Project Management Foundations Exam Study Guide

Ravi took on a system implementation project that he estimated would take six months to complete, but the work keeps continuing. What is the likely cause?

The project is not clearly defined.

Which of the following skills is not crucial for a project manager to possess?

accounting

A stakeholder project review meeting is estimated for a one-day duration. There are eight stakeholders. How many work hours do the stakeholders spend in this meeting?

64

The boss has asked you to research project management tools that will help with building and planning tasks on a timeline. Which type of toll would you most likely consider?

A Scheduling Program

Your project seems to be going off track, so you take action to resolve the problem. In which project management process group are you working?

Monitoring and Controlling

Which activity is not part of the Adapt stage?

Review what has been completed and what is still on the backlog to choose the features for the next iteration

Pam owns several risks in a project. What is Pam's first action as a risk owner?

Proactively implement risk responses before the risks become issues

Your boss has asked you to be the project manager of an approved software implementation project. Which project document identifies your authority and responsibilities?

a project charter

Which type of project data would you review for an accurate picture of the project's progress and labor costs?

actual work hours or actual duration

You have created a risk management plan for your project. Which type of response would you use if the scope was changed to remove a risky section of the project?

avoidance

The project customer and other stakeholders have approved your project plan. After you save the project baseline, those documents will be under the control of the ____

change management process

Your project is split into two teams across two different continents. They understand the work to be completed, as well as communication processes. But they still often argue about how the work should be accomplished and who should make decisions. Given what you know, what is the most likely cause for these issues?

cultural differences

During which process group does the project manager orient team members to the project and expectations?

executing

Which technique would you most likely use to gather valid requirements and get buy-in from various departments?

focus groups

The Agile project management lifecycle _____

includes activities similar to a Waterfall approach but performed in a different order and with different emphasis

A closeout report is primarily used to ____

share a summary of the project with others

What are the names for the stages in an Agile iteration?

speculate, explore, adapt

Which organizational factor would you use when having to make a difficult decision?

the organization's mission

The IT department says that there are several products that do what the project needs. What is the most important thing that will help you choose the right product?

understanding your project needs

Drew is assigning resources to tasks and needs to determine how long tasks might take. Which piece of information does not help him calculate task duration?

what time people start working each day

Turkan is developing a resource management plan for his project. Which part of this plan articulates who makes decisions, who performs work, and who needs to receive status on the project?

responsibility matrix

Jivan is preparing an agenda for the project plan approval meeting. Which item should she not include in her agenda?

schedule the project definition meeting

To get detailed values of project schedule and cost performance , look at _____ and _____

schedule variances; cost variances

Rafel knows that lessons learned is a valuable aid to future projects. When should he and his team address lessons learned on a project?

Add lessons learned as a topic in status meetings

You have quite the diversified team in experience, skills, and hours they work. Which best practice should you follow to help ensure your schedule is as realistic as possible?

Add notes to your schedule to document resource changes and the reasons for the changes

You are building your project schedule. You have the tasks in the right sequence. What is the next step you should take?

Add the time that you estimate for each task

Tiko and Camille's boss has a project in which the solution is a bit unclear. Tiko wants to use a waterfall approach and Camille wants to use the Agile approach. Which approach is best and why?

Agile is best because it delivers partial solutions at regular intervals.

Your client has just asked you to make changes to some features in the project. What would you do first?

Ask the client to document and submit a change request form

The customer has identified several new features since the original backlog was built. What do you do to address them?

At the beginning of the next iteration, re-estimate, reevaluate, and re-prioritize the backlog features to decide which ones to include in the iteration

Although your project has been accepted by the customer, the contract with the system vendor specifies that it will support the system for three months after acceptance. Which step should you wait to take until the end of the three months?

Close all financial accounts and charge codes

Siobhan's boss asked her to take over a project with several problems. What is the first step Siobhan should take in tackling the problems?

Decide which problems are important

What do you use to specify what will be tested in project acceptance tests?

Deliverables and success criteria

Banton is defining his project deliverables. Which statement describes what a project deliverable is?

Deliverables are the results that the project delivers and help define the project scope

Your boss is asking you to take on a reengineering project. The company hasn't run reengineering projects before, but has hired several project managers with reengineering experience. Which technique is best to use in this situation to estimate time and cost?

Delphi technique

Raghbir has done all the project planning and is ready to obtain stakeholders' approval. However, the stakeholders are not colocated. What is the best possible approach for getting their approval?

Have a video conference with all stakeholders

You need to resolve a serious disagreement over requirements between the project customer and another key stakeholder. What is the key communication technique to choose for this situation?

Hold a face-to-face meeting or videoconference

Rosanne's boss asks her to manage a project. Which question requires understanding of objectives, requirements, deliverables, and success criteria to answer?

How will you know when you are done?

Kendra has a project team of varying skills and experience. Since the WBS task names are short and may not be enough for the team members to know what to do, what should Kendra do?

