strict about not doing it again, because a project that re-plans repeatedly loses all credibility. On one recovery the biggest single problem was not the schedule at all, it was that the sponsor and the delivery team had different definitions of done, and writing that down fixed more than any re-plan could.
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See how it worksFollow-up questions to expect
- How do you handle a team that is demoralized and defensive when you arrive?
- When would you recommend canceling a project instead of recovering it?
- What do you do if the previous project manager is still in the organization?
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