- B - Vocal inflection contributes approximately 38 percent of our understanding of a verbal communication. From Hidden Messages by Albert Mehrabian, 1972.
- D - the formula for schedule variance is SV = EV – PV. Therefore the schedule variance as a percentage of the work accomplished is PV/EV or +88.8%
- C - Regression testing is a red herring. The correct PMI term for this activity is progressive elaboration.
- A. The PMI Code of Ethics mandatory standard states that ethics complaints may only be filed when first substantiated by fact
- D – One of the defined uses of a work authorization system is for the control of scope creep. It insures the right work is performed at the right time and in the correct sequence.
- B - the most appropriate form of contract for a cost plus/cost reimbursable contract is the RFP because you are buying expertise. The statement of work may not be completely understood at the start of the project.
- B - a random statistical sample will tell you approximately what percentage of defects you’ll find in the hundred thousand parts.
- B – At this point, this ‘risk’ is an issue that will have to be addressed. A is premature – while we know the probability, we don’t know the impact. C is incorrect: if you are performing a thorough risk assessment, it is assumed you are validating the risk data before it is entered in the log. D might be correct if the impact of the risk is high, but at this point it is an unknown
- B - The next step in the Planning process group for scope is to determine the customer's requirements. Answer A is performed in the Risk Management knowledge area, and answers C and D are performed after the requirements are collected.
- D - "Stakeholders should be classified according to their interest, influence, and involvement..." PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 394.
- C - The PMI code of ethics and professional responsibility states: “We do not engage in or condone behavior that is designed to deceive others, including but not limited to, making misleading or false statements, stating half-truths, providing information out of context or withholding information that, if known, would render our statements as misleading or incomplete.” This means, tell the truth whether the news is positive or negative.
- C – Because you want to be sure if the automation will reduce costs, you want to perform a cost-benefit analysis.
- A – For a cost plus contract vehicle, the biggest concern is Risk from the buyer’s perspective
- B - You cannot earn more value on a project than you planned to spend. The actual cost could be higher or lower than earned value or planed value.
- D. EFGIR represents the critical path. It is the longest path through
the network with the duration of 13.
- D. The path ABIR has duration of seven. Hence B can be delayed by six
days before the next event can begin.
- C. The path CDHR has duration of nine days. Hence H can be delayed by
four days before the next event can begin.
- B - Answer B describes one of the responsibilities of the project manager, not the project management office.
- B - Answer B is correct because the quality audit is focused on “whether project activities comply with organizational and project policies, processes, and procedures.” Acceptance of the deliverable is the key output of the Validate scope process in Project Scope Management. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 247.
- C – Since a project is an endeavor that creates something unique, there will be unknowns and uncertainties on the project. Therefore, projects automatically carry risk due to the existence of unknowns/uncertainties. If there is no risk, then there is no uncertainty; i.e. if all elements are known, your ‘project’ is fundamentally an operational process.
- C - By straight PERT calculation - (O + 4*ML + P)/6. (24 + 4*36 + 72) / 6 yields 240/6 = 40
- C - PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, pp. 293-94.
- C – The standards are broken out into 2 categories: Aspirational standards and
mandatory standards
- D - a SIPOC diagram is a type of flowchart. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p.
236.
- C – Failure to address risk is one of the leading causes of troubled projects
that suffer from negative scope, cost or scheduling issues. It can also lead to project
failure or early termination. PMI considers that failure to perform an adequate risk
assessment on a project is a plan-to-fail scenario.
- C – By straight calculation: [N x (N – 1)]/2 For five people, the number of
communication links would be: [5 x (5 – 1)]/2 = 20/2 = 10. For seven people, the number
of communication links would be: [7 x (7 – 1)]/2 = 42/2 = 21. 21 – 10 yields 11
additional lines of communication.
- A -The PMBOK Guide states, “Many facets of the product life cycle lend
themselves to being run as projects, for example, performing a feasibility study
conducting a product trial and a market, etc.”
- B – A change in scope can impact any of the triple constraints. The potential loss
of the PM might be a risk but not a CR.
- B - Answer A: the cost-of-living adjustment is cost based, not price based. C is
wrong – the BCR is more complex than a simple price minus cost calculation. D is made
up.
