Flashcards and Answers – Practice exam 1
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You are assisting Benjamin, another project manager, to interview candidates for a resource position on his project. While reviewing your interview notes together, you notice that he sorts the candidate's resumes into two piles: One pile for further interviews, the other for candidates that did not meet the requirements for the position. You also notice that he has placed several of the highly qualified candidates in the second pile, stating that those interviewees "did not fit the corporate profile." Upon further review, you discover that all these candidates are of the same ethnic group. What do you do?
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Report this to the appropriate management immediately. Discrimination based on nationality is prohibited by the PMI Code of Ethics and may also be illegal, depending on local laws. PMI requires project managers to report discriminatory behavior to the appropriate management; not doing so is a violation of the Code of Ethics
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A statement of work (SOW) is a narrative description of the products or services to be delivered by the project. It usually references all of the following except:
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The statement of work (SOW) does not usually reference the business case. The business case may contain cost sensitive information that may not be made available to a wider audience. Note that the business case also includes the business need
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Which one of the following tools and techniques is NOT part of the Develop Project Team process?
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Conflict management is a tool and technique used in Human Resource Management. However, it is associated with the Manage Project Team process, not with the Develop Project Team process.
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Which of the following is not a valid instance of risk transference?
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A cost-reimbursable contract does not transfer risk to the seller; rather, the risk is with the buyer. Risk transference involves shifting the negative impact of a risk, along with the ownership of the response, to a third party. Risk transference nearly always involves payment of a premium to the party taking on the risk. Examples include performance bonds, warranties, and fixed price contracts.
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You have just returned from the weekly change control board meeting, where you presented the requested changes to the employee move project. Five changes were approved but one was denied. You are now updating the project management plan to incorporate the changes. In which project management process would this be done?
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Making changes to the project management plan is part of the Direct and Manage Project Work process
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Two of your team members in your software development project are not performing well. The initial assessment from your project leader indicates a lack of skills as the main reason for their poor performance. To enable them to complete their tasks on time, you plan to improve their skills by online training. Since you are in the execution phase of the project, you must document the training requirements in which document?
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A human resource management plan is a part of the project management plan. All training needs, types of rewards, and types of disciplinary actions are documented in the human resource plan. During execution, additional training requirements can be added to this plan as a result of team performance assessments. Hence, in this case you must use the human resource management plan to document the additional training requirements
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As project manager, you find you are constantly dealing with conflict among your team members. Everyone argues over sharing available project resources, so you plan to use a conflict resolution method to alleviate the tension among team members. What conflict resolution method is not recognized by the Project Management Institute?
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Elaboration is not one of the five conflict-resolving methods that are recognized and endorsed by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The five methods recognized and endorsed by PMI include Forcing, Smoothing, Compromising, Collaborating and Withdrawing
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You are the project manager in your organization. You have little authority over the projects you manage, and you are primarily engaged in project coordination activities. You report to the PMO manager while your project team reports to various functional managers. Your organization can be best described as:
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The presence of the PMO indicates that the organization is not strictly functional . In a weak matrix organization, a project manager's role is that of a project coordinator or expeditor. In a projectized organization, a project manager has high authority and complete control. In a balanced matrix organization, the project manager does not have complete authority over the project and funding, but the organization recognizes the need to have a dedicated project manager.
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Your are working for a project-based organization. The organization has a procedure to report minor ethical issues and the ethics committee reviews them at the month end. Only major violations are escalated for in-depth scrutiny. This month, a minor violation of PMI's code of ethics has been reported by a project team member. The project manager, who's a also a member of PMI, has taken on some of the projects activities for which he wasn't qualified. The project manager was offered an opportunity to receive training which he refused. When the project manager is called for his comments, he says that this rule comes under 'Aspirational standards' of PMI's code of ethics and is not covered under 'Mandatory standards'. Has he violated the code?
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He has violated the PMI Code. Project managers must adhere to all standards in the Code; none are optional
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You are a project manager who is in charge of an important project for your company. The project is 40% complete after 3 months and has cost $350,000. The budget for the project is $950,000 and is scheduled to last 8 months. How is the project performing?
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CPI=EV/AC. CPI = (950000*40%)/350000 = 380000/350000 = 1.09 (under budget). SPI=EV/PV. SPI = 380000/(950000*0.375) = 380000/356,250 = 1.07 (ahead of schedule)
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Stakeholder analysis is an important technique in the Identify Stakeholders process. One of the steps involved is to identify the potential impact of each stakeholder and classify him or her appropriately. Which of the following is not a valid model used for this purpose?
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A tolerance model is not a valid classification model. The other three models are valid approaches, and classify stakeholders based on power/interest, influence/impact, or power/urgency and legitimacy as in the case of the salience model.
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You are working as a project manager for a high-yield crop development project. Data from the weather agency shows an unfavorable weather pattern for the next few months. As a senior project manager, you want to assess the feasibility of the schedule under adverse conditions and provide some insights to your team. In this way, your team can prepare some reserves and plan risk responses if unfavorable conditions exist during execution. Which of the following techniques should you use to assess the feasibility of the schedule?
