PMI Test

The probability of risk A occurring is 25% and has an impact of -$20,000 on your project. The probability of risk B occurring is 5% and has an impact of $4000 on your project. What is the EMV?

-$4,800 Probability * Impact = EMV ... 25% * -$20,000 = -$5,000 ... 5% * $4,000 = $ 200 ... Total EMV = -$5,000 + $200 = -$4,800

Which of the following is true regarding the issue log?

An owner should be assigned to each issue The issue log is a project artifact to be worked by the project team, not the customers or within the Plan Quality Management process. An owner should always be assigned to an issue to ensure that the issue is worked in a timely manner. Typically, risks become issues (and are treated as facts) when their probability exceeds 90 percent.

When does customer's acceptance of deliverables take place in an agile project?

At the end of each iteration Customer acceptance occurs in the the Sprint Review where the team delivers the product to the Product Owner who is going to accept or reject it and this occurs at the end of each iteration.

When following mandatory guidelines what regulations would you be following?

De jure Of the above, only De facto and De jure are types of regulations. De jure regulations are mandated by law. De facto regulations are widely accepted but are not legally required to be implemented. Industry standards and best practices are not regulations.

An agile team is exploring how different types of customers will interact as users with the final product. What agile tool will help the team in this exercise?

Developing personas Developing personas is accomplished by using make-believe characters (users) that interact with the product and/or service being produced by the project.

Two team members are in disagreement on the solution to a technical issue. You are hearing statements such as "what are you thinking!", "are you crazy!" and "you obviously don't know what you're talking about". What level of conflict does this describe?

Disagreement The scenario is showing team members getting contentious and opinionated and so this is a Disagreement (level 2). Problem solving is where team members are collaborating to fix the problem. Contest is where other team members are beginning to take sides. Crusade is where teams are polarized with the goal of winning at all costs.

A project manager is leading a predictive project. The sponsor has asked the project manager to include new agile tools on her project, so she elects to hold retrospectives and standup meetings. After two iterations, only one team member has adapted well to the new agile processes, and he has become a top performer. Other team members have struggled and are exhibiting low morale. What should the project manager do?

Encourage the high performing team member to collaborate, train and mentor team members on agile processes Agile promotes and encourages the open sharing of knowledge among team members. Therefore, the best solution is to encourage the high performer to collaborate and engage with other team members to share their knowledge and expertise. Holding a team workshop and rewarding high performance are positive approaches, however they do not directly address the current problem.

As project manager you are ensuring that the resources allocated are indeed available as needed on the project. While you are monitoring and controlling your project resources, which of the following resources would you least likely be interested in?

Ensuring that the construction team members have the required skills to do their job The situation places you in the Control Resources process which focuses on physical resources such as equipment, raw materials and facilities. The "Manage Team" process (in Executing) focuses on managing people (team members), and ensured that team members have the proper skills (via training) to do their jobs.

Which of the following is the correct breakdown of user stories?

Epics -> Features -> Stories -> Tasks The correct breakdown is: Epics -> Features -> Stories -> Tasks

The project manager, product owner, and the team are decomposing requirements down into meaningful units of work. Risks are being considered as the work is being broken down. What project artifact will be used to capture the results of their work?

Feature Breakdown Structure The question places you on an agile project by referencing the "Product Owner". In this situation, requirements are expressed as stories, and the result from decomposition would be a Feature Breakdown Structure (Epics > Features > Stories > Tasks). The other breakdown structures are used on traditional, predictive projects. Risks are always considered during the decomposition of work.

The Tuckman ladder is often used by project managers in your organization. When a new team member joins the team in the middle of a project, what Tuckman stage is the team now in?

Forming When a new team member joins the team in the middle of a project we start over by returning to the forming stage.

Of the following, what would be the best approach to deal with a stakeholder who is constantly asking for status updates and emailing you questions about the sprint?

Invite them to the daily status meetings Of the given options, the best approach is to invite him to the daily standup meeting. Attending the daily standup will give the interested stakeholder a good overview of the project status and should answer any questions they might have.

An agile practitioner is working with the procurement department on the construction of a fixed price contract to hire a 3rd party to perform the work. The sponsor is concerned that the ROI may be insufficient to justify the expense of the fixed priced contract. A decision was made to add the clause "Money for nothing". What does this clause accomplish?

It permits the early termination of the contractor by the buyer at any time A "Money for Nothing" clause permits the early termination of the contractor by the buyer at any time, and typically involves payment of money to the seller at a predetermined fixed amount (ex: 20% of the total contract value). This clause affords the buyer with the flexibility to terminate the clause for any reason. In this question the sponsor is concerned that there is risk that the target ROI may not be achievable, and hence seeks the flexibility for early contract termination.

You are managing a large project for a client and have recently found out that another senior manager has joined the organization who will be impacted by your project. What action should you take in this case.

Meet with the Senior Manager to get his/her requirements. You want to take whatever action will engage the stakeholder the most. In this case getting their requirements. Now the stakeholder feels part of the project and engaged. Whenever you see an option that essentially states you don't need to do anything, that will generally be the wrong option, in any question! Identifying a stakeholder is not a change to the project needs an impact analysis! The other good option would be to meet with them face to face and inform them about the project ... however getting their requirements will engage them more and so is a better answer.

Which of the following is an example of an ambiguity risk?

