Study Guide for PM exam 2

The documentation of a project cost estimate generally requires substantial supporting detail to include all of these EXCEPT:

management reserve needs.

Consider the network scheduling data provided in Figure 8-6. Which activities constitute the critical path for this project network?

A-B-E-G-I

How do you calculate Late Start, using the two-pass method?

Late Finish - Duration

The components (principles) of critical chain project management include which of the following?

Avoid multi-tasking.

In RACI chart, the single individual who will have to provide an explanation if something goes wrong is indicated with a(n) ____________________.

A—Accountable

Consider the programmers resource histogram presented in Figure 9-3. Which activity is an ideal candidate to delay in order to achieve a feasible schedule?

Activity C—Draft User Manual

Consider the project crashing information presented in Figure 9-4. Which activity should you crash to reduce this project by one day with the least incremental cost?

Activity E

Consider the project crashing information presented in Figure 9-4. What is the cost to complete this project in the normal time?

$145

Consider the project crashing information presented in Figure 9-4. What is the total cost to complete this project in seven days if crashed in the most cost-efficient manner?

$220

Consider the project crashing information presented in Figure 9-4. What is the incremental cost to achieve a one-day reduction in the duration of this project in the most cost-efficient manner?

$35

Consider the time-phased budget presented in Figure 10-1. What is the cumulative project budget through the end of April?

$46,000

Consider the lab experiment project depicted in Figure 8-4. Based on the information provided, how many days can you delay the calibration of the instrumentation (Activity B), without impacting the expected project completion date?

0 days

Consider the system integration project depicted in Figure 8-3. Based on the information provided, how many days can you delay the purchase of software (Activity C), without impacting the expected project completion date?

1 day

Consider the network scheduling data provided in Figure 8-6. What is the expected duration of this project?

107 days

Consider the system integration project depicted in Figure 8-3. Based on the information provided, what is the expected duration of this project?

17 days

Consider the research project depicted in Figure 8-2. Based on the information provided, what is the slack associated with activity C—"Review Reports"?

2 days

Consider the software programmer loading chart presented in Figure 9-2. What percentage of available time is the software programmer assigned to work activities on Thursday?

200 percent

Consider the lab experiment project depicted in Figure 8-4. Based on the information provided, what is the expected duration of this project?

24 days

You are planning the schedule and come to an activity that you are unfamiliar with. Your SMEs give you the following time estimates: most⁢ likely=5⁢hours ; optimistic=2⁢hours ; pessimistic=14⁢hours . Using PERT, which activity duration do you use in your plan?

6 hours

Consider the programmers resource histogram presented in Figure 9-3. How many programmers are required during the fifth week of this project?

7 programmers

Consider the network scheduling data presented in Figure 8-6. How many days of slack are associated with activity F?

80

Consider the project crashing information presented in Figure 9-4. What is the normal (un-crashed) duration of this project?

9 days

Consider the activity duration estimates presented in Figure 8-5. Based on the information provided and adopting the PERT conventions to calculate expected activity durations, what is the expected duration of Activity D—"Package Item"?

9.5 days

Which of the following accurately describes risk in project management?

A risk may positively or negatively impact the project team's ability to achieve the project objectives.

Consider the system integration project depicted in Figure 8-3. Based on the information provided, which activities constitute the critical path for this project?

A-B-E-F

Consider the lab experiment project depicted in Figure 8-4. Based on the information provided, identify the critical path(s) for this project?

Both A-B-D-F and A-B-E-F are critical paths

Which estimating technique decomposes the work into lower, more detailed pieces, preferably the lowest level of WBS work elements, for which estimates are prepared and then aggregates them into a total quantity for the project?

Bottom-up estimating

Consider the research project depicted in Figure 8-2. Based on the information provided, what is the late start date for activity A—"Plan Research"?

Day 0

Consider the research project depicted in Figure 8-2. Based on the information provided, what is the late start date for activity C—"Review Reports"?

Day 4

Consider the assembly project depicted in Figure 8-1. Based on the information provided, what is the early start date for activity D—"Attach Modules 1 & 2"?

Day 5

This term is defined as the total number of work periods (not including holidays or other non-work periods) required to complete a scheduled activity, expressed in hours, days, or weeks.

Duration

Projects often include indirect costs that are necessary to keep the organization running, but are not associated with one specific project. Which of the following items are most typically considered to be indirect costs?

Executive salaries, utilities, insurance and clerical assistance

What type of cost is incurred when a project must be conducted faster than normal, and overtime for workers, and extra charges for rapid delivery from suppliers are necessary?

