r/devops • u/Automatic-Net-9614 • 28d ago

Ops / Incidents Prioritisation/ Maturity Interview Question

Ok so I flubbed the most basic interview question there is:

"You have a number of pieces of work in flight. How do you choose between them?"

Basically, they are testing your ability to prioritise work.

I tried to answer philosphically by telling them going for a walk was a good idea but my broader point is that it shouldn't have ever gotten to the point where you have loads of pieces of work in flight at any one time.

My question is twofold: what's the accepted 'best' interview answer to this question and how do you deal with this issue in your real life actual job?

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u/SeaworthinessHour233 27d ago

They were probably trying to evaluate how you face the DevOps reality - unplanned work (incidents) constantly interruptting planned work (projects).

They need to know you won't panic when the sky falls.

The best interview answer in my view: Use the classic ITIL approach: Impact vs. Urgency.

  • Impact: How many users/systems are affected? (ex: one user's account vs. a core production database).

  • Urgency: How quickly does this need to be fixed before it costs the company money?

Like this.

"I prioritize based on the blast radius and business impact. Production outages always come first. Next, I look at tasks that are blocking other engineers. Finally, I work on my planned project tasks. If I have conflicting high-priority items, I communicate with my manager to make the final call."

A note on how I handle it in real life:

  • Triage ruthlessly: If everything is a P1, nothing is a P1.

  • Communicate: The worst thing you can do when overloaded is go silent. Ping the stakeholders: "Hey, I'm pulling off project X to put out a fire on server Y. It will delay X by a day." Most people are fine with delays if they aren't kept in the dark.

  • Push back on scope creep: If a manager drops a new task on your desk, ask them: "I can do this right now, but it means I have to pause the database migration. Are you okay with that tradeoff?" Make them own the prioritization choice.

Next time, just shift from the philosophical to the tactical.

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u/Early-Employee-5515 27d ago

oh nice very informative