PMP Midterm Exam 2

The team is working on a project to develop or procure a customized software package that will be used by delivery drivers for a new chain of pizza restaurants. There are multiple stakeholders on this project. Because of other ongoing projects to design, build, and equip brick-and-mortar restaurant locations. you are informed that there is no rush to complete this software development work. If project time and cost are not as important as the number of resources used each month, which of the following is the best thing to do?

Perform resource optimization

During which part of the project management process is the project scope statement created?

Planning

The team's velocity for the first eight two-week sprints of your 46-week hybrid project are 30, 60, 57, 44, 33, 48, 41, and 49. Should you be concerned about how these results will impact the cost of the project? What should you do about this?

Possibly. Compare these velocity rates to the team's original estimates at the start of the project

You are a project manager on a $5,000,000 software development project. While working with your project team to develop a network diagram, you notice a series of activities that can be worked in parallel but must finish in a specific sequence. What type of activity sequencing method is required for these activities?

Precedence diagramming method

Which of the following are generally illustrated better by bar charts than network diagrams?

Progress or status

A project manager for a small construction company has a project that was budgeted for $130,000 over a six-week period. According to the schedule, the project should have cost $60,000 to date. However, it has cost $90,000 to date. The project is also behind schedule, because the original estimates were not accurate. Who has the primary responsibility to solve this problem?

Project manager

Monitoring cost expended to date in order to detect variances from the plan occurs during:

Project performance reviews

When will you use a milestone chart instead of a bar chart?

Reporting to management

Which of the following is an output of the Collect Requirements process?

Requirements traceability matrix

A project manager has received activity duration estimates from his team. Which of the following does he need in order to complete the Develop Schedule process?

Reserves

In attempting to complete the project faster, the project manager looks at the cost associated with crashing each activity. The BEST approach to crashing would also include looking at the:

Risk impact of crashing each activity

A project manager is taking over a project from another project manager during project planning. If the new project manager wants to see what the previous project manager planned for managing changes to the schedule, it would be best to look at the:

Schedule Management Plan

Which of the following are all items included in the cost management plan?

Specifications for how estimates should be stated, rules for measuring cost performances, and the level of accuracy needed for estimates

The work breakdown structure can best be thought of as an effective aid for ___________ communications

Stakeholder

Which of the following best describes the relationship between standard deviation and risk?

Standard deviation tells you how uncertain the estimate is

Your agile development team can't agree on the best approach to building the next product increment. As the project manager, how can you help them resolve this debate and move forward?

Suggest that they take a vote and proceed with the winning approach

The agile project team you are managing is responsible for developing one of the five different components of a complex enterprise solution. Your PMO representative tells you she's concerned because your team is using a larger story point unit than the other four teams. What should you do?

Tell the PMO that this is the story point your team has chosen, and it doesn't matter how large it is relative to the other teams

Which of the following is correct in regard to the Control Scope process?

The Control Scope process must be integrated with other control processes

EAC is a periodic evaluation of:

The anticipated total cost at project competion

Which of the following is correct?

The critical path helps prove how long the project will take

You have a project with the following activities. Activity A takes 40 hours and can start after the project starts. Activity B takes 25 hours and should happen after the project starts. Activity C must happen after activity A and takes 35 hours. Activity D must happen after activities B and C and takes 30 hours. Activity E must take place after activity C and takes 10 hours. Activity F takes place after activity E and takes 22 hours. Activities F and D are the last activities of the project. Which of the following is true of activity B actually takes 37 hours.

The critical path is Start A, C, E, F, End.

In managing your first agile project, you are trying to decide how to best keep the sponsor and other key stakeholders updated about the team's progress. You want to use one or more of the agile tools that your team is already maintaining for their own use, rather than asking the team members to create any additional status reports or project documentation. Which agile tool(s) should you use for this purpose?

The cumulative flow diagram

You have been working with the subject matter experts to estimate the activity durations and costs on the project. All of the following are outputs of the Estimate Costs process except:

The prevention of inappropriate changes from being included in the cost baseline

On an agile project, who is responsible for prioritizing the product backlog and keeping those priorities updated?

The product owner or customer

What is the most effective way to provide actionable feedback for your agile team's solution design?

The product owner should carefully review the early, incomplete increments

You have just completed the initiating processes of a small project and are moving into project planning when a project stakeholder asks you for the project's budget and cost baseline. What should you tell her?

The project budget and baseline will not be finalized and accepted until the planning processes are completed

A cost performance index (CPI) of 0.89 means

The project is getting 89 cents out of every dollar invested

The development of the scope baseline can best be described as involving:

The project team

During project planning, you estimate the time needed for each activity and then total the estimates to create the project estimate. You commit to completing the project by this date. What is wrong with this scenario?