New government regulations An "Ambiguity Risk", is an uncertainty about what may happen in the future (ex: a new government regulation). The other three answers are examples of "Variability Risks", and are typically addressed using Monte Carlo analysis and probability distributions.

You are asking some project advice from one of your prior co-workers from your prior company who is not working on your project. How would you classify this stakeholder based on the salience model?

Non-Stakeholder. Since this person is not impacted by your project nor do they have any influence on your project, they would be a non-stakeholder. Just asking for advice does not make someone a stakeholder.

You are developing the schedule for your project with your junior Project Managers. There are many tools and techniques out there for this type of planning which can get quite confusing and so they are coming to you for advice. Which of the following tools would you tell them to use to estimate the duration of an activity?

PERT Read the question (the last sentence) carefully. It is asking for a tool for estimating DURATION. The scenario is leading you to think of the entire schedule. The best duration estimate from the above options is PERT. The other T&T's are used to develop the schedule.

On an Agile project, whose responsibility is it to create and maintain project management best practices?

PMO The PMO is always responsible for the creation of best practice procedures and policies for an organization. This is true for both Agile and none Agile projects.

You are the project manager on a small project consisting of 7 stakeholders, and you are working in the Identify Stakeholder process. Which of the following stakeholder data representation techniques would be best suitable for your project.

Power/Influence Grid You have a small project. The grids (Power/Interest, Power/Influence, Impact/Influence) are useful tools for SMALL projects. Both Prioritization and the Salience Model are useful tools for LARGE projects. The Salience Model illustrates the relationship between urgency, power, and legitimacy. The Stakeholder Register is NOT a tool.

An agile facilitator has been assigned to a new project where the specific requirements are well defined by the customer, and there is no rush to put the final product into production. What type of project management methodology would best suit this project?

Predictive Since the scope is well defined (highly certain), a traditional, predictive approach is suitable. This is because the detailed schedule activities are more easily "predicted" for each of the future project phases. For the exam you should get comfortable knowing the difference between Iterative, Incremental, and Agile. (Agile includes both Iterative and Incremental). In addition, "Hybrid" refers to a combination of Agile plus Predictive (both being utilized in a single project).

Which of the following would not be an appropriate collaboration tool for a team made up of both remote and on-site members?

RACI Chart The RACI Chart refers to Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Inform. It is an artifact used to show ownership for each project activity. It would not be used as a collaboration tool.

On an Agile project, which of the following would not be used as a tool to measure quality?

RACI Chart The RACI Chart refers to Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Inform. It is an artifact used to show ownership for each project activity. The others are all tools for measuring quality.

You are assessing what agile activities might best represent check points for assessing continuous improvement on your project. Which of the following agile activities would prove to be the most helpful with continuous improvement?

Retrospectives, pair programming and demonstrations (review meetings) Retrospectives, pair programming and demonstrations and review meetings are excellent check points for assessing continuous improvement.

A newly assembled scrum team is performing their first agile project. During their first standup meeting several of the team members are engaging in sidebar conversations and they appear to not understand the purpose of the standup meeting. Who is responsible for addressing the situation?

Scrum Master Under normal circumstances it would be the "Team" that would address the issue, however "Team" is not an available answer. The next best answer would be Scrum Master since the Scrum Master is responsible for coaching and training the new team on the Scrum methodology - which includes standup meetings.

When an Agile project has several teams, each with their own Scrum Master, what would be the best approach to coordinate between teams to prevent miscommunication?

Set up a Scrum of Scrums to coordinate the work of the teams When coordinating multiple teams, a Scrum of Scrum approach is most effective. Usually the Scrum Master for each team will attend and share information. For projects involving multiple teams, holding meetings with all teams will end up being time consuming. Whilst creating a group chat does work well for exchanging information it is not an efficient method for coordinating the work.

Which artifact needs to be updated first when a requirement is reprioritized during a sprint?

Sprint Backlog By looking at the question, the keys words to pick up are 'sprint' and 'requirement'. Sprint would imply that this is an Agile project and therefore the 'requirement' is the user story which makes option B incorrect. Priority of user stories for a sprint are updated in the Sprint Backlog

The product owner is grooming the stories in the product backlog using Kano Analysis. Which of the following best describes Kano Analysis?

Stories are grouped as delighters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers, and indifferent Kano Analysis involves classifying preferences in four ways: delighters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers, and indifferent. The MoSCoW prioritization technique classifies stories as: must have, should have, could have, and won't have.

You are managing a large HR implementation project for a multinational Fortune 100 client that has offices in many countries worldwide. After a few meetings you realize that not everyone's role is clearly understood and there is much disagreement regarding the direction of the project and many of the stakeholders have conflicting ideas. Which stage of the Tuckman model is your team in?

Storming Since there is a lot of disagreement and conflicts this will be the Storming stage. In the Storming stage everyone has their own ideas and there is much discussion and even arguments regarding the direction of the work.

A project manager is negotiating with the functional managers in order to acquire the required resources for a software development project. Which project artifact would not be generated during this process?

Team Charter All of the answers listed are outputs of Acquire Resources accept Team Charter. Team Charter is an output of Plan Resource Management and contains team values, agreements, and operating guidelines related to team behavior.

"Kaizen" is the Japanese term for continual improvement. "Kai" is to alter, and "Zen" is to improve. This concept of continuous improvement means, "Make small incremental improvements in all aspects of your project - your products, your plans and your processes - and do this continuously." The key way to achieve this continuous improvement is to use?

