PMBOK Study guide

A project manager has been asked to calculate the payback period for her project. The project's investment is $500,000, with expected cash inflow of $50,000 for the first two quarters and $100,000 for every quarter thereafter. What is the payback period?

- 18 months

You're managing a project to build a new project management information system. You work with the team to come up with an estimate of 27 weeks. In the best case, this could be shortened by two weeks because you can reuse a previous component. But there's a risk that a vendor delay could cause the project to be delayed by five weeks. Use PERT to calculate a three-point estimate for this project.

- 25.5 weeks

You're managing a construction project. You've decomposed work packages into activities, and your client needs a duration estimate for each activity that you come up with. Which of the following will you use for this?

- Activity list

You have just started work on the project scope statement. You are analyzing the expected deliverables when you discover that one of them could be delivered in three different ways. You select the best method for creating that deliverable. What is the BEST way to describe what you are doing?

- Alternatives analysis

Which of the following statements best describes stakeholders?

- An individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: The café across the street opened just a few months ago. Alice sits down with the contractor who did the work there and asks him to help her figure out how much it will cost. He takes a look at the equipment Sue and Tamika want to buy and the specs for the cabinets and seating and tells her what she can afford to do with the budget she has.

- Analogous estimating

You are managing a project for a company that has previously done three projects that were similar to it. You consult with the cost baselines, lessons learned, and project managers from those projects, and use that information to come up with your cost estimate. What technique are you using?

- Analogous estimating

You are the project manager for Changing Tides video games. Your project is a long-term project and will be completed in three phases over the next two years. You have gathered the inputs for the Estimate Activity Durations process and are ready to produce the activity duration estimates. Your sponsor would like a project estimate for all three phases by the end of the week. He understands that at this stage it will be a rough order of magnitude estimate and not entirely accurate. Which of the following tools and techniques will you use to produce this estimate?

- Analogous estimating

You are the project manager for a telecommunications project. You are working on the project scope statement. Which of the following is NOT included in this document?

- Authorization for the project manager to work on the project

A project manager meets with the project team to estimate the duration of activities identified to date. The project sponsor recently guided the project manager to present her with a duration estimate for the project that contains a high confidence level. What estimating technique is the project manager likely to use, assuming that the necessary information is available?

- Bottom-up estimating

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: Alice sits down and estimates each and every activity and resource that she is going to need. Then she adds up all of the estimates into "rolled-up" categories. From there she adds up the categories into an overall budget number.

- Bottom-up estimating

You're on the project selection committee. You're reviewing a document that describes the strategic value of a potential project and its benefits to the company. What's this document called?

- Business case

Ralph is a project manager for Storm Health. He has struggled since joining the company, and his manager has noticed a gap in a critical PM skill. In a recent kick-off meeting, he struggled to answer questions on how the project aligns with the organization's goals, insisting it wasn't relevant. What critical skill should Ralph sharpen?

- Business management and strategic skills

Marysil, an enterprise project manager for Cups on Fire, is in the process of sequencing activities with her team to develop the project schedule. One team member noted that when the next generation prototype cup is cauterized, it will need to sit for a period of two days before it can be hand painted. How will Marysil reflect this within the schedule?

- By adding a two-day lag between the activities

Your current project is an $800,000 software development effort, with two teams of programmers that will work for six months, at a total of 10,000 hours. According to the project schedule, your team should be done with 38% of the work. You find that the project is currently 40% complete. You've spent 50% of the budget so far. What is the correct statement about this project's schedule?

- CPI less than 1, project over budget. SPI more than 1, project ahead of schedule

Diane is a project manager at a software company. She just got a change request from one of her stakeholders, but is concerned that it will cause a serious problem with her schedule. She called a meeting with the project team, and decided that there was a real change, and now they need to start change control. Which of the following is NOT an output of the Perform Integrated Change Control process?

- Change Requests

Your company has previously run other projects similar to the one you're currently managing. What is the BEST way to use that information?

- Check the organizational process assets for lessons learned and other info about past projects

Which of the following is NOT true about interpersonal and team skills?

- Coaching means helping your team get more exercise

You're managing a software project when your customer informs you that a schedule change is necessary. Which is the BEST thing to do?

- Consult the schedule management plan

Tamika helps Alice add up all of the estimates they have done into control accounts so that they can figure out how much the stereo installation is going to cost versus building the entertainment center. What tool or technique is Alice using to estimate costs and/or build the budget?

