PMP study

21. Albert is managing a system development project but so far has failed to actively engage the operations group during the system development. When you asked Albert about this, he told you that a focus group representing the users was formed during project planning phase that produced detailed and very specific requirements specifications and so there was no need to keep them engaged during the system development. What is your response?

Developing the system in a silo will introduce risk.

2. For your upcoming project, you are currently looking for a balanced Agile framework that is neither too narrow in focus nor too prescriptive in detail. You are ideally looking for a process decision framework that integrates several Agile best practices into a comprehensive model. Which of the following Agile frameworks is recommended in this case?

Disciplined Agile

13. You have just joined a new organization as a project manager. You have heard a number of rumors about the procurement manager having possible underhanded dealings with suppliers. However, you have no proof these rumors are true. Your project requires a large number of dump trucks. Company policy mandates that all purchases go through the procurement department rather than the department employees. The value of the dump truck purchase is US$395,000, and the contract went to a supplier your company regularly uses. Shortly after taking delivery of the dump trucks, you learn the procurement manager is driving a new car. What should you do?

Do Nothing

You are leading an XP project. The analytics expert is of the view that he should single-handedly develop the analytics module since nobody else on the team has the subject matter knowledge. How should you react?

Encourage using a pair programming approach.

7. Eric, a project manager, is a certified PMP. He is responding to an RFP from a buyer and needs to fill in details on his company's financial performance. His company has performed poorly during the current quarter, and the results will be published in two to three days. However, the company has done very well in the previous quarters. The RFP is due in 10 days, and all the information in the RFP is complete except the financial information. What should Eric do?

Eric should wait until the current results are out and update the latest financial information before sending out the RFP response.

11. Traditional teams initially face difficulties in understanding how Agile teams can determine expected project completion time given that they do not spend sufficient time in upfront project planning. What is your opinion regarding predicting project completion on Agile projects?

The Agile team predicts completion time using velocity and average cycle time.

29. During the course of the project, the project management team developed a forecast for the estimate at completion (EAC) based on the project performance. Which of the following statements about EAC is correct?

The EAC forecast based on the Bottom-up estimate to complete (ETC) requires a new estimate.

2. A business is considering more than a dozen infrastructure upgrade projects. These projects, once delivered, will add to the organization's overall performance 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 consider in such a scenario?

Alignment with the strategic goals

15. One of your project team members comes to your office and says she had a telephone conversation with your customer's executive director, who is also a member of the royal family in the country where your project is. He has requested a number of significant changes in the project scope and schedule. You have questions about these changes. Which one of the following BEST describes what you should do?

Ask the appropriate member of the customer's management team to advise the correct protocol for discussing these issues with the executive director

You are carrying out a project for an external customer. Most of the project's scope of work is outsourced and distributed among many subcontractors. What would be the role of the Direct and Manage Project Work process in this scenario?

Authorize the seller's work at the appropriate time

Responding to change over following a plan" is one of the key Agile Manifesto values. Which of the following Agile approaches helps in achieving this value?

Backlog Refinement

One of the 12 Agile principles states that, "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project". Which of the following Agile techniques helps achieve this?

Backlog preparation and refinement

You have recently been asked to design and build a "complex" project that is supposed to somehow reduce the production costs by 20% or more. Although the project's vision is clear, the project requirements are not. You and team need to understand the high level project requirements to start project work. How should you proceed?

Build a product roadmap using user story mapping and impact mapping.

39. The product owner has asked you how many story points the team would like to include in the next sprint. What should you do next?

Calculate the average velocity.

30. Organizations just beginning to use Agile approaches may find prototyping challenging due to the associated rework which can also be viewed negatively. Which of the following techniques should be used to address the hurdles of transitioning to the use of Agile approaches?

Change management

1. You are currently initiating a hydro-power plant capacity upgrade project with a goal to increase the output by fifty percent. Prior to commencing project planning, you want to ensure that you have considered and documented all applicable enterprise environmental factors for this project. Which of the following is an enterprise environmental factor for your project?

Commercial databases

Traditional EVM metrics can be translated into Agile terms. Which of the following is the correct CPI formula for Agile projects

Completed features value/actual costs to date

The time-box for the current iteration has expired. All of the following activities must now be organized except:

Conducting a spike event

You are managing a construction project for a government agency. Both the client and your project team agrees that a number of change requests are expected during the course of the project. Timely and effective project communications are critical for the success of this project. Which of the following will allow you to communicate all approved and rejected changes to the stakeholders consistently?

Configuration management system

27. A project team trying Agile methods for the first time is considering Agile reporting methods. Historically the team has been reporting on project baselines and has used earned value management for status reporting. What should be the new approach?

Consider ways to report demonstrable value delivery to customers.

The scope of work in a project could not be clearly defined. There was also a strong possibility that the scope would change during the course of the project. Which type of contract would suit this type of situation?