The PDCA loop We achieve continuous improvement and Kaizen by using the PDCA loop - (Plan-Do-Check-Act loop, or Plan-Do-Evaluate-Learn in Agile).

You are working with the sponsor on the development of a project charter for the marketing division. Which of the following would not be taken into consideration during the development of the project charter?

The business need for the project requirements All of the answers are used for the development of the project charter except business need. Business need is an element of the Requirements Traceability Matrix which is an artifact produced by the Collect Requirements process.

One of the user stories on this sprint was particularly challenging due to some external software requiring parameters to be set differently than had originally been planned. The user story was delivered at the sprint review but was rejected by the Product Owner. What was the most likely reason for this?

The user story did not meet the definition of done Any time a Product Owner rejects a user story it is because it does not meet the definition of done. The scenario here is actually irrelevant since the rejection has nothing to do with parameters or incompatible systems or anything else.

Your agile team is told that certain procedures need to follow ISO9000. Which of the following is true?

This is a standard that is not mandatory ISO9000 is a standard but is not mandatory. It is to promote continuous improvement. Regulations are from a Government body and generally mandatory but standards are not

A project manager is meeting with the sponsor to discuss outsourcing some of the work on an agile project. Which of the following would not represent a type of agile contract?

Time & Materials without a ceiling price "Time & Materials without a ceiling price" should read "Time & Materials WITH a ceiling price".

Of the following, what would best define the intent of a retrospective?

To close out the sprint At the sprint review meeting, the Product Owner will approve the product based on the definition of done and will accept the deliverable. Retrospective will occur after this approval and is the final Agile ceremony on a sprint. During retrospective, lessons learnt are shared and the sprint is officially closed out.

Which of the following would not be the right way for a team facilitator to engage their team?

Understand strengths and weaknesses of team members and assign tasks based on their skillsets and aspirations The team facilitator does not delegate tasks to team members. But they will collaborate to provide team building opportunities and co-locate if possible.

You are providing the following information to your senior management: The original budget for the project was $20,000. The forecasted budget is $20,408. So far you have completed $14,000 worth of work on your project. You should have completed $14,500 worth of work to date. You have incurred costs of $14,250 to date. One of your senior management staff is asking what is left to spend on the project. What would be the best answer to this question?

$6158 The question is asking you to calculate ETC (notice it doesn't directly say "calculate ETC" - it is making sure you understand what ETC means!). ETC = EAC - AC = 20408-14250 = $6158. All those values are given in the question. Original budget = BAC ($20,000). ... Forecasted budget = EAC ($20,408). .... You have completed $14,000 worth of work = EV. You should have completed $14,500 worth of work = PV. You have incurred costs of $14,250 to date = AC.

You are working with your team to calculate the duration of an activity. You think the activity should take 28 days to perform. However, there is 60% chance that one of the vendors may delay shipment of raw materials which may delay your activity by another 12 days. If this vendor does not delay raw materials you have identified a 25% possibility that another vendor may supply you with equipment earlier than expected which will result in your activity completing 6 days earlier. Calculate the weighted average expected duration.

29 This question is asking you to calculate PERT. In this example: You think the activity should take 28 days, so ML= 28. If vendor delays shipment it will take another 12 days, so P=40 (28+12). If the other vendor supplies equipment earlier this will reduce the activity by 6 days so O=22 (28 6). We need to use the PERT formula O+(4ML)+P / 6. This gives us 22+(4*28)+40 / 6 = 29. Note the 60% and 25% values are red herrings in this question!

An agile practitioner is working on a software development project that has been plagued with software defects. The team is in the middle of an iteration and is also behind schedule on the development of end user documentation. What should the team focus their efforts on first?

A higher value should be placed on working software rather than on end user documentation One of the four core agile values is that the team should place a higher value on working, functional software rather than ensuring the construction of comprehensive documentation. For the exam, you should study the four agile values as well as the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto.

You and your project team just attended a refresher course on project management. The course covered all five of the PMBOK process groups and the knowledge areas. You are regrouping with the project team to discuss what everyone has learned and how to best apply the new knowledge to your current projects. One team member expressed confusion regarding the difference between a sub-project, project, program and portfolio. What is the least accurate of the following definitions?

A portfolio is a collection of related programs A portfolio does not have to be a collection of related programs. For the test, the term 'related' only pertains to programs - (a program is a collection of 'related' projects). An example would be to organize a set of payroll projects into a single payroll program. This way the project manager can better coordinate and prioritize the payroll projects with the payroll manager. A project is a collection of sub-projects. A program or a portfolio may have a multi-year focus, and a program is typically a component of an overall portfolio. PMI may try to confuse you with these somewhat similar (but really very different) terms. Know what sub-project, project, program and portfolio are and what their relationships are to one another.

Which of the following is not considered a responsibility of the PMO in an Agile environment?

Accepting the deliverables The Product Owner is the one who is responsible for signing off on deliverables, not the PMO. However, PMO will perform all the other functions listed above

You are a project manager overseeing the construction of a new office building. Local government officials will soon be voting on a new zoning ordinance that if passed will adversely impact your construction project. You and the team have elected to set aside $45,000 to be used contingent upon the new zoning ordinance being approved. A strategy for addressing the new rule will be worked out only if the new zoning rule is approved. What type of risk response strategy are you using?

