I don't think his question is unexpected at all for any kind of candidate that is going to have a leadership component. There are a hundred different answers t

I don't think his question is unexpected at all for any kind of candidate that is going to have a leadership component. There are a hundred different answers that you can give to his initial question (how did you increase velocity of your teammates). TDD, improved requirements process, improved deployment process, improved monitoring, improved mentoring process, whatever. I actually think this is a great way to figure out whether someone has actually done what they are talking about and done it successfully or if it's just something they have read about or halfheartedly/unsuccessfully tried to implement. It's easy to say "agile is good" or "continuous integration is good" or "TDD is good". If you're going to claim one of those things as a big accomplishment then you should be able to talk about the specifics of how you implemented it. I don't even care if I agree with all your decisions. What I do care about is why you made your decisions. If you made some decision that caused the company to go bankrupt but at the time it was the most sensible decision then lets talk about it. If all you can say is "testing is good because it prevents bugs" then I would be concerned that you either hadn't implemented a comprehensive testing program or you didn't understand why you were making the decisions you made.