TEPM 6301 Final - All chapters
You are planning the schedule and come to an activity 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
All of the following statements accurately describe supply chain management EXCEPT:
It is a closed-loop system solely within the project organization's boundaries.
The project scope does not come into play when considering fixed and variable cost choices.
false
Outputs of Plan Procurement Management include the procurement management plan and procurement statement of work.
true
A critical path activity has ________ float during the planning process.
zero
Which of the following serves as a pre-condition that must be met in order for a project kick-off meeting to be successful?
An atmosphere of trust and relationship building should be set by all.
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
It is helpful to list requirements and supporting information in a requirements traceability matrix. When requirements are complete, they should meet all of these criteria EXCEPT:
Assigned to a team member who will be the requirement owner
All of the following describe the appropriate application of Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis in project management EXCEPT:
Brainstorming techniques are used by the team and other stakeholders to identify as many project risks as possible.
Project partnerships offer all of the following advantages to vendors EXCEPT:
Buyer gains at the vendor's expense
Which of the following is one of the PMBOK Guide's three project procurement management processes?
Conduct procurements
Under normal conditions, which of these contract types poses the greatest risk to the buyer?
Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee (CPFF)
During which of the following Project Schedule Management processes does the team estimate the number of work periods that will be required to complete a schedule activity, usually expressed as workdays or workweeks?
Estimate activity durations
A "top-down" approach to creating a WBS is typically used when a project is unique and different from previous projects.
False
A WBS dictionary is a document that defines each of the terms used in the project scope statement.
False
A Work Breakdown Structure must be decomposed at least four levels in order to be effective.
False
What is an advantage of using Monte Carlo analysis when estimating the duration for an activity?
It can provide a great deal of information about how activity times may vary
All of the following accurately describe earned value management EXCEPT:
It is good for performance reporting but not for forecasting
All of the following statements accurately describe special cause variation EXCEPT:
It is inherent in the system and is predictable.
Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of an activity?
It is one of the deliverables at the lowest level of the WBS
After completing detailed planning for a project, it is often helpful for the project manager and team to apply a sanity test to the project plan. Which of the following accurately describes the application of a sanity test?
It should include questions to ensure budgets, schedules and resource plans are reasonable and achievable.
How do you calculate Late Start, using the two-pass method?
Late Finish-Duration
Which of the following is true concerning lessons learned on a project?
Lessons learned are the useful knowledge gained by project team members as they perform the project.
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 overall project is considered to be the first level of the WBS. All of the following methods can be used to organize the second level of the WBS EXCEPT:
Organized by activities and tasks
This is the process of reviewing all change proposals, estimating their impact on project goals wherever appropriate, approving or declining changes, and managing changes to deliverables, schedules, budgets and the project management plan:
Perform integrated change control.
Which of the following is NOT a format that is typically used to represent a Work Breakdown Structure?
Requirements Traceability Matrix
All of the following describe an appropriate application of Plan Risk Responses in project management EXCEPT:
Responses should be created for every identified project risk, regardless of the risk score
A ________ presents a hierarchical organization of risks based on categories such as operational, strategic, finance, external, and project management.
Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)
Which of the following quantitative risk analysis techniques is used to determine which risks have the most powerful impact on the project, with results displayed in the form of a tornado diagram?
Sensitivity Analysis
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
Which of the following reasons might lead to an early contract termination for convenience?
The buyer faces changing priorities.
The documentation of a project cost estimate generally requires substantial supporting detail to include all of these EXCEPT:
The documentation of a project cost estimate generally requires substantial supporting detail to include all of these EXCEPT:
All of the following accurately describe the features and characteristics of a contract EXCEPT:
The project organization is always a buyer in a contract arrangement
Which of the following describes how the team uses a cause-and-effect diagram to support project risk analysis?
The team lists the risk as the "effect" in a box at the head of a fish, then names the big bones.
It is important to assign a unique name and a unique number to every component in the project Work Breakdown Structure.
True
Once the plan baseline has been approved and the project is underway, project teams deal with change by establishing and using a change control system to receive and review change proposals and accept or reject them after evaluating their impact on project scope, cost and schedule.
True
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is normally developed by listing deliverables - major deliverables first and then progressively smaller ones until the team feels that every deliverable has been identified.
True
The priority of the product in agile is more significant than in traditional project management, as the outcome, or product, will drive the elaboration of the project.