- Cost aggregation

You are managing a software project when one of your stakeholders needs to make a change that will affect the budget. What defines the processes that you must follow in order to implement the change?

- Cost change control system

A junior project manager is studying for her PMP exam, and asks you for advice. She's learning about earned value management, and wants to know which of the variables represents the difference between what you expect to spend on the project and what you've actually spent so far. What should you tell her?

- Cost variance (CV)

You're planning the schedule for a highway construction project, but the final date you came up with will run into the next budget year. The state comes up with capital from a reserve fund, and now you can increase the budget for your resources. What's the BEST way to compress the schedule?

- Crash the schedule

You're managing a project when your client tells you that an external problem happened, and now you have to meet an earlier deadline. Your supervisor heard that in a situation like this, you can use schedule compression by either crashing or fast-tracking the schedule, but he's not sure which is which. What do you tell him?

- Crashing the project adds cost, while fast tracking adds risk

You're managing an industrial design project. You've come up with the complete activity list, created network diagrams, assigned resources to each activity, and estimated their durations. What's the next thing that you do?

- Create the schedule

Reasons to Lyv is the top client of a large marketing firm. Trudy is the president of Reasons to Lyv and has decided to launch a product that leverages new GPS tracking technology. She has high confidence that the project will be a success and asks the marketing firm to make it their top priority by generating a unique campaign that will run in parallel with her project. Billy, a top executive from the marketing company, briefs his team about this unique situation that they have not managed before, and a project is launched shortly thereafter. Trudy's project came about as a result of what?

- Customer request

You are a project manager on a software project. There are several changes that need to be made, and you need to decide how to apply project resources in order to implement them. What do you do?

- Decide the priority of the changes and announce them to the team

Which of the following is NOT TRUE about a work breakdown structure?

- Describes procedures to define the scope, verify work, and manage scope changes

During the execution of a software project, one of your programmers informs you that she discovered a design flaw that will require the team to go back and make a large change. What is the BEST way to handle this situation?

- Determine how the change will impact the project constraints

This type of dependency has a tendency to create arbitrary total float values that will limit your options when scheduling activities. What type of dependency is this?

- Discretionary

You have just verified that all of the work on your project is completed. Which of these things is NOT part of the Closing process?

- Document the work performance information to show the deliverables have been completed and record the lessons learned

Three members of your project team want to pad their estimates because they believe there are certain risks that might materialize. What is the BEST way to handle this situation?

- Estimate the activities honestly, then use a contingency reserve to cover any unexpected costs

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: Before Alice finishes her schedule, she gathers all of the information she has about previous projects' costs (like how much labor and materials cost). She also talks to a contractor, who gives valuable input.

- Expert judgement

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: Tamika sets up an appointment with the same contractor her friend used for some remodeling work. The contractor comes to the house, takes a look at the room, and then gives an estimate for the work.

- Expert judgement

You are managing a software project, when you find out that a programming team whom you were supposed to have access to has been reassigned to another project. What is the first thing that you should do?

- Figure out what impact that this will have on your project

You are managing a software project. Your QA manager tells you that you need to plan to have her team start their test planning activity so that it finishes just before testing begins. But other than that, she says it can start as late in the project as necessary. What's the relationship between the test planning activity and the testing activity?

- Finish-to-start (FS)

You are the project manager for a software project, when the sponsor pulls the plug and cancels the project. What do you do?

- Follow the project closure procedures to close the project and update lessons learned

Once the budget is close to done, Alice looks over their financial plans for the year to be sure that they can afford everything at the time that it is needed. What tool or technique is Alice using to estimate costs and/or build the budget?

- Funding limit reconciliation

The goal of Validate Scope is:

- Gain formal acceptance of the project deliverables from the sponsor and stakeholders

You are a project manager starting a new project. Your manager warns you that previous projects ran into trouble. Which of the following would be BEST for you to rely on to help plan your project:

- Historical information

You are the newly appointed project manager of a high-profile, critical project for your organization. The project team is structured outside your normal organizational structure, and you have full authority for this project. What type of organization does this describe?