Kendra should have her team leaders create work package documents

The development team has been delivering software components faster than planned, but some components include more features than originally specified. What should you do?

Make sure the development team understands the business objectives and requirements. Then explain that they should initiate a change request if they want to add scope

Ramesh is creating objectives for his project. Which SMART step will help him identify actual progress?

Measurable

The sponsor of Project T5 assigned you as the project manager, and the project has already been approved. What is the first thing you need to do as the project manager?

Review what has been done and complete any tasks not addressed

Izzy has finished identifying risks for her big project, but is unsure how to account for unknown risks from a time and cost perspective. What is the general practice most companies use for projects?

Set aside a percentage of the budget and project duration based on past projects. If you don't have past experience, use 15%

Camille receives a change request that will probably affect the project's business case. How should she manage this change?

She should have the customer approve the change request

As project manager, you have some ideas on how to recover a project that is falling behind schedule. Which action could you immediately take to get the project back on track?

Start with solutions you can authorize

Katrina needs to use her communication and conflict management skills every day with her team. What stage of development is her team in?

Storming

The customer told you that being competitive in their market is a moving target. They asked you to add several items to the scope, even if it adds more time and money. What approach would help you manage the scope for this project?

Switch to an Agile approach

You send your client an email with a project and risk status. You ask for feedback on project performance. Which best practice should you adhere to when using email to communicate?

Take time to write a clear message

Which step is most important for a project to close?

The customer and stakeholders sign the acceptance form

You are asked to take over a project that is behind schedule. As you review the project, you find the delays are due to scope creep. The project uses a reasonable change management plan that seems to be working. What is the likely cause of the scope creep?

The scope is not clearly defined

Rudolph, the project manager, is trying to obtain customer approval of project deliverables. It is taking longer than he anticipated because the customer wants to discuss the results. What is the most likely reason for these delays?

The success criteria aren't clear and quantifiable

Your boss would like to see the progress of your project and wants to know how long the project will take and which variances exist. What is the most likely tool you can use to show these details?

a Gantt chart

You are considering a vendor to help with a project. You are confident about how much work and time is needed, but you want the vendor to accept the risk. Which type of contract would you likely use?

a fixed-price contract

Samantha is using buffers to protect her project plan from delays in some tasks. Which approach is she taking?

critical chain's task buffers

Project objectives help you flesh out a project by _____.

defining project scope

Your organization runs numerous projects and wants to choose the most appropriate resources for each project team. Which of the following is the best tool for identifying project resources?

enterprise project management software

Which choice is not a characteristic of Agile project management?

no documentation

Now that your project is underway, all resource assignments are running late. What is the likely cause?

not taking into account the hours that resources spend on non-project work each day

Your client has asked for a project that will fix productivity concerns with the customer service department. After asking "why" several times, you are able to determine the cause and create a _____.

problem statement

Madhukant's project includes testing software functions. Which part of the quality management plan would address the processes that will be used to ensure the software is meeting the standards?

quality assurance plan

One risk to your schedule is that a hard drive with customized software fails and you lose the work that was done. Resources on the project team regularly back up their work so they can resume work quickly after a hard drive failure. What type of risk management strategy do backups represent?

risk mitigation

What does it mean when earned value is above planned value?

More work has been completed than planned, and the task or project is ahead of schedule

Sakait has done some extra work to appease a client. Now the client is asking her to do one more task, which is significant and not part of project scope. What should Sakait do?

Sakait should tell the client the task is not within scope and add the task using the change control process

The critical chain approach can help prevent delays and even deliver a project earlier than with other approaches. Which choice is not part of the critical chain approach?

Schedule from the project start date

Which factor is a test you can use to determine whether you have broken down the work to the right level?

The work package is between 8 and 80 hours to complete

You are managing a project that is implementing a new financial system. You need to include some of the finance department's resources on the team. Which stakeholder should you approach?

a functional or line manager

You are hiring a new project manager to take over a project with several teams that often disagree on what they are supposed to do. Which competency would you feel is most important in a candidate for this situation?

strong leadership skills

Milestones can be used in many ways. What is not something that milestones do?

summarize schedule and cost performance

Dalton needs to prepare a close-out report for his project. Which part of the close-out report would describe how he would plan and manage projects in the future?

summary of project management effectiveness

George is building his work breakdown structure (WBS) to organize and distribute the project work to various departments. Which type of tasks would he use to represent a department's responsibility?

summary tasks

When would you create a work package document that describes the work to be done in explicit detail?

the assigned resource is inexperienced

How can using an Agile approach help a company improve delivery?

by using an iterative approach to deliver value sooner

Angela is about to start the project plan for a financial system migration project. What information should she identify first because it drives most of the plan?

the work that must be done

The Agile team is building and implementing features. The team lead runs a daily meeting to review the status on completed and incomplete work. Which Agile stage is the team in?

explore

Mike is sequencing tasks in a development project. He wants the testing team to test completed features during development. Which type of dependency should Mike use?

finish-to-finish dependency

Your team asks a lot of questions about their assignments. Although they turn to you to make decisions, they sometimes test the boundaries of what they can do. What stage of team building are they in?

forming

Mariko has created a work breakdown structure diagram to show work broken down into manageable pieces. Which choice is not a reason for creating the WBS?

identifying deliverables

Your team has identified possible strategies for a project. The team is now evaluating them using a decision matrix. What is the purpose of weighting the objectives?

identifying the importance of each objective

Your coworker has to develop a cost estimate but is unsure which is the best one based on a bell curve of costs for past projects. What is a general practice for choosing the best estimate?