Active Acceptance You are using the Active Acceptance strategy. Active Acceptance involves setting aside funds to address a risk, and how the funds will be used will be worked out later IF the contingency event occurs. In this case the contingency event is the passing of the new zoning ordinance. A sibling to Active Acceptance is Passive Acceptance which is similar to Active Acceptance however NO funds are set aside up front. Mitigate refers to reducing the probability and/or impact of a risk. Escalate refers to risks responses that are either outside of the authority level of the project manager or the response is outside the scope of the project (project charter). Escalate responses are normally handed off to the appropriate program or portfolio manager.

Which of the following is a valid response to a positive risk?

Active acceptance Active acceptance is putting money in contingency reserves and is valid for both positive and negative risks. The other options relate only to negative risks.

What is the best advice to give to Senior Management if a global business customer is not exactly sure of the final deliverable and informs you that the requirements may regularly change?

Advise Senior Management that an adaptive approach should be taken for this project Taking an Agile (adaptive) approach to a project, allows for constant change as the project is broken down into sprints and delivered incrementally. Putting a project on hold is not recommended

Your organization is very new to agile, and Senior Management are learning about agile concepts. One of the Senior Managers approaches you requesting a detailed project schedule. What should you advise?

Advise the Senior Manager that you will provide a product roadmap The best advice is to provide a Product Roadmap since there is no real schedule on agile projects. Analogous estimating will not work here since this is very new, we won't have any historical data on prior agile projects.

You are the project manager of a web site development project. The customer has mentioned several times how important controlling scope is in order to keep the budget and schedule under control. Which of the following would least likely need updating as an output of the Control Scope process?

Affinity Diagrams Affinity Diagrams is a tool (not an output), and it is a tool in Collect Requirements. The other three answers are potential updates to the Project Management Plan which is an output of Control Scope.

How often should you conduct Close Project or Phase?

At the end of each project life cycle phase The best answer is at the end of each project life cycle phase. For the exam you need to assume that you are working on a large project where PMBOK (and the 5 process groups) are being applied to each project phase. Remember, there is a Phase Gate (potential Kill Point) at the end of each project phase, and that happens after Closing the phase. Therefore, you will encounter a "Close Project or Phase" process at the conclusion of each project life cycle phase. The other answers are distractors. An iteration is an Agile term and in the Scrum methodology it represents a 2-4 week sprint. Close Project or Phase would occur at the END of each iteration, not at the beginning. A retrospective is an Agile term and is equivalent to a Lessons Learned which would occur at the end of each iteration (sprint). While Close Project or Phase may occur at the end of each product life cycle, it also occurs at the end of each individual project life cycle phases, which makes the latter the better and more succinct answer.

You are the project manager for a large oil producer. The company is aggressively moving toward a paper-less work environment, and you are managing a project to automate the pay change form for the Human Resource Department. While collecting requirements with the project team there was significant disagreement regarding how many management levels of approval should be required to approve an employee pay change. Eventually the sponsor interjected and declared that there will be six levels of approval for all pay changes corporate wide. What tool was used by the sponsor to bring closure to the decision making process on this one requirement?

Autocratic The sponsor is using a technique called Autocratic, which is sometimes referred to as Dictatorship. This technique is within the tool category called Decision Making. Autocratic is a decision making method whereby one person takes responsibility for the decision. Plurality refers to a decision making technique whereby the largest block of votes decides on the outcome. Unanimity occurs when 100% of the voters agree on the same decision. Majority occurs when greater than 50% agree on the same decision.

You are developing a schedule network diagram. What is the critical path assuming the following activity relationships? Activities A and B can begin when the project starts. Activity C can begin after Activity A is finished. Activity D can begin after Activity B is finished. Activity E can begin after Activities C and D are finished. Activity F can begin when Activity D is finished. Activity G can begin after Activity F is finished. Activity H can begin when both Activities E and G are finished. Durations: A: 3, B: 9, C: 3, D: 6, E: 4, F: 3, G: 3, H: 4

B, D, F, G, H After drawing the network diagram, you will want to carefully list out the network paths. Then add up the durations for each path. The longest path is the critical path (B, D, F, G, H).

What is the correct term for the process of reprioritizing user stories, breaking large user stories into smaller ones, removing outdated user stories and adding new user stories?

Backlog Grooming The primary function of Backlog Grooming is to keep the Backlog up to date. Gold plating occurs when features are added that the customer didn't request. A retrospective is a lessons learned meeting and Decomposition refers to the WBS.

Jonathan and his team have spent the day reassessing priorities of existing user stories. They have also purged user stories that are no longer relevant and have updated cost estimates of user stories in light of new information. What procedure are they performing?

Backlog Grooming Whenever such actions as reprioritization of user stories based on new information or changing requirements occurs, Backlog Grooming (or Backlog Reprioritization) is being performed. A and B are made up terms.

You are the project manager leading an enterprise-wide web application. You are working with the sponsor on the development of the project charter. The sponsor refers to a document which outlines the specific project benefits and its strategic alignment with the organization. Which document is the sponsor referring to?

Benefits Management Plan The Benefits Management Plan describes how and when the benefits of the project will be delivered. The Project Statement of Work is not a document that is used in any PBMOK process. Procurement Statement of Work is an output of Plan Procurement Management which documents specific procurement deliverables. Project Charter is an output of the process being explained in the question.