- Hybrid

A project manager is having trouble with his project because one of his team members is not performing, which is causing him to miss an important date he promised to a stakeholder. He discovers that the team member knew about the project problem, but didn't tell him because the team members are all afraid of his bad temper. Which BEST describes how the project manager can avoid this situation in the future?

- Improving his personal skills

You're the project manager at a telecommunications company. You recently had stakeholders approach you with changes. You figured out that the changes would cost additional time and money. The stakeholders agreed, you were given additional time and budget, and the changes were approved. Now you have to incorporate the changes into the project. What do you do next?

- Incorporate the changes into the baseline so you can track the project properly

Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of the project scope statement?

- It describes the objectives, requirements, and deliverables of the project, and the work needed to create them

Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of a requirements traceability matrix?

- It helps you understand the source of each requirement, and how that requirement was verified in a later deliverable

Which of the following best describes project management Knowledge Areas?

- Knowledge areas bring together processes that have characteristics in common

Sue is the head of an enterprise project management office (PMO). She delivers a presentation at the annual company meeting to describe her role's responsibilities and the value of the PMO. As part of her presentation, Sue stresses the critical skill sets that PMs must have in order to be effective. She stresses one in particular, which is that PMs must exhibit the knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed to guide, motivate, and direct a team. What skill set is Sue referring to?

- Leadership skills

Quincy and Michael are two executives of Widgets for Life, a company providing the latest cool lifestyle gadgets. They've learned that a new federal law will be passed that regulates how personal data may be collected and used. Many of Widgets for Life's gadgets collect data, which has been made possible by advancements in technology. As a result, they decide to launch a new project that will address the requirements of the new law. This project came about as a result of what need?

- Legal requirement

Your company has asked you to provide a cost estimate that includes maintenance, installation, support, and upkeep costs for as long as the product will be used. What is that kind of estimate called?

- Lifecycle costing

You're managing a graphic design project. One of your team members reports that there is a serious problem, and you realize that it will cause a delay that could harm the business of the stakeholders. Even worse, it will take another two days for you to fully assess the impact—until then, you won't have the whole story. What is the BEST way to handle this situation?

- Meet with the stakeholders and tell them that there's a problem, but you need two more days to get them the information they need

When is a project considered successful?

- Meets business requirements, are delivered and maintained on schedule, delivered and maintained on budget, deliver expected business value and ROI

Historical information and lessons learned are part of:

- Organizational process assets

The project manager reviews lessons learned from past similar projects to start the project off on the right foot. What input contains lessons learned and historical information from past projects?

- Organizational process assets

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: Alice creates a spreadsheet with all of the historical information from similar remodeling projects that have happened on her block. She sits down and types in Tamika and Sue's desired furnishings and the square footage of the room to generate an estimated cost.

- Parametric estimating

You are the project manager on a construction project, and you have just received a change request. You consulted the Project Management plan, and followed the procedures laid out in the change control system. You are in the process of reviewing the change and documenting its impact. Your manager asks you why you are doing this. Which process are you doing by reviewing the change and documenting its impact?

- Perform integrated change control

A consulting company assigns extra resources to a project to compensate for possible attrition.

- Preventive action

Consulting company working on your IT project assigns extra resources to compensate for possible attrition during mid-project stage. this would an example of what kind of action?

- Preventive action

Your selection committee can choose only one of the following projects: Project A's original investment is $1 million, the present value of the cash inflows is $1 million, and the discount rate is 4 percent. Project B's original investment is $1.4 million, the present value of the cash inflows is $1.4 million, and the discount rate is 6 percent. Project C's original investment is $1.8 million, the present value of the cash inflows is $1.8 million, and the discount rate is 7 percent. Which project should the committee choose?

- Project C

You are managing a software project when one of your stakeholders needs to make a change that will affect the budget. You follow the procedures to implement the change. Which of the following must get updated to reflect the change?

- Project cost performance baseline

You're a project manager on a construction project. The electrician has started laying out the wiring, when the client comes to you with a change request. He needs additional outlets, and you think that will increase the cost of the electrical work. What is the first thing you do?

- Refer to the project management plan to see how the change should be handled

You've taken over as a project manager on a highway construction project, and the execution is already under way. Your sponsor tells you that moving forward, all asphalt should be laid down with a 12" thickness. The scope statement and the WBS call for 9" thick asphalt. What is the BEST course of action?