Choose a point halfway between the average and worst-case values

You are closing the accounts you used to bill the project costs, but you still have some lingering expenses. Which best practice should you follow?

Close all the accounting codes, except for the ones related to the follow-up activities, until the remaining expenses are complete

Your project meetings run longer than planned and you're determined to start and finish them on time in the future. What technique would you implement to accomplish this?

Create an agenda with topics and time estimates so you can move topics that exceed their time to the parking lot to be handled later

Freya and her team resolved several problems and came up with some great techniques during their latest project. What should they do to help improve the performance of future projects?

Identify and document lessons learned

You have a project committee meeting with all stakeholders. What is the key step you need to take to make the meeting effective for the stakeholders?

Identify the purpose of the meeting and results you need from the stakeholders

To create a project schedule, you need to perform several tasks. Which choice is not one of these tasks?

Set a deadline for the project

After the plan is approved and project work begins, Tara's boss is not happy about a project delay for an upgrade. The vendor thought Tara's team would do the upgrade, and Tara thought the vendor would do it. What was missed in this situation?

An assumption was not identified

A project that you manage is behind schedule. You have identified an approach that would get the project back on track, but it would require you to break one of your organizations policies. What is the best course of action?

Determine if the rule is one that can be broken and come up with an alternative plan of action if your approach doesn't work

As project manager, Gabriella has discovered a major problem that could affect the remainder of the project. What should she do before deciding how to resolve the problem?

Evaluate options similar to evaluating project strategies

You are a project manager of a technical team. Which approach would you take to help the team members balance their perfectionism and creativity so they are within scope?

Explain to the team how the work they are doing fits the project's business needs

You are project managing a team of 10 people. Lately, one of your team members is not performing up to par. What is the least likely approach you should use to handle this situation?

Quickly find another team member to take over

The change review board can't get through all the change requests that are submitted. They want to focus on requests with significant impact. What process change would you propose to allow the review board to focus on significant changes?

Set thresholds so you or team leads can decide what to do with small change requests

Callahan just completed the planning phase. Now he needs to have a kickoff meeting with the team. Which choice is not something covered in the kickoff meeting?

The team needs a detailed review of the project plan

James is managing a project in which he has some authority to make decisions. In which type of organizational structure is James most likely managing this project?

a matrix organization

Krisha is gathering information on her stakeholders, such as department names, factors that motivate them, who they listen to, and their contributions on the project. What is this document called?

a stakeholder analysis

What are the components that differentiate a project from operational work?

a unique goal, a temporary endeavor, and usually a budget

There's a conflict on Mack's virtual project team. Which approach is best to address the conflict?

a video or phone conference

Candace is a new project manager and has asked for your help with the project budget. Which type of cost typically represents the largest portion of a project budget?

labor

As part of the project definition, Bisa identifies risks for the project. What is the purpose of doing this during project initiation?

so management can decide whether the risks are serious enough to warrant denying the project

Mei has obtained a graph showing duration data for past projects that follows a normal distribution. Which duration estimate provides the best chance for a project being selected and completed successfully?

the average of the worst-case value and the 50% probability value on the normal distribution

Chloe is developing her risk management plan and wants to make sure that she can get early warning that a risk might occur. What is the key item she should document in her risk information forms?

the events that might trigger the risk

A change request submitted by the project sponsor has an effect on several other projects within the organization. If the change request appears to be a positive addition to the project, who should you ask to approve the change request?

the organization's executive board

Linde has a tight budget for her project. She needs to potentially seek outside sources. Which plan should she consult to understand the products or services that are available?

the procurement plan

Several stakeholders for a project disagree on the priorities of many project objectives. Who would you ask first for help resolving this issue?

the project sponsor

You are the project manager for a healthcare system implementation project. The sponsor has asked you to create a project definition. What will the sponsor use this document for?

to decide whether to approve the project

Why is it important to document the project scope?

to remind stakeholders what they agreed to and to prevent scope creep

The development team has encountered a problem with a software feature. They need to handle this problem quickly, but they can't make a face-to-face brainstorming session because they aren't local. Which alternative solution is best

videoconferencing

A risk that has become reality in your project has led to a cost increase. You have already used the funds reserved to handle this risk and have concluded that you need additional funds that the project does not have. Who is the most likely person or group you need to ask for help?

your organization's management team