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Modeling techniques are used to prepare a schedule under various scenarios. These techniques help assess the feasibility of the project schedule if adverse conditions exist. The Monte Carlo technique employs simulation to calculate multiple project durations, each with a different set of activity assumptions using a probability distribution.
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When a negative unplanned risk occurs in a project, a response to it would be called:
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A workaround is a response to a negative unplanned risk that has occurred. It differs from a contingency plan in that a workaround is not planned in advance of the occurrence of the risk event
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In a ship design project, a project manager is in the process of negotiating with a consulting company to ensure that the project receives certified and specialized consultants for creating the hull design. The project manager wants to make certain that the consultants will be able to work until their assignments are completed. He is using all his negotiation skills and interpersonal skills to get competent staff on time. Based on the scenario described above, the project manager is engaged in:
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Negotiation skills are used by project managers throughout the project. In this scenario, the project manager is negotiating with vendors to get talented consultants in sufficient number within the scheduled time. This process ensures the availability of scarce resources during critical phases of the project. This effort is done during the Acquire Project Team process
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An employee, working as senior project coordinator, and a member of the PMI, has requested that performance appraisals should be shared with the employees. This is in the best interest of transparency. He also refers to the transparency clause of the PMI code of ethics. What must you do?
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Follow the organizational human resource policies for employee reviews.
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A team member in your project is constantly providing incomplete deliverables and not performing well. What should you do first?
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Discuss the issue with the team member in private
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A manager asked to see a list of milestones in the project. This would be available as an output from the
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The list of milestones is available as an output from the Define Activities process
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You are the project manager responsible for building a 100,000 sq. ft. data center. One of the schedule activities in your plan is to install the Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units. However, a raised floor must be installed in the data center before installation of the units can begin. This is an example of what type of precedence relationship?
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The successor activity, in this case the installation of the CRAC units, cannot begin until the raised floor in the data center is completed (because the units need to sit on the raised floor). Therefore, this is an example of a finish-to start relationship
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Your project sponsor has asked you to present your project's high-level risk register to him in the next project update meeting. To create your high-level risk register, which of the following processes must be performed?
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A high-level risk register contains the identified risks only. The risk register is created during the Identify Risks process
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What is the primary risk when including reserves or contingency allowances in your cost estimate?
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Contingency funds are used to handle cost uncertainty due to unforeseen purchases that may be needed during a project. These funds are generally used for items that are likely to occur but are not certain to occur
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The critical path method (CPM) calculates the theoretical early start and finish dates and late start and finish dates. If no scheduling constraints have been applied to the critical activities, the critical activities will have
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The critical path method (CPM) calculates the theoretical early start and finish dates and late start and finish dates. Critical path activities typically have zero total float. However, the critical paths may have positive or negative total floats if scheduling constraints are applied
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Your company requires that before you purchase any routers or switches for the data center you are building, you need to solicit quotes from three separate suppliers prior to submitting the purchase request to the finance department. This policy belongs to
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Any type of corporate policy or formal procurement procedure is an organizational process asset
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At a division project status meeting, a dashboard of cost metrics for each project is distributed to all attendees, and each project manager is presenting the status of his or her project. The metrics for one project show a BAC of $1100, an EV of $998, and an EAC of $1099. However, the project manager is reporting an ETC of $354. What do you do?
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If ETC is being reported, then EAC should be AC + ETC. You must notify the appropriate management that there is a calculation error. Project managers are required by the PMI Code to accept ownership of their own errors and to report to the appropriate management any errors they have observed being made by others
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Which of the following correctly depicts the most common order in which the project management processes are executed?
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Validate Scope is primarily concerned with the acceptance of all the deliverables while Control Quality is primarily concerned with meeting the quality requirements specified for the deliverables. Control Quality is performed before Validate Scope. The other responses are incorrect. Perform Quality Assurance is done before Close Project or Phase. [
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What is the best way to make an accurate forecast of ETC?
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Manual forecasting of cost of the remaining work
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Your company's reward system, aligns the objectives of its managers with those of the company. Managers who have contributed to the bottom line are rewarded, and as a result profitability has ; increased six fold in the last 2 years. This culture has created a sense of ownership with all top and middle management. The project you are running has a late finish penalty of USD $2000/ day and an early completion bonus of USD $80,000. You as a project manager will get 25% of the amount of this reward. The most important deliverable will be handed over to the client in next week. A project team member comes to your office and explains that this deliverable will fulfill all the scope requirements but may not provide an important functionality the customer might need in a year's time. In that case the customer would need to redo some of the work at their own expense, after the project has completed. What should you do
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Verify that the deliverable meets all project requirements. Future functionality that is not called out as a project requirement is outside the scope of the project. PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct requires project managers to follow all project processes and policies. Under- or over-delivering required features and functionality is a violation of this requirement
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Which of the following is NOT considered a method in the Manage Communications process?
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The change control system is not a tool and technique of the Manage Communications process. The other choices are valid tools and techniques of this process
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A project manager analyzed the project's communication requirements and decided that 10 out of the 30 stakeholders in the project would only need voicemail updates of certain information. This type of communication is called
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Use of voicemail is push communication. In this type of communication, information is distributed to specific recipients who need to know the information. However, this method does not certify that the information actually reached, or was received by, the intended audience.