- B – Who identified a risk is not a part of the risk register.
- B - This is the definition of a finish to finish relationship: I must complete
activity ‘a’ before I complete Activity ‘b’
- C – The team member is the stakeholder. Answer A describes a potential
stakeholder. Answer B gets paid to review the product whether they use it or not (although
their opinion may impact your sales!). Answer D is probably working to her own P&L, has
nothing to do with your product and probably hasn’t heard of it.
- C - Answer A is for stakeholders who are high in influence and low in impact; B is
for those stakeholders who are low in influence and low in impact; D is for stakeholders
who are low in influence and high in impact. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 396.
- A - Your job is to report honestly to management and to the best of your ability.
While the last answer might be a recommended option, you must first give management the
reality check
- B -Answer B is correct because the cumulative probability is calculated by
multiplying the percentages by each other: .99 x .98 x .96 will yield slightly over 93%.
The concept is known as RTY: Rolled Throughput Yield.
- A - Answer A is correct. It is the most commonly described benefit of the charter.
Answers B and D are partly true but do not apply. Answer C is misdirection.
- C – PMI considers expert and reward power as the two best forms of project manager
authority.
- D – the iterative lifecycle is used for projects in which the project elements may
not be clearly defined or are uncertain. Per PMBOK® Guide, p. 22.
- C – Life-cycle costs are the inclusive costs that include purchase price,
maintenance and support and warranty costs. This is your ultimate cost for the product or
service
- C - All of the other answers are leadership approaches of the situational
continuum theory.
- B - Answer B is not true; a longer duration does not necessarily translate to
higher risk. A is true, because a larger standard deviation indicates a riskier estimate.
C is true because the maximum estimate for Project A at 95 percent probability is 115
days, whereas the most likely estimate for Project B is 110 days. D is true because the
minimum range within 2 standard deviations for project #1 is 75-115 days and for project
#2 is 100-120 days.
- A – Rolling wave planning details the work to be performed in the near term while
planning future work at a higher level in the WBS.
- C – these are elements of a product analysis.
- D - The RBS is part of the Risk Management Plan.
- D - When changes or variances to the original plan are discovered, the project
manager and the team should take corrective action. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 83.
- D - Recommended preventive actions are implemented to reduce the probability of
a negative future event.
- A - The project manager can approve or reject change requests only if explicitly
granted this authority by the charter, the customer, and the integrated change control
system. Answers B, C, and D are true.
- D - Confronting, compromising, and forcing are all forms of conflict resolution
techniques. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 283.
- D - PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 430.
- B – A code escrow arrangement will protect the seller and the buyer. If the seller
goes out of business, the buyer will have access to the code for continuing support of the
product. Otherwise the code stays in escrow
- C. According to PMI, Compromise is an example of a lose-lose
situation.
- A. Procurement statements of work is an output of Plan Procurements
process.
- C. Expert judgment is a tool for the Develop Project Charter process.
- C. War room is used for collocation to facilitate communication within
the team.
- A. When the team is afraid of the Project Manager, the power yielded
is of type Coercive.
- B. An S-curve is typically used to represent a cost baseline. The cost
is low in the beginning and end, and high during the middle of the project.
- D. We need to compute the following for all the vendors - (0.4*Price +
0.6*Quality). The scores come out to be vendor 1 - 10.4, vendor 2 - 10, vendor 3 - 9.6,
and vendor 4's 11. Since vendor 4 has the highest score, it should get selected.
- D. A CPI of greater than one indicates you are taking less money than
planed to do the project.
- B. EAC = (BAC/CPI).
- D. CPI = EV/AV. EV=400, AC = 1000, PV=500.
- A. SV=EV-PV. 400 minus 500 is -100.
- C. Ethnocentrism refers to belief that ones culture is superior to
other cultures.
- C. Screening system are predefined criteria that are used to short-
list vendors for source selection
- D. WBS is not an input to the Conduct Procurements process.
- B. The others are conditions that indicate the process is out of
control.
- C. Statistical Sampling is the standard technique that is used to test
only A small sample of products instead of all the products manufactured.
- D. This is the only correct statement.