Expedited costs

Crashing almost always accelerates the schedule while increasing project risk, whereas fast tracking almost always accelerates the schedule while increasing project cost.

False

Which of the following is not a characteristic of an activity?

It is one of the deliverables at the lowest level of the WBS.

Which of the following statements correctly describes the critical path?

It is the sequence of activities from start to finish in the network that have no float.

Critical chain method was developed to address several problems that are common in organizations that use traditional project scheduling. Which of the following describes a common problem addressed by the critical chain method?

Many team members tend to use all of the time available for an activity rather than completing it early.

When establishing cost control, a milestone is a typical measuring point. Which of the following does NOT accurately describes the use of cost control milestones?

Milestones are developed during risk planning.

All of the following statements correctly describe an advantage or disadvantage associated with the use of Monte Carlo Analysis EXCEPT:

Monte Carlo simulations do not consider risks.

Which estimating technique uses a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables (e.g., square footage in construction, lines of code in software development) to calculate an estimate for scope, cost and duration?

Parametric estimating

The "process of identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, required skills, reporting relationships, and creating a staffing management plan" is called ____________________.

Plan Resource Management

Determine budget is "the process of aggregating the estimated costs of individual activities or work packages to establish an authorized time-phased project budget or cost baseline." This is used for ____________________ projects.

Plan-driven

This term refers to improving the accuracy and elaborating the scope plan continuously with more detailed and specific information as the project progresses, leading to a better and more accurate cost estimate with each successive iteration of the planning process.

Progressive elaboration

Complex projects such as research and development for new products often employ rolling wave planning to estimate costs. Which of the following best describes "rolling wave" planning?

Project managers render a definitive estimate for the first stage and an order of magnitude estimate for the remainder of the project.

Which of the following terms best describes extra money in the project budget to be used if necessary—usually if a risk event occurs?

Reserve

A project manager and team can review a variety of project documents to uncover possible risks. Which of the following would be a valuable type of risk review?

Review the communication plan to determine where poor communications could cause trouble or threaten project goals

Which of these is NOT an issue to be considered when selecting team members?

Stages of team development

Which of the following describes the activities appropriately performed by the project team during Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis?

Team members assess the probability of occurrence and severity of impact for identified risks.

Consider the programmers resource histogram presented in Figure 9-3. If only six programmers are available to support this project, which of the following conclusions is valid?

The demand for programmers during weeks five and six exceeds the number available.

Consider the software programmer loading chart presented in Figure 9-2. Which of the following statements most accurately describes the loading of the software programmer?

The programmer is overloaded on both Wednesday and Thursday.

Consider the RACI chart presented in Figure 9-1 (RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform). Who is responsible for development of the specification?

The project engineer

Consider the RACI chart presented in Figure 9-1. Who is accountable for the data requirements?

The project manager

There are many causes of variation in project costs. Which of the following accurately describes the nature of this variation?

Variation occurs in all work processes and the novelty associated with most projects creates many opportunities for variation.

As a project manager, which of the following situations would concern you the most?

a one-day delay to an activity with zero total float

A common tool project teams use is a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM). Typically, this chart will depict:

all the work packages and the resources assigned for various responsibilities regarding each work package.

All of the following factors must be in place in order to develop an analogous estimate effectively EXCEPT:

an organization must know details behind the time value of money.

Jason, a project manager, is working with his team to estimate the total cost of developing a web-based CRM system. After reviewing the planned scope of work with Jason, his sponsor suggests that Jason use the budget from a previous, similar project as the basis for his project budget. The estimating process that Jason's sponsor is using is called ____________________.

analogous estimating

The approved budget, with contingency reserves and any amount of management reserve that has already been approved, serves as a(n) __________ for project control.

baseline

All of the following describe the appropriate application of Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis to projects EXCEPT:

brainstorming techniques are used by the team and other stakeholders to identify as many project risks as possible during quantitative risk analysis.

A Gantt chart represents project schedule information in an easy-to-read, graphical format. Which of these is not a component of this type of Gantt chart?

budget data

The budget within the cost baseline that is allocated for identified risks, for which mitigating responses are developed, is called the ____________________.

contingency reserve

A(n) ____________________ is used to compare actual project spending with planned expenditures over time to determine if corrective action is needed.

cost baseline

Activity cost estimates, the basis of estimates, and other supporting detail are outputs of which process?

estimate costs

The Midlands Company is eager to develop a project schedule. They have already completed the scope statement, work breakdown structure, and schedule management plan. What is the next thing they should do to start creating a project schedule?

define activities

Crashing the following activity chains would save time and cost extra money as follows: AGJQ—2 days $300 CDIL—3 days $400 Which sequence of activities would you, as a project manager, choose to crash?

depends on which, if either, is on the critical path

All of the following methods have proven to be useful techniques to help project teams identify the risks that might impact the project EXCEPT:

document lessons learned.