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Mark is managing an internal project. The project is sensitive in nature and has many negative stakeholders. Which of the following project life cycle is recommend if Mark wants to keep the stakeholder influences low throughout the life cycle of the project?
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Adaptive life cycles are developed with the intent of keeping stakeholder influences higher and the costs of changes lower throughout the life cycle of the project than in predictive life cycles. The iterative and incremental life cycles are closer to the adaptive life cycle than to the predictive life cycle. In the given situation it is advisable to use a predictive life cycle in order to keep the stakeholders' influence low through the life of the project
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Effective steps must be taken to build trust between project stakeholders. Which of the following is not an effective trust building exercise?
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Withholding information out of a fear of being wrong is a recipe for disaster. Project information must not be withheld at any cost. If there is a fear of being wrong, project information must be reviewed and revalidated before distribution.
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Identification of new risks, reassessment of old risks, and closing of outdated risks are done as part of the Control Risks phase. How often should project risk reassessment be scheduled?
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It depends on how the project progresses relative to its objectives.
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The State Board of Education is reviewing RFPs for deployment of its new HR system. An outside consultant has been hired to provide an independent estimate of the same work. This will be used as a_____________.
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Benchmark estimate
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Susan is managing the deployment of a quality management system in her organization. The organization has a PMO that uploads all the project documents to a centralized information system accessible to all employees. Which of the following is a sensitive project document that must not be shared with everyone in the company
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The stakeholder management plan is a sensitive document as it contains information about the resisting project stakeholders. This plan must not be shared with everybody in the organization.
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A decision tree is a Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis technique. A decision tree is represented by a Decision Tree Diagram. The decision tree describes a situation under consideration, the implications of each of the available choices, and the possible scenarios. A Decision Tree Diagram shows how to make a decision among alternative capital strategies known as
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The decision points are known as Decision nodes. The decision tree incorporates the cost of each available choice, the possibilities of each of the available choices, and possible scenarios. It shows how to make a decision among alternative capital strategies (decision nodes) when the environment is not known with certainty
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Mark is managing an airport construction project. He is currently identifying his project stakeholders, and he has compiled a long list of stakeholders already. Managing expectations of every project stakeholder is not practical. What should be done in this situation
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Project stakeholders should be prioritized based on their influence and interest
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The Risk Management plan will usually contain the definitions of risk probability and impact. Which of the following has the highest impact (negative) on a project?
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The impact scale will include the probabilities of certain risks occurring, with values from 0 to 1. A value of 0 indicates non-occurrence of the risk while 1 is a certainty. Hence, a risk impact of 0.8 represents the highest impact among the choices presented.
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You are managing an oil-drilling project. With oil at $143 per barrel, this could be a highly lucrative project. However, there is a chance that the price of oil will drop below $105 per barrel, which would eliminate the profit in the project. This is an example of:
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The uncertainty of the oil price is a project risk, which can positively or negatively affect the project. The rest of the choices are incorrect
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A point in time that a project or project phase is authorized to its completion is called
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A point in time that a project or project phase is authorized to its completion is called a project boundary
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You are defining the schedule activities for your project and identifying deliverables at the lowest level in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). You find that there is insufficient definition of the project scope to decompose a branch of the WBS down to the work package level. You now look at using the last component in that branch of the WBS to develop a high-level project schedule for that component. Such a planning component is called
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The correct response is a planning package. Control accounts and planning packages are two planning components used when there are insufficient details of the project scope.
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Decision-making is an important skill that a project manager must possess to manage and lead the team. Which of the following is not a part of the six-phase decision-making model
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Problem solution escalation. In the six-phase decision-making model, the project manager first defines the problem. Then he or she generates solutions, puts ideas into action, plans the solution action and plans the solution evaluation. Once the solution is implemented, he or she evaluates the outcome and process. Therefore, all choices except for problem solution escalation are part of this model.
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You are the project manager of a project whose team has interacted with a number of stakeholders. You believe that in order to have an objective project performance appraisal, you would like to obtain feedback for the project team members from all the people they have worked with, including superiors, peers and subordinates. Project performance appraisals are performed during which of the following processes?
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Manage Project Team
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Dan is a project manager in an organization and conducts a workshop on project management. Which of the following statements made by him about projects is incorrect
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Projects exist within an organization and operate as a closed system. Projects exist within an organization but cannot operate as a closed system. They require input data from the organization and beyond, and deliver capabilities back to the organization
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Which of these is not a risk diagramming technique?
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RACI chart
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A business is considering over a dozen of infrastructure upgrade projects. These projects, once delivered, will add to the overall performance of the organization but will not contribute to any of the revenue streams. Prior to initiating any such project, the value of the project to the organization must be determined. Which of the following is the most important factor to be considered in such a scenario?
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Alignment with the strategic goals
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Which of the following is an enterprise environmental factor
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Commercial databases are considered enterprise environmental factors. The other choices are organizational process assets
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Decision tree analysis is used to calculate the average outcome when the future includes scenarios that may or may not happen. What are a decision node's inputs and outputs?