Cost-reimbursable contract

. You and your team are about to start a new project. In the past the team has faced issues with estimating user stories and provided inaccurate estimates. All of the following actions can help mitigate this risk from happing on this project EXCEPT:

Develop a team charter

39. You are leading a complex multi-phase construction project. The project requires construction of a new airport terminal along with all ancillary facilities required to smoothly operate the terminal. For this project, the procurement team has decided to close all procurements applicable to a particular phase of the project. What happens to unresolved claims at this stage?

Unresolved claims may still be subject to litigation after closure.

45. Which of the following roles is responsible for helping the management of an organization to understand the advantages of Agile practices, tools and techniques?

Agile Coach

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation" is one of the key Agile Manifesto values. Which of the following Agile approaches helps in achieving this value?

Agile Measurements

Which of the following is a simplistic version of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and is an understandable approach to developing business application software using Agile techniques and concepts?

Agile Unified Process

Your customer has just called and said they must have the final project schedule three weeks earlier than they previously stated. You have not yet completed the WBS, so you ask a colleague for advice as to how to proceed. Your colleague advises you to forget about finishing the WBS, ask the team to provide estimates based on past projects, and add those estimates together to come up with a date. What should you do?

Advise the customer that the shortened delivery time could significantly affect the accuracy of both the cost and schedule. Then, create a WBS and ask the team to provide analogous estimates of both timing and reserves required. Create the schedule based

9. You are examining your project's statistics. For the iterations one to six the team's velocity has been 40, 50, 43, 47, 46, and 44 story points respectively. What is the most reasonable velocity estimate for the next sprint?

45 Story Points

31. Which of the following is a systematic problem-solving Agile process that collects the pertinent information on a single sheet of paper?

A3

Which of the following is the method of collaboratively creating acceptance test criteria that are used to create acceptance tests before delivery begins?

ATDD

There are a number of risks that have been identified in your project. The team has decided not to change the project plan to deal with the risks, but they have established a contingency reserve of money in the event something triggers these risks. This is an example of what type of risk mitigation technique?

Active acceptance

7. You are managing a project that is required to deliver personal protective equipment (PPE) to a manufacturing facility. Due to the nature of the manufacturing process, all the deliveries have to be in accordance to strict specifications defined in the contract. 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.

Grade relates to the customer requirements.

18. You are working for a project-based organization. The organization has a procedure to report minor ethical issues, and the ethics committee reviews them at month's end. Only major violations are escalated for in-depth scrutiny. This month, a project team member reported a minor violation of PMI's code of ethics. The project manager, who's a also a member of PMI, has taken on some of the project's 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?

He has violated the code

Most projects require use of repeated feedback and continuous analysis. As more information becomes available and as the project environment changes, project requirements are gathered, understood and analyzed. As a result, many project management processes are performed more than once and repeated throughout the project life cycle. In contrast to this, some of the processes, such as Develop Project Charter, are usually performed once or at predefined points on most projects. Which term best describes the Identify Risks process?

Iterative

You have recently been hired as a senior business analyst on a complex system integration project. The chief programmer has asked you to review the project BRD prior to arranging a meeting with him. What is a BRD?

Listing of all requirements for a specific project.

46. The Kanban method is less prescriptive than some Agile approaches and less disruptive to being implemented. Organizations can begin applying the Kanban method with relative ease. A Kanban board is a:

Low-tech, high-touch technology.

20. Your organization encourages employees to involve themselves in professional activities or organizations. Since you are a PMP and an active member of PMI's local chapter, you encourage other employees to become certified, as well. You just received an email from PMI stating it is investigating two recently certified PMPs from your organization for allegations of contract fraud. They have asked you to send information about all relevant people in your organization. How should you respond?

Notify the appropriate management immediately

16. You are managing an electronic chip design project for a customer. There are a number of engineers and subject matter experts from the customer's organization that have been assigned as resources to the project plus several additional design engineers that your company has supplied. All the engineers were involved in the development of a prototype chip, an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. Upon the completion of the prototype, you submit it for review to ensure there are no patent infringement issues with the design. However, the review determines there are several issues that could result in an intellectual property dispute with the patent owners should the prototype design be released commercially. Resources from your company developed the affected prototype elements, as well as from your customer's organization. What should you do?

Notify the project stakeholders immediately

A number of teams are developing an enterprise system using the agile approach for product development. Which of the following is a major risk item for such a complex project being performed in an agile environment?

Number of interconnected dependencies between the features developed by different teams.

2. Halfway through the iteration, a senior team member has expressed his concern regarding a major risk. Although the probability of the risk occurrence is very low, the impact will be significant if the risk does occur. The team member has some mitigation ideas that need to be tested before being implemented. What should you do?

Organize an exploratory spike.

You are leading an Agile team currently analyzing and documenting enterprise-level processes for an organization. In order to review drafted processes as early as possible and get a just-in-time feedback, which XP technique can be tailored and applied?