- A. Contract Closeout is performed before administrative Closeout
- C. Risk Register is the only output of the Risk identification
process.
- B. A numeric value is assigned to risks impact and probability during
the Quantitative Risk Analysis process.
- C - This is an ethics question dressed up as a stakeholder management
question. What happens next is an impact assessment. Under the mandatory Responsibility
section: "We inform ourselves and uphold the policies, rules, regulations and laws that
govern our work..."
- C - Expert judgment is not a tool and technique of Manage Stakeholder
Engagement. PMBOK® Guide, 6th edition, p. 398
- D. Cleaning the building is a repetitive task that is done everyday.
Hence it is not an example of a project.
- B – This exactly describes the Salience model. PMBOK® Guide, 6th
edition, p. 396
- A - stakeholder management is about the creation and maintenance of
relationships between the project team and stakeholders. Under specific circumstances,
answers B and C may be partially or. Answer D is incorrect: what is created as the
stakeholder management plan, not the stakeholder management strategy. PMBOK® Guide, 6th
edition, p. 400
- C – With the Delphi technique, participants remain anonymous to each other so that
they can simply focus on the facts without having to deal with the emotional components of
the problem
- B - Answer A is incorrect – it shows the resource hierarchy but not responsibility
level. Answers C and D are made-up terms.
- D - In the time management process, after the activity definitions have been
established, we then sequence the activities and create network diagrams.
- B – Project float is the delay a project can incur without delaying a succeeding
project. Total float addresses delaying the project and date. Free float addresses the
early start of a successor activity. Slack float is a made-up term
- A – The lowest level of decomposition in the WBS is the work package, which is
deliverable focused.
- B - Scope management is, ”…the processes required to ensure that the project
includes all the work required, and only the work required” is completed successfully.
- B – The project statement of work is a high-level narrative that is an input to
developing the project charter, an initiating process. PMBOK® Guide, 6th edition, p.75
- B – stakeholder disagreement is common on all projects and must be addressed by
the skill of the project manager to facilitate an acceptable resolution for the
stakeholders in conflict. It rarely, if ever, results in a cost overrun. Fleming and
Koppelman, Earned Value Management, Third Edition, PMI 2005
- A - the force field analysis shows the pros and cons of an idea.
- B – Communications models are a tool and technique of Plan Communications. PMBOK
Guide®, 6th edition, p. 288
- C – Answer C is most correct. All the answers are somewhat correct, but all can
be subsumed within answer C: get the required information to the right person when it is
needed or requested. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 287.
- D - PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 263
- B – The letter of intent is not a legal document and does not obligate the buyer
to follow through
- B – The SPC chart sets upper and lower control limits at +/- 3 sigma
- B – PMBOK® Guide, 6th edition p. 404
- A - It is a direct cost because it is attributable to your project. It is also a
variable cost because the hourly workers could put in 30, 40, or 50 hours a week.
- B - PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, pp. 265-66.
- C – The hierarchy of needs was developed by Abraham Maslow
- B – The contract is the final arbiter of what gets paid and what does not. Only a
formal written change to the contract, specifying that the change would be paid for, is
legally binding
- B - The project’s organizational structure and external stakeholder requirements.
New PMP Task Classifications. Domain 2, Task 6. PMI, 2011
- D - Monitoring and Controlling is the only correct answer. PMBOK Guide 6th ed. p. 61
- C – This is a classic example of a secondary risk: A new risk that is identified
as a direct outcome of implementing a risk response.
- B - Quality is defined as “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics
fulfill requirements” (PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p. 228) while grade is “a category
assigned to products or services having the same functional use but different technical
characteristics.” (PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition). Absence of the ‘standard’ feature set does
not automatically imply low quality. The customer may have requested a high-quality
product but with fewer features at a better price point.
- B – Since the customer has decided that crashing is an option, answer ‘A’ has
already been taken into consideration as well as answer ‘C’. Answer ‘D’ is a complete
unknown at this point. Of the four answers, the biggest concern is whether the testing
resources are actually available to do the job
- C - It is the 3rd step in the stakeholder analysis. PMBOK Guide®, 6th edition, p.
396
Selection of questions courtesy of Richard Perrin, PMP