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Decision tree analysis is used to calculate the average outcome when the future includes scenarios that may or may not happen. In a decision node, the input is the cost of each decision and the output is a decision made
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In a manufacturing project, you have requested bids to procure stainless steel products. However, your sponsor insists that you conduct bidder conferences before selecting sellers. What mandatory standard in the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct would be met by conducting bidder conferences
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Fairness
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Projects are often started as a result of an external factor such as market demand for a new product, a new legislative or regulatory mandate, or a change in technology. This results in the creation of ______ by an entity or organization external to the project.
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the project charter
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For your weekly project status review meetings, you set aside some time on the agenda to review the risk register and review the project risks. You ensure that the response plans are still appropriate and add or delete risks as necessary. This is an example of:
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All of the answers listed are tools and techniques of the Control Risks process. The regular review of your risk register for appropriateness (e.g., responses, identified risks, etc.) is an example of risk reassessment.
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You are just about to present your project's status to your company's executive team. Just as you are leaving your desk for the meeting, one of your resources hands you an updated report on the progress of a critical deliverable. As you are walking to the conference room, you review the report and notice that there is an error in it. What do you do
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Disclose that you have just discovered that there is an error in some of the information that you had intended to present, and only present the information that you know to be true. Disclose
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Which of the following defines the total scope of the project and represents the work specified in the current approved project scope statement?
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The WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the work to be performed by the project team. It defines the total scope of the project. It represents the work specified in the currently approved project scope statement
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You are in the 10th month of a yearlong project and are about to deliver the main product of your project. You have already received 75% of the total payment from your client, a non-governmental organization (NGO). You have just received a fax from the client saying that they are wrapping up their operations in the region because of a change in the government. The new government has decided to close down this NGO because of fraud allegations. You are shocked to receive this news and call your boss to get confirmation from him. He has also received the same news from other sources, and he asks you to terminate the project and release the team. What must you do?
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Release payments, check the termination clause in contract, and relieve employees from their duties.
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Which of the following scenarios is likely to occur in a project?
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Cost and staffing levels are low at the start of the project. The other statements are incorrect.
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A technique that iterates the project schedule many times to calculate a distribution of possible project completion dates is called:
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Monte Carlo Analysis is a technique that computes or iterates the project cost or the project schedule many times, using input values selected at random from probability distributions of possible costs or durations. In this way, one can calculate a distribution of possible total project costs or completion dates
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The WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives. This is created as part of:
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Creating the WBS is an important process in a project, and it is done as a part of Project Scope Management
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An estimating technique that uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables (such as square footage in construction or lines of code in software development) is known as:
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This technique is known as Parametric Estimating. It can produce higher levels of accuracy, depending on the sophistication as well as on the underlying resource quantity and cost data built into the model
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Joe is attempting to calculate the average financial impact of some future uncertain scenarios. What method could he use?
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Expected monetary value (EMV) analysis is a statistical concept that calculates the average outcome when the future includes scenarios that may or may not happen. The EMV of opportunities will usually be positive values while risks will result in negative values.
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Your project is nearing completion, but a previously unidentified risk has been discovered and it could significantly affect one of the project deliverables. What do you do?
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Notify the project stakeholders immediately about the new risk. Once the stakeholders have been made fully aware of the circumstances and potential impacts, a plan to deal with this risk can be developed. The PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct requires project managers to provide accurate and timely project information at all times and to follow all project processes and policies
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The project management processes communicate with each other through their inputs and outputs. Which of the following outputs of the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process is a prime input of the Control Stakeholder Engagement process?
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Issue log is produced and continuously updated by the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process. This is then used as an input to the Control Stakeholder Engagement process to ensure stakeholder management efforts are on track
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Which of the following statements is NOT accurate about the initial phase of a project?
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The cost associated at the beginning of the project is highest
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During which of the following processes project key stakeholders get engaged with the project for the first time?
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Develop Project Charter
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A good project manager always gathers and documents lessons learned throughout the project lifecycle rather than delaying the effort till the project closure. Which of the following is NOT a risk associated with postponing the lessons learned gathering effort till the very end of the project?
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Project's earned value gets decreased
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During the Conduct Procurements process, the procuring organization found that there were significant differences in pricing by different sellers. What is the best course of action in such a scenario?
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Investigate whether the project statement of work was defective or ambiguous
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You have just started leading a World Bank health care development project in a developing country in which it is customary to offer lunch when a project is initiated. Although your team members are willing to accept the offer, you decide to refuse the offer since you are well aware that the PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct does not allow you to accept gifts. Which of the following statements about your decision is correct?
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Your decision is wrong because you should obey the norms and customs of others as long as you do not favor them
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What is the best way to show, at a glance, all the work packages or project activities assigned to a specific organizational department?