You have just completed the development of a new air traffic control system for a small start-up airline. The customer is very happy and you are now entering project closure. You would like your team to assess whether the project outcomes met the anticipated benefits of the project. What document would best assist you and your team in making this comprehensive assessment?

Benefits Management Plan The question is related to the anticipated benefits of the project and how well the project outcomes met those expectations. The Benefits Management Plan is a key input to closing the project, and it would be used to conduct the assessment outlined in the question. The Final Report is generated during the closing of the project, hence that would not be available at this juncture in time that the question places you. Project EVM metrics such as CPI and SPI would be stored in the OPAs and possibly the lessons learned, but would not help address the question. Project Charter is also used during project closure, however it also will not help address the question of conducting a comprehensive assessment of the project output benefits vs the planned benefits of the project. The Benefits Management Plan would best serve that need.

You are managing the development of a web site and have completed the construction of the WBS, finalized the schedule, and just wrapped up estimating costs of the activities and work packages. You are now aggregating all project cost information into a final project budget. As part of the aggregation process senior management would like to review the projected benefits of the project including NPV calculations and other associated metrics. What document will you use to conduct this review with senior management?

Benefits Management Plan The question places you in the Determine Budget process, and the Benefits Management Plan is an input to that process. The Benefits Management Plan will detail out the target benefits of the project and include quantified metrics such as NPV and the timeframe for realizing the benefits.

Which of the following is not used by an agile team to estimate tasks?g

Bottom Up Estimating Bottom up estimating is a very detailed estimate and is used in predictive projects, not Agile

A few hours before your project's status meeting with the customer, one of your team members informs you they will not have some critical performance data ready for one of the key agenda items. The best course of action to take is?

Cancel the meeting, and inform the customer your team will get the complete status report to them as soon as possible, and the meeting will be rescheduled. The correct answer is: "Cancel the meeting, and inform the customer your team will get the complete status report to them as soon as possible, and the meeting will be rescheduled." You will get the missing status information to them as soon as possible. Planning to proceed with the meeting puts the team member in a potentially embarrassing position. You are the advocate for the team, and their defender! Also, you need to take responsibility for the team and the project results. Also, similar to what was covered in one of the Communications Quiz questions, there may be dependencies between this piece of information and other parts of the status report, so if you proceed, there is a risk of providing inconsistent and conflicting data.

You are the project manager for a large software project, and you and your team are heavily engaged in the resource planning processes. You have just completed the identification of the project's physical resource requirements, and have completed the construction of a Resource Breakdown Structure. Which of the following would normally be found on a Resource Breakdown Structure?

Certification requirements The Resource Breakdown Structure simply shows the breakdown of resources by category. In addition, the structure may also display information related to resource 'type' such as skill level, grade level and required certifications. The structures does not show information related to costs, availability or control accounts. Control accounts (formally called Cost Account) would be found on the Work Breakdown Structure.

You are meeting with your agile project team members to discuss how the team should go about developing user stories. The user stories will be used later in the project life cycle. What process are you and your team working in?

Collect Requirements User stories are used in agile project management. User stories are short, textual descriptions of requirements which often describe the stakeholder role, who benefits, the end goal, and the benefits of the requirement to the stakeholder. Collect Requirements uses user stories during the collection of stakeholder requirements. Control Requirements is not a PMBOK process. Create WBS is a planning process that occurs well 'after' the completion of Collect Requirements. The question is asking for a process, and Brainstorming is a tool, not a process. Whenever a test question asks you for a process, input, tool, or output...always quickly use the process of elimination to whittle down the answer list by eliminating any or all of the other three. Example: if the question is asking for a tool, then eliminate all processes, input and outputs from the answer set. Then if you 'must' guess, then the probability of guessing the correct answer is higher if you only need to select one of two or three, rather than one of four.

You and your project team are in the closing process group. You have completed the project level lessons learned work, and have archived the project documentation. You are seeking final project sign-off from the sponsor when a key stakeholder approaches you and indicates that a key work package was overlooked and must be included in the product scope. What should you do next?

Collect the stakeholder's requirements and perform an impact assessment You will encounter 5 to 20 questions on the exam related to Integrated Change Control. In general, we do not want to put a defective, inferior product into production simply because a stakeholder overlooked a key requirement. In this situation we halt the closing procedures, collect the stakeholder requirements, and conduct an impact assessment against the six constraints. If there is an impact, then we submit a Change Request to ICC for approval and subsequent implementation. The other answers are incorrect because they do not directly confront and resolve the issue.

Your project team has just completed the development of the Procurement Management Plan and has finalized quotes obtained from independent cost estimates. As a result of the planning process it was necessary for you to update the requirements traceability matrix, source selection criteria, risk register and stakeholder register. In what process will your team use the source selection criteria?

Conduct Procurement This is a an example of a bait-and-switch question. Most of the text in the question describes activities performed in Plan Procurement Management. However the specific question asked for the process that would 'apply' (use) the source selection criteria. The source selection criteria is developed in Plan Procurement Management, however it is applied and used in Conduct Procurement. Control Procurement is the day-to-day administration of a signed contract, and is where vendor deliverables are developed. Independent estimates refer to the buyer hiring a 3rd party to provide a 'sanity check' on what the buyer should reasonably expect as bids from sellers.