- Refuse to alter the plans until the change control system has been used

You are the project manager on a network engineering project. Two weeks ago, your team began executing the project. The work has been going well, and you are now a day ahead of schedule. Two stakeholders just approached you to tell you that they have an important change that needs to be made. That change will put you behind schedule. What do you do?

- Refuse to make the change because the stakeholders did not take it to the change control board - Refuse to make the change until the stakeholders document it in a change request

You are managing an industrial design project. One of your team members comes to you with a suggestion that will let you do more work while at the same time saving the project 15% of the budget. What is the BEST way for you to proceed?

- Refuse to make the change until a change request is documented and change control is performed

You are a project manager on a software project. When you planned the project, your enterprise environmental factors included a policy that all changes that cost over 2% of the budget need to be approved by the CFO, but smaller changes could be paid for by a management contingency fund. One of your stakeholders submitted a change request that requires a 3% increase in the budget. Your company has an outsourcing effort, and you believe that a small change to the way that the change is requested could allow you to take advantage of it and cut your costs in half. What is the BEST way to handle this situation?

- Request approval from the CFO

Alice reads a newspaper article that says that there has been a sharp increase in lumber costs recently. She knows this wasn't in her contractor's original plan and decides to put a few hundred dollars aside to deal with the price hike if it should happen. What tool or technique is Alice using to estimate costs and/or build the budget?

- Reserve analysis

At the beginning of a project, a software team project manager is given a schedule with everyone's vacations on it. She realizes that because the software will be delivered to the QA team exactly when they have overlapping vacations, there is a serious risk of quality problems, because there won't be anyone to test the software before it goes into production. What BEST describes the constraint this places on the project?

- Resource constraint

You are starting to write your project charter with your project sponsor when the senior managers ask for a time and cost estimate for the project. You have not yet gathered many of the project details. What kind of estimate can you give?

- Rough order of magnitude estimate

Which of the following is NOT a tool or technique used in Estimate Activity Durations?

- SWAG estimation

Accuracy levels, units of measure, control thresholds, and performance measurement rules are all elements of what project management document?

- Schedule management plan

A project manager on an industrial design project finds that the sponsor wants to make a change to the scope after it has been added to the baseline, and needs to know the procedure for managing changes. What is the BEST place to look for this information?

- Scope management plan

A project manager has facilitated the decomposition of work packages into activities. She next carries the team through several exercises to identify predecessor and successor activities. The project manager is performing activities associated with which process?

- Sequence activities

A project manager at a cable and networking company is gathering requirements for a project to build a new version of their telecommunications equipment. Which of the following is NOT something that she will use?

- Specific descriptions of work packages that will be developed

Which of the following is NOT a responsibility of a project manager?

- Sponsor the project

You're managing an interior decoration project when you find out that you need to get it done earlier than originally planned. You decide to fast-track the project. This means:

- Starting activities earlier and overlapping them more, which will cost more and could add risks

You have just been put in charge of a project that is already executing. While reviewing the project documentation, you discover that there is no WBS. You check the Scope Management plan and discover that there should be one for this project. What is the BEST thing for you to do?

- Stop project work and create the WBS, and don't let work continue until its created

You are managing a project for a defense contractor. You know that you're over budget, and you need to tell your project sponsor how much more money it's going to cost. You've already given him a forecast that represents your estimate of total cost at the end of the project, so you need to take that into account. You now need to figure out what your CPI needs to be for the rest of the project. Which of the following BEST meets your needs?

- TCPI (EAC calculation)

You're managing a software project. You've created the schedule, and you need to figure out which activities cannot slip. You've done critical path analysis, identifying the critical path and calculating the early start and early finish for each activity. Which activities cannot slip without making the project late?

- The activities on the critical path

You have just received a change request. This means:

- The change needs to be approved before it can be implemented

You are the project manager for a software project. One of the teams discovers that if they deviate from the plan, they can actually skip one of the deliverables because it's no longer necessary. They do the calculations, and realize they can save the customer 10% of the cost of the project without compromising the features in the product. They take this approach, and inform you the following week what they did during the status meeting. What is the BEST way to describe this situation?

- The team did not follow the control scope process

Alice wants to keep the Kitchen project's costs under control, and that starts with the Estimate Costs process. Take a look at the list of tools below, and select one of them Alice is using when she estimates costs for the given. Scenario: Alice figures out a best-case scenario, a most likely scenario, and a worst-case scenario. Then she uses a formula to come up with an expected cost for the project.