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The organizational breakdown structure (OBS) looks similar to the WBS; however, instead of being arranged according to a breakdown of project deliverables, it is arranged according to an organization's existing departments, units, or teams
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Tim is the project manager of a project that has a timeline of 18 months. Tim has planned for daily status reports to be sent to all stakeholders. After receiving two such reports, Sue, the project sponsor, informs Tim that she would like to have only fortnightly reports. Tim had done an analysis of communications requirements and considered various attributes for the communications management plan. What aspect has he missed which resulted in a daily status report being sent instead of fortnightly status reports?
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He has not considered the frequency of information distribution
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Which of the following tools and techniques can be used to process work performance data during the Control Quality process?
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The question is asking for a tool and technique used during the Control Quality process. The SIPOC model is a specific type of a flowchart which is a tool and technique of the Control Quality process
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Julia is managing a software development project. Recently, an unexpected event delayed the project by 15 days. Julia has called a team meeting to identify measures that can be taken to bring the project back on schedule. A measure that is taken to bring future results back in line with the project plan is best described as?
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A corrective action is anything that needs to be done to bring the project back on track. Care must be taken not to confuse corrective action with preventive action. Corrective action is taken to correct the results of a non-conformance event that happened in the past. Whereas, preventive action is taken to avoid or mitigate any potential non-conformance event that may occur in the future.
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A certain project was in the Collect Requirements phase. The eventual users of the product were unable to define their requirements. In this scenario, which of the following tools could have helped determine the requirements?
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Prototypes are working models of the expected product before actually building it. The tangible nature of prototypes allows users to experiment with a model of their final product early in the project life cycle and to generate clear feedback. Interviews, questionnaires and surveys were unlikely to help in this case since the users were struggling to define their requirements
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Your manager offers you a position managing a project that is much larger than any other project you have undertaken up to this point. It will be a stretch assignment for you. What do you do
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Tell your manager that you are interested in the position, but fully disclose that the gaps between the job requirements and your experience. If the offer still stands, then accept the position
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You are the project manager of a project and have created a bar graph of problems and their frequencies. This kind of chart is called a:
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This is an example of a Pareto chart or Pareto diagram.
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Which of the following is neither an input to nor an output of the Develop Project Charter process?
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A project statement of work and a business case are inputs to the Develop Project Charter process. A project charter is an output of the Develop Project Charter process. Professional and technical associations are tools to gather expert opinions while developing a charter. Hence, the correct answer here is professional and technical associations.
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You have just returned from the weekly change control board meeting at which you presented the requested changes to the employee move project. You had five change requests approved and one request rejected. These are outputs of what process?
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Perform Integrated Change Control
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Andrew is managing a construction project. He is using his communication, interpersonal and management skills to keep the key project stakeholders engaged with the project. Which of the following activities is NOT related to the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process? Correct
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Adjusting the stakeholder management strategy is an activity related to the Control Stakeholder Management process. The other choices are the activities performed during the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process.
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The process of auditing the quality requirements and the results from quality control measurements to ensure that appropriate quality standards and operational definitions are used is the definition of:
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Quality assurance
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Which of the following Project Scope Management processes documents a configuration management system
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Configuration management activities are documented as part of the requirements management plan which is an output of the Plan Scope Management process
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A project was randomly selected for a quality audit, and various issues and non-conformances were found by the external auditor. The project manager lodged a complaint with the quality department that this was improper procedure, and he should have been given notice since an external auditor was involved. What is your view?
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The project manager has no case. Quality audits may be scheduled or random and may be conducted by internal or external auditors. It is the responsibility of the project manager and the project management to ensure that the project documentation is kept up to date and available for any quality audit.
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You are a Project Manager for a company that has a composite organization structure. The current project you are managing is ending. There are a number of activities that need to be completed including releasing project resources. All of the following statements are examples or true statements related to releasing project resources in this company except:
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Transferring the documented lessons learned into the lessons learned database is not linked with reassigning of project team members or transferring of project equipment at the end of the project. Lessons learned track project successes and failures, which would include factors that led to the project being cancelled. It is important to archive or transfer these records to a lessons learned knowledge base for reference on future projects
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Organizational process assets are key inputs to the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process. The key elements of the organizational process assets that are used during this process are organizational communication requirements, issue management procedures and the change control procedures. Which of the following is also a key organizational process asset that must be considered during this process?
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All of the given choices are organizational process assets. However, the organizational policies and templates are more relevant during the planning phase of the project. For the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process, a process from the executing process group, historical information about previous projects is considered a critical input from the organizational process assets.
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Project requirements are determined during the Collect Requirements process through various tools and techniques. These requirements form the basis for defining the project scope. One of the responsibilities of a project manager is to identify key project deliverables during this exercise. Where are the key project deliverables documented?
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The project scope statement provides the product description, acceptance criteria, key deliverables, project boundaries, assumptions, and constraints about the project. The scope management plan and the requirements management plan are the subsidiary plans of the overall project management plan and they detail how the project team needs to manage the project scope and requirements respectively. These plan do not document the actual scope of the project. Accepted Deliverables is the wrong answer since deliverables are accepted post completion and validation, the identification of the key deliverable is done early during the planning phase of the project
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All of the following are tools of the Control Schedule process except:
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Leads and lags, schedule compression and modeling techniques are tools in the Control Schedule process. Parametric estimating is not a tool of this process
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Two of your team members played the Mega Millions lottery and won! As much as they like working on your team, they have decided to retire. What plan should be updated?
