# Critique a Recent Engineering Project and Explain What You Would Redo Choose a meaningful engineering project from roughly the last two years. Give a concise deep dive into the problem, your personal responsibilities, the most important technical decision, and the outcome. Then identify what did not go well and explain what you would do differently if you restarted the project today. ### Constraints & Assumptions - Focus on one project for which you can distinguish your own work from the team's work. - Support claims with evidence you genuinely observed; do not invent metrics. - The retrospective should demonstrate judgment and learning, not merely blame constraints or teammates. ### Clarifying Questions to Ask - Should the discussion emphasize architecture, execution, cross-team leadership, or all three? - How technical should the explanation be for the audience? - May confidential details be generalized while preserving the decision and trade-off? ### Solving Hints Use a simple narrative arc: context, goal, constraints, decision, your actions, result, shortcomings, and a concrete redesigned approach. Pick one consequential trade-off rather than listing every technology used. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A crisp problem statement, scope, and explicit personal ownership. - Alternatives considered, constraints, and the reasoning behind a technical decision. - Verifiable outcomes or candid qualitative evidence when metrics were unavailable. - A specific failure or weakness, its root cause, and a better approach grounded in what was learned. - Clear communication that can go deeper when the interviewer probes. ### Follow-up Questions - Which decision was hardest to reverse, and how did you manage that risk? - What early signal did you miss? - How did you align stakeholders when technical and delivery goals conflicted?