- Three-point estimate

You're managing a construction project. You've decomposed work packages into activities, and your client needs a duration estimate for each activity that you came up with. Which of the following BEST describes what you are doing?

- Understanding, in calendar time, how long each activity will take

You are the project manager for a new project, and you want to save time creating the WBS. Which is the BEST way to do this?

- Use a WBS from a previous project as a template

It's the end of execution for a large highway construction project. The work has been done, and the workers are ready to pack up their equipment. The project manager and project sponsor have come by with specialists to check that each requirement has been met, and that all of the work in the WBS has been performed. What process is being done?

- Validate scope

You're the project manager on a software project. Your team has only completed half of the work when the sponsor informs you that the project has been terminated. What is the BEST action for you to take?

- Verify the deliverables produced by the team against the scope, and document any place they do not match

You are a project manager working on a project. Your sponsor wants to know who a certain work package is assigned to, what control account to bill it against, and what work is involved. What document do you refer her to?

- WBS dictionary

You are managing a software project. Your team has been working for eight weeks, and so far the project is on track. The lead programmer comes to you with a problem: there is a work package that is causing trouble. Nobody seems to know who is responsible for it, the accounting department does not know what cost center to bill it against, and it's not even clear exactly what work should be performed. Which of the following would BEST help this situation?

- WBS dictionary

Which of the following is TRUE about a work breakdown structure?

- WBS represents all the work that must be done on the project

You're a project manager on a software project. Your team is busy executing the project and creating the deliverables, but there have been several changes requested by stakeholders over the past few weeks. Each time you got one of these changes, you called a meeting with your team and the stakeholders to discuss it. Why did you do this?

- You do not have a good change control system in place

One of your team members has discovered a defect in a deliverable and has recommended that it be repaired. Which of the following is NOT true:

- You must update the project management plan to document the defect

Slack is a synonym for:

- float

You are working on the project plan for a software project. Your company has a standard spreadsheet that you use to generate estimates. To use the spreadsheet, you meet with the team to estimate the number of functional requirements, use cases, and design wireframes for the project. Then you categorize them into high, medium, or low complexity. You enter all of those numbers into the spreadsheet, which uses a data table derived from past projects' actual costs and durations, performs a set of calculations, and generates a final estimate. What kind of estimation is being done?

- parametric

Project A has an NPV of $75,000, with an internal rate of return of 1.5% and an initial investment of $15,000. Project B has an NPV of $60,000 with a BCR of 2:1. Project C has an NPV of $80,000, which includes an opportunity cost of $35,000. Based on these projects, which is the BEST one to select:

- project C

What is the range of a rough order of magnitude estimate?

-50% to +50%

CPI =

CPI = EV/AC cost performance index measure of cost efficiency of budgeted resources

CV =

CV = EV - AC cost variance amount of budget used at a given point in time

A software project is running late, so a software project manager looks to find slack time and reassign resources to get things done more quickly. What kind of project management action is this?

Corrective

EAC =

EAC = BAC / CPI estimate at completion expected total cost of completing all work

ETC =

ETC = EAC - AC estimate to complete expected cost to finish remaining work

Yasmin is a project manager tasked with putting together the project charter for a project that will produce a new line of widgets for the company. After meeting with various key stakeholders, she sits down to draft the document. Yasmin is likely to include all of the following elements within the project charter except for which one?

Preapproved budget

SPI =

SPI = EV/PV schedule performance index measure of schedule efficiency

SV =

SV = EV - PV schedule variance amount by which a project is ahead or behind

Which of the following is NOT a distinguishing characteristic of a project?

Strategic

VAC =

VAC = BAC - EAC variance at completion projection of budget deficit or surplus

Which of the following is NOT a type of project management office?

Value Driven

AC =

actual cost

BAC =

budget at completion

EV =

earned value

You are a full-time project manager working within the customer operations organization, reporting to the VP of customer solutions. Your boss manages the project budget. Which organizational structure do you work in?

hybrid

PV =

planned value

An energy company is investing in a series of initiatives to look for alternative energy sources so that the company can be competitive in 10 years. The initiatives are tracked and managed together because this goal is vital to the success of the company. This is an example of:

portfolio

TCPI

to complete performance index measure of cost performance to meet goals