True
The project scope is the work that must be performed to deliver a product, service or result with the required features and functions.
True
When a project team needs to construct a WBS, it needs to include in its planning team a subject matter expert (SME) who understands how each segment of the work will be accomplished.
True
he project scope statement establishes the project boundaries by stating what features and work elements are included (in scope) and which are excluded (out of scope).
True
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
With respect to performance reporting, which of these are the actual and raw observations and measurements gathered during execution of project activities?
Work performance data
As a project manager, which of the following situations would concern you the most?
a one-day delay to an activity with 0 total float
Many organizations require the completion of a project close-out report upon completion of a project. These reports typically include which of the following?
a review of the project's original justification
This technique is an iterative process that identifies and defines the work to be completely accomplished in the near term, and plans the future work at a higher level.
agile
A _______ is the approved project plan mainly consisting of scope, schedule, and cost that is not normally altered unless a formal change control request is approved for modifying these plans.
baseline
One useful method of process improvement involves consideration of how another organization performs a process, identifying and analyzing best practices for improvement ideas. This method is known as:
benchmarking
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
This Agile project reporting tool is useful to Scrum Masters as it projects how close to plan the team is within a given time box, by providing a graphical representation of work effort remaining in an iteration versus the days left in an iteration.
burn down chart
The work component at the lowest level of the WBS for which cost and duration can be estimated and managed is called the ______:
c. work package
Some organizations rely upon a formal group authorized and responsible for reviewing, evaluating, approving, delaying, or rejecting any changes to any aspect of the project plan by following a formal communication method of documenting the decision process. This group is typically known as a:
change control board
A _________ is a written request or formal proposal to propose changes to any project planning component such as a document, project deliverable, or baseline (scope, cost, and time).
change request
All of the following reasons might lead to a contract termination for default EXCEPT
changing customer priorities
Normal or random variations that are considered part of operating the system at its current capability are ______:
common cause variations
Milestones are important points in a project schedule that can serve as check points for project managers and sponsors. Which of the following could be a reason to identify a milestone during project schedule planning?
completion of a major deliverable
Which of the following activities illustrates a risk response strategy designed to research a threat or an opportunity?
construct a prototype to learn more about a candidate solution
The _________is the approved budget, usually in a time distribution format, that is used to estimate, monitor, and control the overall cost performance of the project.
cost baseline
Which of the following types of contracts involves payment to the seller for the seller's actual approved costs of completed work, plus a fee typically representing the seller's profit?
cost-reimbursable contract
The method of dividing the project scope into many parts that, when combined, would constitute the project deliverable is called _____:
decomposition
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 in order to start creating a project schedule?
define activities
The procurement management plan:
describes how a project team will acquire goods and services from outside the performing organization
The decision process for developing relevant quality standards on a project includes all of the following activities EXCEPT:
design work systems
All of the following practices have proven effective for managing lessons learned in an organization EXCEPT:
documenting all lessons learned only at the end of the project.
This term is defined as the total number of work periods (not including holidays or other non-work periods) required to complete a schedule activity, usually expressed as workdays or workweeks:
duration
A contract is a unilateral, binding document that obligates the seller to furnish supplies or services to the buyer.
false
A high level view of processes and stakeholders, that starts with suppliers and ends with customers, is sometimes referred to as a "Plan-Do-Check-Act" (PDCA) model.
false
Analogous estimating is the most detailed, time consuming and accurate way to estimate.
false
Control quality is the forward-looking process of using and improving the quality plan and policy to perform tasks that will most likely lead to creating project outputs to customers' satisfaction.
false
Earned Value (EV) is the approved value of the work to be completed in a given time.
false
Fixed price contracts provide low risk for the seller, since the buyer will pay a fixed price, regardless of how much the project actually costs the seller.
false
GANTT refers to the Generalized Activity Network Tracking Technique which was developed to better understand how variability in the duration of individual activities impacts the expected project duration.
false
If necessary, the quality policy on a specific project may violate either the quality policies of the parent organization or of a major customer.
false
On complex projects, despite the importance of factors such as technical capability, managerial capability and previous experience; the selection decision is made mostly or entirely on price.
false
Since projects are temporary in nature and the project team disbands upon completion, it is not necessary for project managers to provide ongoing support in the form of training, change management, and/or other services.