Pair Programming

10. You are managing a project for your company constructing an office complex in another country. The construction work on two of the buildings is complete, and those buildings are ready for move-in. However, the construction supervisor informs you that you must pay a fee to a local government agency to issue an occupancy permit for any new construction in that country. What should you do?

Pay the fee

Rick has just been assigned as the project manager of a project to develop a complex product. The project is in the Define Scope phase. Which of these tools and techniques will Rick not use in this phase?

Process analysis

40. You have recently acquired a new team member. Today the team member came to you and suggested trying a new planning approach. How should you respond?

Try the new planning approach at the next opportunity.

35. You are helping an organization uplift its project management practices. You have recommended developing a business case for each of the organizational projects followed by development of a project benefits management plan. Who would you recommend to be the owner of the business case?

Project Sponsor

With a growing awareness of so-called unknowable-unknowns, the existence of emergent risk is becoming clear. These are risks that can only be recognized after they have occurred. Emergent risks can be tackled through developing:

Project resilience

29. If the customer wants to incorporate new ideas or features not originally planned into a not-to-exceed time and materials arrangement, which of the following approaches is recommended?

Replacing original work with new work.

25. 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?

Report this to the appropriate management

A new telecom network operator is planning to launch its services in your country. Your organization has won the contract to build their network and you have been assigned as the project manager on this project. Early during the project execution, some key staff members have complained of over allocation on project tasks. In order to investigate this, which of the following tools can help you identify resources that are over-allocated?

Resource Histogram

You have recently been hired into an organization that has a reputation of operating best project management practices and processes. For your very first project in this organization, you have been asked to develop a concrete and effective stakeholder engagement plan before commencing any significant project work. Which of the following is not a basic input required to develop an effective project stakeholder engagement plan?

Stakeholder engagement assessment matrix

Large organizations typically manage a wide range of projects; from small projects to large initiatives requiring long-term commitments. Which of the following factors can be used in scaling such projects:

Team size, geographical distribution, regulatory compliance, organizational complexity and technical complexity.

You are aware that cost and schedule risks are prevalent in your project. You want to compare the planned project performance with its actual performance during the Monitor Risks process. What should you perform to provide this information?

Technical Performance Analysis

14. Your project team is having a dispute with a vendor about whether a specific task is within the project's scope. The scope statement does not provide implementation-level details that could resolve this dispute. There is no WBS, however, because the project sponsor insisted that the project be started right away without pausing to create standard project planning documentation. Who is at fault?

The project manager

You need to send out meeting invitations for your project's first retrospective meeting. Who should be on your mandatory participants list?

The team and the servant-leader.

38. While sequencing activities for a project, the project management team applied certain discretionary dependencies. This was based on their knowledge of best practices within the project application area. What is the potential risk involved in using such dependencies?

They can create arbitrary float values and limit later scheduling options.

48. If an Agile project's SPI is greater than the project's CPI, and the CPI is less than 1.0, what can you infer about the project's schedule performance?

This cannot be determined with the given data

32. A first-time project manager was assigned to a project that had a duration of three months. In order to get a head start on the project, the manager took an older, completed project and incorporated all the tools, techniques, and checklists in their entirety from that project into the current one. The older project was completed in 14 months' time and was remarkably similar in nature. The most appropriate comment on this would be:

This may be unnecessary. The project management team needs to decide what is appropriate for the project.

15. Flow-based Agile has a different approach to stand-ups than iteration-based Agile. Which of the following is one of the typical areas addressed during these stand-ups?

What do we need to finish as a team?

14. Agile teams complete the features usually in the form of user stories. The teams periodically demonstrate the working product to the product owner who accepts or declines the stories. In flow-based Agile, when are these demonstrations conducted?

When enough features have accumulated into a set that is coherent.

You have recently joined a team that is obsessed with the use of decision trees to analyze most project situations. You are a bit concerned with this behavior and are now putting together a presentation on proper usage of decision trees. You need to give examples where you should or shouldn't apply a decision tree to analyze a project situation. Under which of the following scenarios would you not use a decision tree?

When the future scenarios are known

49. Joe is managing a technology platform upgrade project. The project was initiated as the currently deployed technology was getting obsolete from the market. Joe is currently estimating activity durations for his project. Which of the following should he consider while performing this activity?

While calculating the duration of schedule activities, differences in staff capabilities should be taken into consideration. A senior staff member will generally be expected to finish an activity in less time than a junior member.

15. You are leading a complex project and are currently doing some high-level planning. You want to schedule retrospectives so that each team member's calendar gets booked. How should you schedule these events?

You should not schedule these events well in advance, the project team decides when to call a retrospective.

46. You have just started leading a World Bank healthcare 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 know 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?

Your decision is wrong because you should obey the norms and customs of others as long as you do not favor them.