The team did not create this estimate, and a network diagram was not used

Marketing has asked for a copy of the plan for your agile project, including the release dates and the key features to be included in each release. What will you send them?

The team's product roadmap

Your agile project team is updating a mobile alert aggregator for social media updates and trending new items. The team lead tells you that this week they plan to hold a planning poker session for the users in the upcoming release. What does this tell you

They are evaluating the relative size in story points of the stories for this release

The team is helping the project manager estimate activities on their project. They are experienced and skilled, and many members have been with the company for some time. There are several activities they need to estimate that have not been previously done by the company. What is the best method of estimating these activites?

Three-point estimating

To manage a project effectively, work should be broken down into small pieces. Which of the following does not describe how far to decompose the work?

Until it can be done by one person. The lowest level of the WBS is a work package, which can be completed by more than one person. The other choices are aspects of a work package.

The development phase of a new software product is near completion. A number of quality issues have increased the cost of building the product, but the project manager and team feel these costs will be inconsequential once the project gets to market. The next phases are testing and implementation. The project is two weeks ahead of schedule. Which of the following processes should the project manager be most concerned with before moving into the next phase?

Validate Scope

During project executing, a team member comes to the project manager because he is not sure what work he needs to accomplish on the project. Which of the following documents contains detailed descriptions of work packages?

WBS dictionary

Lag means:

Waiting time

The product owner on your agile project has learned that a competitor is planning to release a similar product to the one your team is working on. To make sure your product will be competitive, she has added two major features to the backlog. Your team estimates that this additional work will take five one-week iterations to complete. The sponsor asks you how this addition will impact your ability to meet the delivery deadline. How do you respond?

We will still release on time, but the release version won't include the least important features.

Which of the following is the best thing you could tell the project managers to convince them to use work breakdown structure?

Work breakdown structures will prevent work from slipping through the class

During the course of your hybrid project, changes and additions have gradually moved the total project score upward. The original scope was 400 story points, but at this point the total project scope is 620 story points. The team's average velocity has stabilized at 20 story points per iteration of 1 week, and they have already completed 120 story points worth of scope. The team's burn rate is $16,000 per week. The original cost estimate for the team was $256,000, based on the initial scope and the team's initial velocity estimate of 25 story points per iteration. What is the remaining cost of running the team on this project?

$400,000

If earned value (EV) = 350, actual cost (AC) = 400, and planned value (PV) = 325, what is the cost variance (CV)?

-50

A project manager is informed midway through project planning that she was given inaccurate data regarding new regulations affecting the required end date of her project. She may need to make a few adjustments, but she thinks she can still manage the project to complete it before the regulations take effect. She confirms this by analyzing the sequence of activities with the least amount of scheduling flexibility. What technique is she using?

Critical path method

Which of the following is a key output of the Validate Scope process?

Customer acceptance of project deliverables

You are managing a six-month project and have held biweekly meetings with your project stakeholders. After five-and-a-half months of work, the project is on schedule and budget, but the stakeholders are not satisfied with the deliverables. This situation will delay the project completion by one month. The most important process that could have prevented this situation is:

Define scope

A project manager needs to report on the longest time this project will take. Which of the following is the best project management tool to use to determine this

Network diagram

On the two-year agile project you are managing, the team's velocity for the first eight sprints is 43, 24, 47, 35, 24, 34, 30, and 32. Should you be worried about the results?

No; this looks like fairly typical data for an agile team's velocity.

The cost performance index (CPI) on the project is 1.13, and the benefit-cost ratio is 1.2. The project scope was created by the team and stakeholders. Requirements have been changing throughout the project. No matter what the project manager has tried to accomplish in managing the project, which of the following is he most likely to face in the future?

Not being able to measure completion of the product of the project

Which estimating method tends to be most costly for creating a project cost estimate?

Bottom-up

Although the stakeholders thought there was enough money in the budget, halfway through the project the cost performance index (CPI) is 0.7. To determine the root cause, several stakeholders audit the project and discover the project cost budget was estimated analogously. Although the activity estimates add up to the project estimate, the stakeholders think something was missing in how the estimate was completed. Which of the following describes what was missing?

Bottom-up estimating should have been used

A community college has asked you to manage a small project to develop an introductory course for people who want to become family childcare providers. The team is using an agile approach, and so far there hasn't been much upfront planning or requirements gathering. A group of three childcare experts are serving as "authors" (subject matter experts) for the project, working remotely. They have sent you a lot of ideas for designing the course, but everyone seems to have a different opinion about the best approach. How can you best help resolve this stalemate and move forward?

Bring the authors together and facilitate a design session to help them come to a consensus.

