Project Management Foundations

What is a reason that you might not be able to tailor your project in some ways?

The project is in a highly regulated industry that has specific project management requirements.

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

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

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

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

A scheduling program

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

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

Accounting

The people assigned to your project have high billable rates, and the project budget doesn't provide much of a buffer over your estimated total project cost. Fortunately, the project finish date has some wiggle room. Which measure of progress is most important to track in this situation?

Actual work Actual start date.

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 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.

You are using earned value analysis to track your project's progress. In your project, earned value is higher than planned value. That means the project is _____.

Ahead of schedule

What questions do you answer when you manage a project?

All of these answers.

Which of the following is not an example of a project delivery artifact?

An approach to communicating across the cultures in a global project team

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

Why is the critical path critical?

Any delay in the critical path delays the project finish date.

Who applies the principles for effective project management?

Anyone who works on projects

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?

Archive project information All of these answers

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.

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

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

Bars in a Gantt Chart; cost variances

The seventh edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge does not prescribe a specific methodology for all projects. Which project management principle reflects the emphasis on choosing the correct methodology for your projects?

Be a diligent, respectful, and caring steward

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

Deliverables and success criteria

While each performance domain places on a specific topic, what is the overarching focus of all performance domains?

Delivering outcomes, benefits, and value

Your project team is not delivering as planned due to interpersonal issues. Which performance domain should you review to identify potential corrections you could make?

Delivery performance

Alice isn't sure which labor rate to use for employees in her project budget. Which employee labor rate should you tell her to use?

Billable rates Salaries

How does a project charter support the project manager in getting things for the project from other people?

By communicating the project manager's authority for the project while it is underway. By publicizing the project

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

By using an iterative approach to deliver value sooner

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 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 the financial books immediately after the project is complete, and have the accounting department handle the remaining expenses.

Your project requires new software. The IT department is going to research options to identify the best software to work with your project and existing infrastructure. The customer will approve their choice. In your responsibility matrix, which category would you use for the IT department for identifying the software?

Consult

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.

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

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.

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 organization's 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.

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

During which waterfall phase does the project manager bring the full team on board and orient them to the project and expectations?

Executing

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

Which types of dependencies are most common in project schedules?

Finish-to-start; start-to-start

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

Raghbir has done all the project planning and is ready to obtain stakeholders' approval. However, the stakeholders are not co-located. 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?

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.

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

Identifying deliverables

The project sponsor has asked Franz to hold a kickoff meeting for their project. What is the purpose of a kickoff meeting?

Introduce the team to the project, processes, and to one another.

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.

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

In a _____ organizational structure, team members report to both functional managers and project managers.

Matrix

Estimating a project using the Delphi technique is an example of which type of tool?

Method

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

Monitoring and Controlling

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.

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

A description of the processes you use to ensure that results meet the specified quality standards is a _____.

Quality process plan

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.

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

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.

You are fortunate to have an experienced team that has worked together for more than a year and is familiar with the project work. What action can you take to provide the most help to this team?

Remove obstacles so they can do their work.

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

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.

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

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

What is not a required part of creating a project schedule?

Set a deadline for the project.

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%.

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.

A close-out report is primarily used to _____.

Share a summary of the project with others.

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.

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

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.

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

The assigned resource is inexperienced

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

Camille wants to use the Agile approach on the project she will be managing. What significant benefit does the agile methodology provide?

The customer receives value from the project sooner.

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

Which organizational factor is most important when you need to make a difficult decision?

The organization's mission

What is the initial driver for what the value delivery system does within an organization?

The organizational vision of senior leadership

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

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

Speculate, explore, adapt

The time for the current iteration is up and one of the features isn't complete. What do you do?

Stop working and add the incomplete feature back into the backlog.

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

Storming

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

What is not something you would tailor in a project?

The project objectives

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.

Franco is responsible for decomposing the work for a project to host a major conference. Which two things should he use to get started?

The scope statement and deliverables

Which factor could directly affect the strategy and portfolio changes that the leadership team makes?

The value realized from project-related work

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.

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 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.

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

What is not a required part of creating a project schedule?

What time people start working each day

In what situation is Agile project management superior to waterfall project management?

When the project goal is not clearly defined and you must figure out the solution as work proceeds.

Which type of dependency is most common in project schedules?

finish-to-start

The Agile project management lifecycle _____.

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