false
The Cost Variance (CV) is a cost performance measure expressed as the ratio of earned value (EV) to actual cost (AC).
false
The cost per risk for risks discovered early in the project is often more than the cost per risk for risks discovered late because there is more opportunity for the risk to impact several dimensions of the project.
false
The first process in developing a project schedule is to identify all the resources available to work on the project.
false
The most common type of logical dependency to determine the sequence of project activities is "finish-to-finish" (FF).
false
The purpose of a check sheet is to quickly understand the primary causes of a particular problem using the 80/20 rule.
false
The purpose of risk management is to eliminate all project risk.
false
When the impact of an event is negative, it is considered a risk; when the impact is positive, the event is considered an opportunity
false
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
Which of the following responses identifies a common type of logical dependency used to sequence project activities?
finish-to-start
During schedule and cost control, when comparing performance to the schedule and cost baselines, if schedule or budget has changed these changes should be:
formally recommended and managed through the integrated change control system
On agile projects, the scope definition begins with :
large chunks of work, or features
All of the following elements should be included in a project scope statement EXCEPT:
names of the project team members
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
Another term for "activity on node," the most commonly used technique for constructing a schedule model is:
precedence diagramming method (PDM)
The ________ documents the portion of work to be purchased, in enough detail so potential suppliers can decide if they feel they are capable of and interested in providing it.
procurement statement of work
Which of the following documents describes how the project team will implement the performing organization's quality policy?
quality management plan
Costs that repeat as project work continues such as the cost of writing code or laying bricks are appropriately classified as:
recurring costs
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
Which of the following measures is best suited for determining whether the project is on, ahead or behind schedule?
schedule variance
All of the following are among the classic risk response strategies EXCEPT:
share a threat
DMAIC is a disciplined process that includes five phases: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. DMAIC is most typically associated with which of the following quality improvement approaches?
six sigma
procurement statement of work
stakeholder register
The four contemporary core project quality concepts that evolved from the quality gurus and frameworks include which of the following?
stakeholder satisfaction
All of the following items are among the key areas covered by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award EXCEPT:
team learning
A project team attempting to close a project should review which of the following to ensure the customers are satisfied with the project work?
the customer feedback and scope verification
Which party to a contract absorbs the majority of cost risk when a Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) contract is used?
the seller
A project team attempting to close a project should review all of the following documents to ensure that everything promised was delivered EXCEPT:
the stakeholder register
The Budget at Completion (BAC) is the sum of all budgets established for the work to be performed on a project. As such it is equivalent to:
the total planned value of the project.
A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that shows each work activity on a separate line with the bar placed from the early start date to the early finish date for each activity on a timescale.
true
A contingency reserve is money assigned to the project and allocated for identified risks for which contingent responses are developed.
true
A mandatory dependency is a logical relationship between activities that must happen - usually due to a physical or legal demand.
true
A method for documenting and sharing lessons must be established in order for an organization to capitalize on lessons learned.
true
A project manager needs to ensure that the cumulative amount of cash coming into the project either from internal budgeting or from customer payments meets or exceeds the demands for paying cash out.
true
A quality audit is a project management and quality tool that is a structured process to ensure project activities comply with organizational policies.
true
A successor activity is the schedule activity that follows a predecessor activity, as determined by their logical relationship.
true
Contract incentives are often used when the buyer wants the seller to meet some defined project metrics, such as finishing the project early, providing a higher level of quality or more features, or anything else that the buyer wants to maximize and is willing to pay for
true
Cost estimating is linked very closely with scope, schedule and resource planning.
true
Crosby, a well known quality management thought leader, asserts that quality is meeting requirements, not exceeding them.
true
DMAIC is typically used as a method of implementing continuous improvement and can thus be practiced repeatedly.
true
During procurement planning, the project team determines which needs can best be met by acquiring products and services from an outside provider, and which can be accomplished by the team.
true
Fixed costs remain the same regardless of the size or volume of work, while variable costs vary directly with volume of use
true
Helping good workers to secure good follow-on work is one of the most important things a project manager must do near the end of the project
true
If the project manager changes an activity on the critical path to start at a later date, then the whole project will end at a later date.
true
In Agile projects early risk planning, assessment and response planning is done at a high level, and more detailed and timely risk management occurs during the planning of each subsequent iteration, in daily stand-up meetings, and in retrospectives at the end of each iteration.