Management has asked you to update the projected cost of running your agile team through the end of the project based on the latest project data. What information will you need from the team to update this estimate?

Burndown graph

Cost performance measurement is best done through which of the following?

Calculating earned value, and using indexes and other calculations to report past performance and forecast future performance

Which of the following is not needed in order to come up with a project estimate

Change requests (what IS needed: a WBS, a network diagram, risks)

What should the project manager do next when the evaluation of the requested scope is complete?

Complete integrated change control

Validate scope is closely related to:

Control Quality

Which of the following best describes the difference between the Control Scope process and the Perform Integrated Change Control process?

Control Scope focuses on controlling the scope of the project, and Perform Integrated Change Control focuses on determining the impact of a change of scope on time, cost, quality, risk, resources, and customer satisfaction

Your project management plan results in a project schedule that is too long. If the project network diagram cannot change but you have extra personnel resources, what is the best thing to do?

Crash the project

The WBS, estimates for each work package, and the network diagram are completed. The next thing for the project manager to do is:

Create a preliminary schedule and get the team's approval.

Your cost forecast shows you will have a cost overrun at the end of the project. Which of the following should you do?

Eliminate risks in estimates and reestimate

Project setup costs are an example of:

Fixed costs

You are the project manager for a new product development project that has four levels in the work breakdown structure. The network diagram and duration estimates have been created, and a schedule has been developed and compressed. Which schedule management activity should you do next?

Gain approval

Which of the following best describes product analysis?

Gaining a better understanding of the product of the project in order to create the project scope statement

The customer responsible for overseeing your project asks you to provide a written cost estimate that is 30% higher than your estimate of the project's cost. He explains that the budgeting process requires managers to estimate pessimistically to ensure enough money is allocated for projects. What is the best way to handle this?

Ask for information on risks that would cause your estimate to be too low

The project is mostly complete. The project has a schedule variance of 300 and a cost variance of -900. All but one of the quality control inspections have been completed, and all have met the quality requirements. All items in the issue log have been resolved. Many of the resources have been released. The sponsor is about to call a meeting to obtain product validation when the customer notifies the project manager that they want to make a major change to the scope. The project manager should:

Ask the customer for a description change

it's Monday morning, and you just found out that the lead developer on your agile team has broken his leg and will be out for six weeks. The team is in the middle of a two-week iteration that ends in four days, on Thursday. What should you do?

Ask the team how much of the iteration plan can be completed by Thursday

When should the validate scope process be done?

At the end of each phase of the project

A highway renewal project you are managing appears to have some missing scope. Your understanding of the scope was that the highway was to be resurfaced. Now, one of the construction foremen has come to ask why he finds no mention of repainting the lines on the repaved road. He also wants to know if there are any guard rail replacement work packages in the project. You have seen some of the resurfaced road that is completed, with the new lines painted on them. Which of the following is most likely to have caused the misinterpretation of the project scope statement?

Imprecise language

You are having difficulty estimating the cost of a project. Which of the following best describes the most probable cause of your difficulty?

Inadequate scope definition

The program was planned years ago, before there was a massive introduction of new technology. While planning the next project in this program, the project manager has expanded the scope management plan because a project becomes more complex, the level of uncertainty in the scope:

Increases

A rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimate is made during which project management process group?

Initiating

As part of a project manager's due diligence, he reviews the schedule, focusing on each activity as its start time approaches. He also monitors activities as they progress. He is currently looking at an activity that has an early start (ES) of day 3, a late start (LS) of day 13, and early finish (EF) of day 9, and a late finish of (LF) of day 19. In all likelihood, this activity:

Is not on the critical path. The activity described has float because there is a difference between the early start and late start. An activity that has float is probably not on the critical path.

Which of the following best describes the Validate Scope process?

It ensures customer acceptance, shows the deliverable meets specifications, and provides a chance for differences of opinion to come to light

A new project manager is walking you through the schedule she has created for her project. She asks you about the duration of a particular milestone, so she knows how to properly schedule it. What will you tell her about a milestone's duration

It has no duration

To help them determine the schedule baseline, the team has drafted a network diagram. The project manager adds the time estimates for each activity to establish a critical path for the project. They discover the project has three critical paths. Which of the following best describes how this discovery will affect the project?

It increases the project risk

Rearranging resources so that a constant number of resources is used each month is called:

Leveling

The project is calculated to be completed four days after the desired completion date. You do not have access to additional resources. The project is low risk, the benefit-cost ratio is expected to be 1.6, and the dependencies are preferential. Under the circumstances, what is the best thing to do?