You have rolled onto a project as a project manager because the last project manager has left the organization. You are caught up to speed with all the plans, including the Scope Schedule and Budget baselines. You are aware of all the roles of each of the team members and know exactly how the project is progressing compared to the plans. A new discovery has suddenly been made that may add some additional tasks and significantly affect the schedule. What should you do in order to determine how to move forward?

Consult the Schedule Management Plan in order to determine the next steps The question is essentially asking "HOW" to move forward, and how to move forward is always a "Management Plan", in this case the Schedule Management Plan. You probably will need to perform the other options listed, however the only option that answers the question is consulting the Schedule Management Plan.

There is dispute between two team members which has escalated to a point where other team members are beginning to support one over the other. What level of conflict does this describe?

Contest Contest is where team members are beginning to take sides and winning becomes more important than resolving. World War is where teams are not talking to one another, Crusade is where teams are polarized, and disagreement is where the two team members are opinionated.

Your project team is meeting to review deliverables and the project schedule, and you are performing schedule analysis using the critical path method. You have just discovered that you have three critical paths which is two more than originally thought. To further complicate matters senior management has asked that you move up the project end date by 30 days. You are exploring options with the team and have concluded that using a combination of fast tracking and crashing will be the best course of action. What process are you in?

Control Schedule Since the question states that your team is reviewing deliverables then you have already obtained approval from the sponsor on the original schedule baseline, and that takes you out of planning and puts you in Control Schedule. If the schedule baseline had NOT already been approved then the question would have placed you in Develop Schedule (planning). Fast tracking and crashing are both Schedule Compression tools in Control Schedule. While it may (or may not) be necessary to revisit Plan Schedule Management to resolve the schedule issues, you are in Control Schedule as your starting point.

You are meeting with your team to review deliverables and conduct a lessons learned. A team member suggests adding a work package that is not in the Work Breakdown Structure. You point out that the work package is out of scope for the project. What project management activity are you exercising?

Control Scope Since the question states that you are reviewing deliverables, then you are no longer in planning. You are in Control Scope. Configuration Management relates to version control of the project and product. Change Management relates to properly processing Change Requests through the Integration Change Control process. Configuration Management and Change Management are both a part of Integrated Change Control (ICC).

You are at the beginning of an agile project and the team realizes they need to do more analysis and research in order to better understand the functionality of requirements since this is new technology. What should the team do?

Create a spike experiment If teams need to do more analysis to better understand new technology then this would be conducted as a spike. You don't need to reach out to the customer, and you wouldn't extend the sprint.

The agile team needs to further investigate new technologies and approaches to better understand requirements. What should the team do?

Create a spike experiment Spikes are used to investigate unfamiliar technologies and approaches. Paired Comparison is a prioritization technique, planning poker is an estimating method and value stream mapping is used to identify inefficiencies in an organization's process.

You have just been selected to manage the development and implementation of a new data warehouse for the IT department. The project charter has been signed by the sponsor authorizing you to start working on the project. You have assembled your core project management team and are now reviewing what planning steps need to be performed in the Scope knowledge area. Of the following, which scope activity should be performed last?

Develop Scope Baseline The last scope planning process in the Scope knowledge area is Create WBS, and the Scope Baseline is a key output of that process. Therefore developing the Scope Baseline is the last scope planning output on the answer set. Scope Baseline consists of: Scope Statement, WBS, WBS Dictionary. Requirements Documentation is an output of the Collect Requirements process. Milestone List is an output of Define Activities, which is an entirely different knowledge area (Project Schedule Management). Scope Statement is an output of Define Scope. If you include the PMBOK process matrix in your brain dump, after a quick glance at your brain dump you should be able to quickly answer this question by envisioning the KEY inputs and outputs of each scope planning process. TIP: Another correct answer (not listed here) would have been "Develop WBS" since the WBS is a part of the Scope Baseline.

The charter for the project you are managing defines two key constraints. The most important constraint is budgetary: the project must finish at less than $250,000; and secondly, needs to be completed within six months. During a meeting with stakeholders to collect requirements, a high level senior manager identifies new data items and reporting requirements for her department that will increase the budget over the $250,000 limit. She lets you know these are mandatory requirements for her. You should?

Document the change request, and see that it is submitted to the change control board and system. Let the senior manager know that the additional requirements are not consistent with the original constraints set for the project. Ensure the senior manager understands the next steps as the change request is submitted to the change control board for approval. The correct answer is: Let the senior manager know that your team is examining all possible alternatives, but at the moment, this is the only alternative that protects public safety adequately.

ou are holding a regularly scheduled team meeting on a software development project. As you review the issue log with your team one of your team members becomes very agitated when he discovers that the issue assigned to him was still open and not closed out. The team member is becoming very emotionally charged and you had to refrain yourself from getting excited or upset about the situation. You decide to stay calm and paraphrase the team members concerns to reassure him that you understand, and then proceed to calmly reduce tensions and solicit cooperation to resolve the issue. In this situation you are exercising what skill?

Emotional Intelligence In this situation you are exercising Emotional Intelligence which is a tool in the Manage Team process. An aspect of Emotional Intelligence is identifying, assessing, and managing the personal emotions of oneself as well those of others. This awareness is the first step in reducing tensions and improving cooperation of team members. Emotional Intelligence is 'not' a conflict resolution strategy. Compromise/reconcile is a conflict resolution strategy that usually hurts the project since the project often suffers. Smoothing/accommodation is a conflict resolution strategy that is just a short-term solution and does not address the issue long-term. Tolerance is a made-up term and is not a PMBOK tool or technique.