true
In a control chart, a point that occurs above the upper control limit typically means that some sort of special cause is creating the variation and requires a specific intervention.
true
In many cases, the proposal prepared by the vendor becomes a part of the final contract.
true
In some cases, project teams will elect to reduce a threat to a level that a sponsor and other stakeholders deem acceptable, rather than eliminate it completely.
true
Just as total quality dramatically changed general management in the 1990s, agile is dramatically changing project management in the 2010s.
true
Many organizations use project closeout checklists that itemize typical project activities and/or deliverables. These can be used to assign responsibility to each item concerning project closeout.
true
Monitoring and controlling project work refers to the processes of tracking, reviewing and reporting progress to meet the performance objectives defined in the project plan.
true
On agile projects, because communication is frequent and rapid, a directional indicator showing that things are getting better or worse in some manner is more valuable than a more detailed and polished report.
true
On long projects it is often better to capture lessons frequently since people may not remember clearly what happened several months previously
true
One of the important factors that should influence the selection of contract type is how the risk is distributed between the buyer and the seller, and how the project is performed.
true
Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis is the process of numerically analyzing the effect of identified risks on overall project objectives.
true
Plan Cost Management is the process to determine how to plan, estimate, and control project costs.
true
Process Analysis is a step-by-step breakdown of the phases of a process, used to determine the inputs, outputs, and operations that take place during each phase.
true
Project partnerships can be advantageous to both the client and the vendor, in terms of improved project execution, flexibility, and reduced bid administration
true
Regardless of what method is used to estimate project costs, supporting detail should be provided.
true
Risk response strategies such as accept risk and research risk apply to both threats and opportunities.
true
Risk response strategy decisions should reflect a thorough understanding of the priorities that key stakeholders have for cost, schedule, scope, and quality.
true
Self-directed teams on agile projects are largely empowered to decide what work to do and when to do it, consistent with the prioritizing of deliverables by the product owner.
true
Some project sponsors will only approve a project charter if it includes and reflects lessons learned from other recently completed projects
true
Sometimes a project is terminated before its normal completion.
true
Stakeholder satisfaction consists of identifying all stakeholders and understanding the stakeholders' ultimate quality goals using a structured process to determine relevant quality standards.
true
Supply chain operations require managerial processes that span across functional areas within individual organizations, and link trading partners and customers across organizational boundaries.
true
The Validate Scope process occurs with interim deliverables throughout the project and with final deliverables near the end.
true
The formality of a kick-off meeting can vary considerably depending on the size and type of project.
true
The primary questions project teams use in qualitative risk analysis are "how likely is this risk to happen?", and "if it does happen, how big will the impact be?"
true
The purpose of process control is to be able to have confidence that outputs are predictable.
true
The quality management plan defines the acceptable level of quality, which is typically defined by the customer, and describes how the project will ensure this level of quality in its deliverables and work processes.
true
To use the enumeration method of determining the critical path, we list or enumerate all of the paths through the network
true
Value engineering is aimed at increasing the value or productivity of a work element while minimizing the cost
true
Vendor bid analysis is used to determine whether the price being asked by the vendors appears to be reasonable.
true
When a project is no longer needed or viable, the project manager, as primary advocate for the project, should recommend early termination.
true
When complete, the risk register presents the results of both qualitative and quantitative risk analysis as well as risk response planning.
true
When developing a project schedule, total float refers to the amount of time a schedule activity may be delayed from its early start date without delaying the project end date.
true
When reporting performance to sponsors and management, it is often helpful to organize the information in terms of three time horizons: past, current and future.
true
While the lowest level of decomposition in a WBS is the work package, work packages can still be decomposed further into work activities.
true
Closure of a project generally entails all of the following activities EXCEPT:
updating the project management plan
When a project is completed on time, the project team must accomplish all of the following activities EXCEPT:
use alternative dispute resolution
The process of formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables is known as:
validate scope
All of the following criteria can be used to categorize project risks EXCEPT:
whether the risk is a known known
Faced with significant schedule challenges, the project manager has an ethical responsibility to do all of the following EXCEPT:
willingly accept end dates dictated by customers or sponsors
Joseph Juran provided guidance regarding how to conduct quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Which of the following items is NOT part of Juran's Quality Trilogy?
work to identify root causes, not just symptoms