The amount of project budget reserved for unforeseen project work that addresses the "unknown unknowns" that can affect a project is the ____________________.

management reserve

The process of developing an approximate and best guess of the monetary value of resources needed to complete all project activities is known as:

estimate cost.

As compared to a plan-driven project management approach, an Agile project schedule is set up based on the _________.

expectations of the product owner

A "schedule compression technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence are performed in parallel for at least a portion of their duration" is referred to as ____________________.

fast tracking

The Bluestar Creative Agency is developing a new marketing campaign for a client. They have determined that the client's marketing plan must be completed before the graphic design can begin. This situation describes what type of dependency?

finish-to-start (FS)

The amount of time a scheduled activity can be delayed without delaying the early start date of any successor or violating a schedule constraint is:

free float.

One of the principal benefits of creating a bottom-up estimate during planning is that the estimate:

is very accurate

The cost management plan provides guidelines to the project manager and other stakeholders and serves all of the following purposes EXCEPT:

it documents all of the project risks and the amount of reserves required.

All of the following are benefits that can be attributed to the effective use of a risk management plan EXCEPT:

it enables the project manager to identify and eliminate all risks.

Events discovered during Identify Risks that may or may not occur are often categorized as:

known unknowns.

All of the following items describe an aspect of life cycle costing EXCEPT:

life cycle cost only includes the project cost from initiating through closing.

The sequencing of activities is often based upon dependencies between the activities. The dependencies that should guide activity sequencing can be either:

mandatory or discretionary.

As the project progresses from initiation through planning and executing, and additional detail is gathered, the range of values for the project cost estimate will:

narrow

A schedule in which activities have a firm, fixed order of completion is most likely:

none of the above

Ellen is estimating how much it will cost to recarpet the executive conference room. After selecting the grade and pattern of carpet, Ellen multiplies the carpet price per square yard times the number of square yards in the conference room to derive the total price of the material. This estimating method is called ____________________.

parametric estimating

Project managers can identify risks by learning and understanding the cause-and-effect relationships of risk events. All of the following approaches are used to learn about the cause-and-effect relationships of risk events EXCEPT:

perform a Monte Carlo analysis.

The "process that establishes the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, managing, expending, and controlling project costs" is referred to as:

plan cost management

Another term for "activity on node," the most commonly used technique for constructing a schedule model, is:

precedence diagramming method (PDM)

Costs that repeat as project work continues such as the cost of writing code or laying bricks are appropriately classified as:

recurring costs.

Project managers often confront the challenge of reducing excessive time commitments and overloads among project resources. All of the following methods can be used to reduce work overloads EXCEPT:

require all project resources to work over

After creating a Staffing Management Plan, the project manager and team might create a chart that provides a visual representation of project resource needs by type of resource and time period (weeks, months, etc.) This chart is called a(n) ____________________.

resource histogram

When the demand for resources is greater than the available supply, the project manager can use a scheduling method that adjusts the start and finish dates of activities to address resource limits or constraints. This technique is called ____________________.

resource leveling

A __________ presents a hierarchical organization of risks based on categories such as operational, strategic, finance, external, and project management.

risk breakdown structure (RBS)

An iterative planning technique where "the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level" is referred to as ____________________.

rolling wave planning

In Agile projects, teams adjust their thinking so they test as early as practical anything that will ultimately need to be tested in order to reduce risk, improve quality, and improve the accuracy of estimates. This practice is referred to as:

shift left.

A ____________________ addresses when and how project team members will be acquired and how long they will be needed.

staffing management plan

In Agile planning, a(n) _____________ is a requirement that is written from the end user's perspective.

story

When estimating resource needs, project teams should consider all the following EXCEPT:

strengths and weaknesses of scoring models.

"Unknown unknowns" are unexpected events that can occur when the project is underway. All of the following accurately describe an implication associated with unknown unknowns EXCEPT:

they are usually discovered during risk identification

The process "Estimate Activity Resources" involves identification of the ____________________ and ____________________ of resources required for each activity within a work package.

types; quantities

Project managers must often face the challenge of compressing the project schedule. All of the following actions can be taken to reduce the duration of the critical path EXCEPT:

use the float in critical path activities

With respect to risk, Agile teams assume __________ and plan with the flexibility to make necessary adjustments.

variability

All of the following criteria can be used to categorize project risks EXCEPT:

whether the risk is a known known.

A critical path activity has _____________ float during the planning process.

zero