An agile project leader is formulating and documenting communication guidelines for her newly assembled agile team. Which of the following communication strategies should rank the highest for the agile team members?

Encouraging face-to-face communication One of the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto highlights "Face to Face" as the most efficient and effective method of communicating on project teams.

You have been assigned as the scrum master for a new, large agile project. After several initial team meetings, it has become apparent to you that you will be responsible for meeting two, large, related project objectives. What should you do to best organize the two project initiatives?

Establish a Scrum of Scrums Setting up a program containing two related projects is a 'predictive' lifecycle solution to an agile problem, and would not be your first best choice. You are a Scrum Master managing a large scrum project. The scrum methodology permits the decomposing of a large scrum team into smaller scrum teams if that will improve the coordination of work. A representative from each scrum team would hold the daily standup meetings, and would communicate project status information to a central Scrum Master who is coordinating all of the scrum teams. This is referred to as a "Scrum of Scrums". On very, very large projects you may see a "Scrum of Scrum of Scrums". Therefore, the scrum methodology is scalable.

A scrum master has noticed that throughput on the team has dramatically fallen during the previous sprints. What should the scrum master do to address the issue?

Evaluate the cumulative flow diagram for bottlenecks A Cumulative Flow Diagram will display workflow bottlenecks which may account for a drop in team productivity (product throughput). It's a common tool displayed on Information Radiators. The Scrum Master should be competent on the construction of Information Radiator elements, as well as the diagnosis of those elements. Standup meetings are not designed for team working sessions. Cause effect analysis is not normally performed on a burndown chart. A burnup chart displays the planned work vs the actual work performed. While the Product Owner may be able to offer advice, a primary role of the Product Owner is to represent the sponsor, and to groom (prioritize stories) in the product backlog.

Jane is managing a two-year project to implement a human resource management system for a large multinational corporation that has offices in many global locations. There have been many challenges and, due to external environments, there have been many changes to the original scope of the project. Jane has done an excellent job of ensuring that these changes went through formal change requests. As this project is now winding down Jane is preparing to close the project and is trying to plan the activities involved in closing. Which of the following documents will be created as part of the closing process?

Final report The final report is created during closing. Issue log and Risk Register are creating during planning and updated throughout the project. The team does not accept the deliverable, the customer accepts the deliverable (the team tests and signs off on the deliverable).

You are managing a project onsite at a CIA location, and there are strict rules that no design documents, plans or any other project artifacts can be removed from the premises. The project is behind schedule, and a key milestone is approaching where the next revision of design documents are due. The lead engineer on the team is also a good friend of yours, and while stopping by his house on the weekend, you see a document on the coffee table that you know is project related. The best course of action to take is?

Follow the policies that are defined by the CIA for reporting such incidents. The correct answer is: Follow the policies that are defined by the CIA for reporting such incidents.

You are a project manager overseeing a complex computer hardware assembly project. Your team members consists of 12 computer scientists and 14 software developers. Your SPI is .92 and your CPI is .88. Defect rates have been accelerating during Validate Scope, and you suspect gold plating. The product is complex in nature. You have decided to use the Delphi technique to solicit anonymous feedback from all key stakeholders regarding the source of the high number of defect rates. What form of communication would be most suitable for this situation?

Formal written Since the issue is COMPLEX in nature it is best to use formal written to ensure that the intended message is properly delivered, and to minimize the chance for misunderstanding. In questions like this you will need to look for key words such as "complex" to guide you. Another example: Meeting Notes should be informal written, while Meeting Minutes should be formal written. The word "minutes" implies the formal gathering of information during a meeting.

You have just completed acquiring the project team for a large scale software development project. You are working with a virtual team with team members spanning several countries. You recognize that there will be cultural and potential language barrier differences. You want to develop the team to ensure that the team will perform well as a cohesive whole. Which of the following would not be an objective of developing a team?

Fostering feelings of trust and agreement among team members to raise morale, increase conflict, and increase teamwork On the exam you should be prepared to read long answers very carefully. At times it is simply a single word that can turn a correct answer into an incorrect answer. You are often being tested on your ability to pay attention to details when you read. That is the case with this question. Three of the four answers represent clear objectives of developing a team. However, the correct answer to this question indicates that one objective is to "increase" conflict, which is not true. It should read "decrease" conflict. So, the statement should have read - "Fostering feelings of trust and agreement among team members to raise morale, DECREASE conflict, and increase teamwork"

All of the following are tools of Determine Budget except?

Funding Limit Consolidation Even though this is an ITTO question, it is also a very tricky question. On the exam expect to see common PMBOK terms slightly transposed to throw you off. "Funding Limit Consolidation" SHOULD SAY "Funding Limit Reconciliation". The other three answers are all tools of Determine Budget.

You are a project manager for a small airplane manufacturer. Being a pilot yourself you have an appreciation for high tech features and functionality often installed in high performance aircraft cockpits. You would like to surprise your customer by adding a slick cruise control feature even though it was not documented as a customer requirement. In this situation the addition of cruise control is considered which of the following?

