Customer Role-Play and Scope Changes
Clarify an urgent, loosely defined customer request to identify the underlying task and its success criteria. Present scope options with clear trade-offs, avoid committing to accuracy targets without supporting evaluation evidence, and document the agreed scope, constraints, and next steps in a written handoff. Keep the customer's primary objective central to scope decisions.
You are nearing the end of a support-review take-home assignment. The read-only CSV report runs successfully and retains every exported request. You have 120 minutes of active work remaining, allocated as follows:
45 minutes: Build an optional chart.
15 minutes: Refine the visual presentation.
40 minutes: Run verification checks.
20 minutes: Complete the handoff.
Before you finish, the support supervisor sends a new request:
“Urgent delivery complaints are being missed. Before tomorrow, add automatic routing at 99% accuracy.”
First, identify the customer task that must succeed tomorrow, the consequences of failure, and which parts of the existing implementation can change. Evaluate routing libraries only after clarifying the requirements and agreeing on scope.
Translate the customer's request into an agreed, feasible scope with measurable acceptance criteria. Avoid committing to outcomes that the available evidence cannot substantiate.
Public interview scenarios illustrate requirements discovery, late scope changes, and written handoffs. Their suggested timings and evaluation criteria are illustrative, not requirements shared by all employers.
Uncovering the real need
Start by acknowledging the consequence. Then ask questions whose answers change the delivery decision.
Engineer: “It sounds like the main risk is missing an urgent complaint. What happens if one is missed? How does your team currently review complaints?”
Supervisor: “A delivery issue might not receive follow-up until the next day. I manually review about 40 exported requests before 16:00. I cannot miss requests already marked urgent.”
Engineer: “For tomorrow, do you need every request marked urgent identified for review, or must the tool also assign teams automatically? What data can I access for this exercise? Are you authorized to approve changes to the remaining scope?” ...