Make more activities concurrent

During project executing, a large number of changes are made to the project. Several of the change requests have come from the customer, significantly changing the functionality of the originally requested product. Six project team members have been reassigned by management to a higher-priority project, and they have been replaced. As project work has progressed, many of the identified risks have occurred and have been successfully mitigated. However, three contingency plans have been adjusted and will be implemented if identified risks recur during the remainder of the project. The project manager should:

Make sure the project charter is still valid

A design engineer is helping to ensure that the dependencies within her area of expertise are properly defined on the project. The design of several deliverables must be complete before manufacturing can begin. This is an example of what type of dependency?

Mandatory dependency

Which of the following is the best thing to do when asked to complete a project two days earlier than planned?

Meet with the team to look at options for crashing or fast tracking the critical path

Senior management is complaining that they are not able to easily determine the status of ongoing projects in the organization. Which of the following types of reports would help provide summary information to senior management?

Milestone reports

A manufacturing project has a schedule performance index (SPI) of 0.89 and a cost performance index (CPI) of 0.91. Generally, what is the most likely explanation for why this occurred?

A critical path activity took longer and needed more labor hours to complete

The team has been asked to analyze and create options for the customer. Value analysis is performed to get:

A less costly way of doing the same work

Based on the following, if you needed to shorten the duration of the project, which activity would you try to shorten

Activity C

You are leading a project to introduce a new healthcare appointment scheduling application. As you are creating plans detailing how the team will respond to possible events that may impact the project, you and the team determine the amount of cost contingency reserve needed. The cost contingency reserve should be:

Added to the cost of the project to account for risks

Your new project is faced with a challenging deadline and an anxious customer. After consulting with the team, you have assured the customer that the best way to develop the required features on time will be to follow an agile approach. The customer agrees to this somewhat reluctantly, since ehe isn't familiar with agile. However, the next week he hears that your team has spent *two whole days* doing t-shirt sizing of the product features, and yet they still haven't produced a viable schedule model! He calls you into his office to explain how this is justified, given the limited time available. What do you say?

Agile teams need to develop quick, coarse-grained estimates to do just enough planning to get the work started

Early in the life of your project, you are having a discussion with the sponsor about what estimating techniques should be used. You want a form of expert judgement, but the sponsor argues for analogous estimating. It would be best to:

Agree to analogous estimating, as it is a form of expert judgment

For each activity on your project, you have worked with designers, engineers, technical experts, and consultants to come up with details on the resources needed to complete the activity. For some of the activities the lists are quite long, are you need raw and finished materials, equipment, and people. You have a limited amount of warehousing available, so you have to coordinate the deliveries and work so that the materials and equipment are delivered as close to the start of an activity as possible. You and the project management team have identified the amount of time and money needed for each of the activities, which you have then aggregated and analyzed with their help. These efforts will eventually result in the creation of a cost baseline for the project. A senior manager is trying to better understand the work of project management and has asked which process produces the cost baseline. What is the correct response?

Determine Budget

The project manager is working with cost estimates in order to establish a baseline for measuring project performance. What process is this?

Determine Budget

A project manager is in the middle of executing a large construction project when he discovers the time needed to complete the project is longer than the time available. What is the best thing to do?

Determine options for schedule compression, and present management with the recommended option

Your project has a medium amount of risk and is not very well defined. The sponsor hands you a project charter and asks you to confirm that they project can be completed within the project cost budget. What is the best method to handle this?

Develop an estimate in the form of a range of possible results

You are a project manager on a US $5,000,000 software development project. While working with your project team to develop a network diagram, your data architects suggest that quality could be improved if the data model is approved by senior management before moving on to other design elements. They support this suggestion with an article from a leading software development journal. Which of the following best describes this type of input?

Discretionary external dependency

One common way to compute estimate at completion (EAC) is to take the budget at completion (BAC) and:

Divide by CPI

Which of the following is an example of a parametric estimate?

Dollars per module

To gain a clear indication of how the project is progressing, the buyer expects periodic reporting includes analysis of the work that has been accomplished according to the plan, the dollars that have been spent and how they reflect the planned expenses, the accepted deliverables, and evaluation of the risk events that have occurred. Which of the following represents the estimated value of the work actually accomplished?

Earned Value (EV)

Earned value analysis is the basis for:

performance reporting

All of the following are parts of the scope baseline

project scope statement, work breakdown structure, WBS dictionary (NOT the scope management plan)

A heuristic is best described as a:

scheduling method

A project manager may use ________________ to make sure the team members clearly know what is included in each of their work packages

the WBS dictionary

The cost management plan contains a description of:

the WBS level at which earned value will be calculated

On an agile software development project, the project manager asks business stakeholders to create user stories, which will be used in the development and testing of the new application. The main purpose of a user story is:

to document features or functions required by stakeholders

Analogous estimating:

uses top-down estimating techniques