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Staffing Management Plan
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Which of the following endeavors is unlikely to be a project?
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Updating of data in an HR database.
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Nancy's project is in execution. Nancy is currently planning to execute the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process. She has gathered the stakeholder management plan, the recent change log, and the necessary organizational process assets. Which of the following is a key input to this process that is still missing from this list?
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Communications management plan
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John has just finished analyzing his project's stakeholders' needs, interests, expectations and influence. He wishes to create a group of stakeholders that must be constantly kept on his radar. These will be most important stakeholders he wants to closely manage. Which of the following stakeholders would qualify for this group?
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Negative stakeholders in a decision making role
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As a project manager, you are responsible for determining and delivering the required levels of both grade and quality. Select which of the following statements you DISAGREE with.
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Grade relates to the customer requirements
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A project manager in a seller organization discovered that certain deliverables had been delivered to the buyer without undergoing proper testing. Recalling the deliverables will result in a cost overrun on the project. What should the project manager do in such a case?
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Recall the deliverables even though there will be a cost overrun.
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You are finalizing payments to a vendor on a 3 year long project, but some of the procurement records were lost in the first year. The vendor has disputed a penalty that was deducted from their payment, maintaining that he is not at fault because the delay was a result of a last minute change in specifications by your project team. He is willing to bear some portion of the penalty, but not the full charge. You contact your legal team to discuss the situation. After reviewing all the available documents, the legal team suggests litigation. Which one of the following would be the best course of action?
answer
Attempt an alternate source of mediation
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Which of the following processes goes beyond the distribution of relevant information and seeks to ensure that the information being communicated to project stakeholders has been appropriately generated, as well as received and understood
answer
Manage Communications
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The key difference between Validate Scope and Control Quality is:
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Verify Scope differs from Perform Quality Control in that Verify Scope is primarily concerned with the acceptance of the deliverables, whereas Perform Quality Control is primarily concerned with meeting the quality requirements specified for the deliverables
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It is not practical, and usually not necessary, to engage with all stakeholders with the same level of intensity at all times. A project manager must prioritize stakeholders depending upon on who they are, what level of influence they have on the project, and what are their interests. Which of the following techniques helps in stakeholder prioritization?
answer
Stakeholder classification models are used during stakeholder analysis to rank stakeholders based on their power, influence, interest, and impact
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The WBS is finalized by establishing control accounts for the work packages and a unique identifier from a code of accounts. This provides a structure for hierarchical summation of:
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Cost, schedule and resource information
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As part of Define Activities, you are looking at dependencies used to define the sequence among the activities. Which of these is not a valid type of dependency?
answer
Linked dependency
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During the development of the project stakeholder management plan, a project manager is usually dependent on the voice of the project stakeholders in order to obtain expert opinion. Which of the following is an important tool available to the project manager for gathering and organizing stakeholders' information?
answer
Focus group Pareto charts, control charts and histograms are quality management tool. The question is asking for a tool that help the project manager collect stakeholder information and focus group is one of the effective tools available to the project manager.
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At the beginning of the project, a project manager realized that the technical expertise of the team was limited, a risk to the project. Midway through the project, the project manager decided that this was no longer a risk and considered it outdated. As part of which process would the risk reassessment be done?
answer
Control Risks
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You have presented a unique and verifiable product to your customers for their approval. Approval of this product may allow you to move on to your next phase. This unique and verifiable product is also known as:
answer
A deliverable
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Midway through a project, a project manager determined that the project was running way behind schedule. If the project manager needs to shorten the project schedule without changing the project scope, which of the following schedule compression techniques could be applied?
answer
Crashing
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You have just received an invoice from your supplier that contains some uncertified items. Payments to the supplier are processed through your corporate accounts payable system only after certification of satisfactory work by the project quality control specialist. What should you do?
answer
Call the supplier and obtain more information
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If you would like to base your project cost estimate on historical data and statistical analysis, which cost estimation technique would you use
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Parametric estimating is the process of using historical data to compare against your project to determine a correlation and thereby a cost estimate for your current project.
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You are the project manager for a project and have just entered the third year of a scheduled four-year project. You need to evaluate new risks that have arisen since the project began. What technique should you use to provide this information?
answer
Risk re-assessment
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A project manager is estimating the project duration and finds that the only information available to him is a previous project that was quite different from the current one. However, some portions of the previous project were similar to the current one. Which of the following tools is the project manager likely to use
answer
Analogous duration estimating is used when there is limited information available about a project. This is especially true in the early phases of a project. In such instances, a previous similar project is used as a basis for estimating
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Kelly, the project manager of a large project, found that she did not have the necessary resources required for some activities in the project. To account for the limited resources, she decided to apply the critical chain method. Which of the following would she use to protect the critical chain from slippage along the feeding chains
answer
In the critical chain method, additional buffers known as feeding buffers are placed at each point that a chain of dependent tasks that are not on the critical chain feeds into the critical chain. These buffers protect the critical chain from slippage
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You are managing a project. An audit team wants to know where they can find information on training plans for the project team members and certification requirements. This would be found in the:
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Staffing Management Plan
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During lunch with a project manager from another department, you are told that it is sufficient to adhere to the applicable standards for the project. Regulations are not necessarily applicable to projects since they are guidelines, and you as the project manager have the option to decide whether they are applicable. Your own understanding is that:
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Standards are guidelines established by consensus and approved by a recognized body whereas Regulations are mandatory, government-imposed requirements.
