Killing a project people loved

Tell me about a time you decided to stop or kill a project that your team had invested a lot in.

Context

What the interviewer is testing: senior judgment: sunk cost, communication and looking after the team.

Clarifying questions to ask first

What signal made you decide?
How did you tell the team?
What happened to the people and the learnings?

How to approach it

Pick one real, specific story (not a hypothetical or a summary of many)
Set the scene in two or three sentences, including the stakes
Spend most of the time on what you personally did and why
End with a measurable result and what you learned

Framework: STAR: Situation -> Task -> Action -> Result, with a short reflection at the end

Sample answer

Clear stopping criteria
Handled team morale deliberately
Redeployed effort to higher value

Situation: specific context, their role, and why it mattered (stakes)
Task: what they personally owned
Action: concrete steps they took, decisions and trade-offs, using "I" not "we"
Result: measurable outcome, plus what they learned or would do differently

Explains the evidence and criteria, resisted sunk cost, communicated with care, kept the learnings, and moved the team to higher-impact work with results.

What interviewers look for

Strategic judgment
Communication
Leadership