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You overheard a project manager at your company, a new PMP, say that he wrote down as many test questions as he could remember after he completed his PMP exam, and that he is willing to share that list with anyone who is preparing for the exam. What should you do?
answer
File a complaint with PMI and inform them that a PMP is sharing exam questions. The PMI Code of Ethics mandates that project managers respect the intellectual property rights of others, and act in good faith. Not only does sharing the PMP exam questions violate this requirement, it also violates the terms and conditions of the exam itself.
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You are managing a project with a large multinational staff. Susan, one of the engineers, was originally tasked to deliver her part of the work on 19 October. Due to a change in the critical path, her deliverable will be needed 2 days sooner. However, as the new deadline is still 2 weeks away and she is ahead of schedule, you are confident that her delivery will be on time. During a staff meeting, you learn from John, her functional manager, that Susan celebrates a religious holiday on 17 October. However, he also tells you that Susan is not particularly religious; if pushed a bit and offered some incentive, she may forego celebrating this holiday and come to work. What should you do?
answer
Check if one of her colleagues can share some of her workload this week
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The Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct has as its foundation four values identified by practitioners from the global project management community. They are:
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Responsibility, respect, fairness and honesty
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The manager in charge of your company's IT change control board is extremely difficult to deal with. He frequently denies change requests for petty reasons. You have a software patch change request pending that is a critical path item in your project. If the change is not approved at the upcoming change control meeting, there will be a two-week delay in your project until the next change control meeting. How do you handle this?
answer
Present the change request per company process. If it is denied, escalate the issue to management for assistance and submit an emergency change request. The
question
You have been contracted to build a manufacturing plant in Kuala Lumpur. However, you are not familiar with the building codes in Kuala Lumpur or Malaysia, so you are reviewing all of their building codes prior to "turning a shovelful of earth." This is an example of:
answer
All types of quality plans, such as building codes, OSHA guidelines, ISO 9000, or company quality plans are examples of Organizational Process Assets which are inputs to the Plan Quality Management process
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As part of a strategy to handle negative risk, a project manager decided to adopt less complex processes, conduct more tests and choose a more stable supplier. What strategy would this be classified as
answer
Mitigation
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The Plan Stakeholder Management Plan process has many inputs. Which of the following is an input to the Plan Stakeholder Management Plan process that comes from the Identify Stakeholders process
answer
Stakeholder register
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Which of the following structures helps track project costs and can be aligned with the organization's accounting system?
answer
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provides the framework for the cost management plan. The WBS contains control accounts, which link directly to the performing organization's accounting system
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Laurence is the PMO manager at ANZ Company. The CEO of the company has asked Laurence to review the business requirements and develop the current year's capital management plan. The capital management plan will outline the key business deliverables (capital projects) and will be presented to the board for final approval. Which of the following organizational artifacts should Laurence review in order to analyze the business requirements for the current fiscal year?
answer
Organizational Strategy Capital planning is the process of budgeting resources for the future of an organization's long term plans. Capital planning for a business would include budgeting for new and replacement machinery, research and development and the production of new products, new plants and other major capital projects. Capital projects can only achieve the organizational goals when they are aligned with the organization's strategy
question
You have been assigned as the project manager for a software development project. You are currently communicating with stakeholders and addressing their issues and expectations. Which of the following documents help carry out this effort?
answer
The stakeholder management plan, communications management plan, and the change log
question
You have been managing a Federal highway construction project which is intended to improve transportation between north and south regions of the country. In the execution phase, you have received many complaints from stakeholders including the highway transportation agency. At least half of these complaints were regarding the quality of the microtexture of the road, and the nonconformance to the quality levels incorporated in the project quality management plan. So far you have successfully fixed all of the reported issues but you are concerned by this recurrent event. What should you do to avoid future similar issues?
answer
Initiate a preventive action to reduce the probability of negative consequences associated with the poor quality of the road
question
Megawatt is estimating the expected cost of a new ERP system deployment project using the actual costs of an earlier similar ERP system deployment project as the basis for the cost. This is what type of estimating?
answer
Analogous
question
When would Rolling Wave Planning be useful in a project?
answer
You should use Rolling Wave Planning to help you achieve the appropriate level of detail in each work package at the right time.
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How can a project manager ensure continued active support of the project supporters and at the same time minimize negative impacts from the negative stakeholders?
answer
By ensuring that stakeholders clearly understand project goals, objectives, benefits and risks
question
The enterprise environmental factors play an important role during the development of the project stakeholder management plan. The following list gives the most significant enterprise environmental factors considered during the Plan Stakeholder Management process except one. Which one is it
answer
stakeholder management plans of previous similar projects
question
The list of identified risks is found in the risk register. However, the high-level risks are first listed in the
answer
Project charter
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There are a number of risks that have been identified in your project. The team has decided to not change the project plan to deal with the risks, but they have established a contingency reserve of money in the event some of these risks are triggered. This is an example of what type of risk mitigation technique?
answer
Recognizing the risk and not changing the plan but making some contingencies in the event the risk is triggered is an example of active acceptance. Passive acceptance would recognize the risk but not put contingencies in place, and avoidance would be correct if the project plan were modified
question
The testers on the software development project you are managing have said repeatedly that the processes required to certify each release are overkill and are actually much more work than is required. The project is slightly ahead of schedule. What do you do?
answer
Implement a continuous improvement program for testing processes
question
A Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) is used to break down the project by type of resources. The RBS is an example of a:
answer
Hierarchical chart
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A project manager feels the need of updating one of the project supplier contracts to meet the current needs of the project. However, before any change can be requested, the project manager must know the right process to incorporate a change to this specific contract. What should he do first?
answer
Review the change control procedure as documented in the contract itself
question
Sheila has been assigned as the project manager of a project. After a detailed discussion with the project management team, she decides to create a quality management plan that is informal and broadly framed. What would your comment on this be?
answer
The quality management plan may be formal or informal, highly detailed or broadly framed. Its style and detail are determined by the requirements of the project as defined by the project management team.
question
A senior project manager advises a first-time project manager that identifying risks is just one step. On a continuing basis, new risks need to be identified, and existing risks need to be analyzed, tracked, and their status reported. All this is done as part of what process?
answer
Identifying new risks and analyzing, tracking, and monitoring existing project risks are done in the Monitor and Control Project Work phase. This phase also makes sure that the status of the risks is properly reported, and appropriate risk response plans are executed
question
You are managing a project to lengthen a runway at a major airport. However, after you have worked on the project for six months and held weekly status meetings, many of your stakeholders are dissatisfied with the deliverables, even with a CPI of 1.0 and an SPI of 1.0. Which of the following phases has probably not been done properly?
answer
With a CPI of 1.0 and an SPI of 1.0, the project is on time and on budget, but the stakeholders are dissatisfied with the deliverables. This indicates that the Define Scope phase was not properly done
question
A project manager is considering risk in a project. When does risk come into play in a project?
answer
As soon as a project is conceived
question
Which of the following is an output of the Define Activity process?
answer
Milestone list
question
Your company is planning to deploy a corporate accounting software project. It will take over a year to complete, have a budget of over $5 million, and be implemented at 16 corporate locations around the world. The project sponsor wants to bring in an outside resource to be the project manager. This person, the sponsor's brother-in-law, has many years of finance experience but no experience or training in project management. You are a PMP; what should you do
answer
Notify appropriate management that there is a potential conflict of interest.
question
You are building a mile-long bridge on a T;M contract. During the excavation activity you found out that some telephone cables are crossing the alignment where you have to construct the bridge. You need to relocate these telephone cables but there is no provision of such an activity in the contract. Further, the relocation of the cables will be a costly task and a lot of government paperwork needs to be done as well. You requested an amendment in the contract but the buyer has rejected it. Despite many efforts you both have not been able to resolve this issue. What should you do next?
answer
Seek arbitration following the ADR procedures in the contract
question
In an underground highway construction project, the project stakeholders have suggested many changes to the project scope. You had already defined the cost baseline in your project, and you would like to revisit the baseline to see how these changes might impact the overall cost of the project. You start an impact analysis to determine the impact and inform the concerned stakeholders of all approved changes and the corresponding costs. You perform these activities in which process?
answer
Control Costs
question
You are managing a railway track construction project. The construction contract awarded to your company is fixed priced and is based on some pre-determined quantities of work to be executed. During the project execution you find out that the actual quantities of work that need to be executed are 20% more than what has been stated in the contract. What should you do?
answer
In this scenario the scope of works has increased for the contractor. As a first step, the contractor needs to collect necessary evidence and request for the amendment in the contract. If both parties cannot settle this amicably, ADR procedures need to be followed.
question
Control Schedule is part of which Project Management process group?
answer
Monitoring and controlling
question
You are part of the review team of a running project. Which of the various documents define how the project is executed, monitored, controlled, and closed?
answer
Project Management Plan
question
Mandatory dependencies are those that are inherent in the nature of the work being done. They often involve physical limitations, such as on a construction project where it is impossible to erect the superstructure until the foundation has been built. According to the PMBOK, a mandatory dependency is also called:
answer
Hard logic
question
You are managing a heavy equipment manufacturing project that involves many mechanical, electrical and IT staff. Your team prepared a schedule network diagram using duration estimates with dependencies and constraints. Your team also calculated the critical path for the project using late and early values. Today, your project office has indicated to you that some of the resources whom you had planned for the project will be unavailable. To deal with this, you explore the possibility of modifying the schedule to account for limited resources. What is your best possible step in such a situation?
answer
Recalculate critical path using the critical chain method
question
A software team tracing the root cause of an application failure can use this to help determine the cause(s) of the failure:
answer
Ishikawa diagram