Gold Plating What is being described is Gold Plating. Gold Plating occurs when scope is added to the product or project without first consulting with the customer. Scope Creep is referred to as the uncontrolled expansion to product or project scope without adjustments to schedule, cost, and resources. With Scope Creep the customer is aware of the scope expansion since they are the ones requesting it. With Gold Plating the customer is not aware of the scope expansion until the deliverable is presented to them for acceptance. Silver Plating is not a PMBOK term. While Gold Plating may appear to exhibit a high level of customer focus, the fact remains that the customer did not ask for the feature or functionality and that by itself dramatically increases the probability of downstream issues occurring with the schedule and budget. Gold Plating (and Scope Creep) should always be avoided. Exam Tip: A Work Authorization System (WAS) is an system that will help control gold plating and scope creep.

You are in the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process and are meeting with a large group of stakeholders. As the meeting progresses you begin to notice several side-bar conversations going on which are disrupting the meeting. You politely remind the team that if the group hopes to work through the entire agenda that everyone will want to try and refrain from more than one conversation at a time as outlined in the Team Charter. What would best help you to contain the side-bar conversations?

Ground Rules You are using Ground Tools which are defined in the Team Charter. The Team Charter is a document that provides ground rules for team behavior, and is an output of Plan Resource Management. The other answers are indeed tools in Manage Stakeholder Engagement, however none of them directly address the issue being described in the question. Ground Rules specifically addresses the issue in the question.

You are trying to determine the best approach for a high visibility project. This will be a large project with distinct phases. Requirements for each phase is not fully understood and will regularly change due to changes in the business environment. Senior Management want to be involved regularly and need to sign off on deliverables frequently which could inspire new requirements. Which of the following approaches would you recommend?

Hybrid lifecycle The scenario states that there are distinct phases but requirements for each phase are dynamic, and the customer needs regular delivery of value then the best approach would be a hybrid approach. Predictive would be used when requirements are fixed. Agile would be used when there are no distinct phases. Incremental is best when frequency of change is limited for each iteration.

You are leading a complex government project that must take into consideration the needs of over 1,252 key stakeholders. At a minimum, you must plan to ensure that the stakeholders are involved in which of the following?

Identify and communicate the project deliverables and the go-live date Stakeholders should be involved (one way or the other) in all of the processes and activities outlined in the answer set. However, at a minimum, the best answer is that they should be deeply involved in identifying project deliverables (hence involved in the Collect Requirements and Define Scope processes) as well as establishing a 'go live' date per the business needs of the organization. The other answers are best handled by the PM and the PM team.

Having successfully completed the first sprint, you are now planning the second. However, you are concerned about the progress of the project. As the Team Facilitator, what should you do next, if in the first sprint you had noticed the performance of some team members was poor because they were struggling with basic concepts?

Identify skill gaps The question states what you should do "next". You need to first identify any gaps in their skill set before you can determine if they need additional training. Replacing a team member would normally be the last resort.

A PMO has been doing predictive projects for over 20 years. One of the PMO project managers has been asked to introduce agile to the PMO as a new approach to managing projects. What should the project manager do?

Implement a simple agile methodology on a small, simple project When introducing agile to a department for the first time, it is prudent to start small and test the waters. Best practices suggests that for the first project, a simple agile methodology (ex: Scrum) be used on a small, simple, low profile project. Only then expand the approach to other larger, more complex projects as the team acquires more expertise in agile. Implementing scrum on the first available project is too broad of an answer, and would include large, complex projects which would be too risky.

You are an agile coach at an iteration review meeting. You observe that other attendees of the meeting include the agile team, the team facilitator and other key customers. The team members are demonstrating the deliverables to the product owner who is asking questions about the functionality and signing off. Sometimes the discussions lead to talking about the success and failures of the iteration. What feedback would you give?

Inform the attendees that the discussion of success and failures should have been left out for this meeting Discussing success and failures should be at the retrospective meeting, not the iteration review meeting. The iteration review meeting should be limited to delivering the product increment and discussing functionality to see if it meets the definition of done. Other key customers can be present at the meeting.

You are the project manager for a company that builds high performance race cars. You have decided to subcontract out all of the work related to design and construction of the vehicle braking system, and you are using a fixed price contract. The contract calls for stainless steel piping yet the subcontractor is using aluminum piping. To correct the situation, what should you do next?

Issue a change request and once it is approved the contract administrator would change the contract The question clearly states that the work being performed is not in compliance with what the contract is calling for. The best course of action is to issue a change request and have the contract administrator or procurement specialist change the contract. The project manager does not normally have authority to change a legally binding contract. Even if the change was minor (which we do not know) a change request would still be required.

You are the project manager for the development of a new stock options system for senior management. Your project is 70% complete. Your SPI is running at .85 and your CPI is running at 1.2. In order to address the schedule issue you and the team have decided to crash the schedule. What is the first step that you should take, and what document would need to be updated?

Issue a change request and update Project Team Assignments Since the project itself is no longer in the planning process and deliverables are being created the project manager cannot simply spend funds to hire new staff without issuing and processing a change request. Since the question states that crashing the schedule will be pursued the schedule baseline will require updating to reflect the addition of new staff on the project. This will require an update to the schedule baseline which will require the approval of a change request prior to updating the Project Team Assignments documentation. Update Team Performance Assessments would not be appropriate in this situation since the question refers to changing project staffing needs and not assessing team performance and training needs. Verbal approval from the sponsor to change the schedule baseline would be insufficient since a formal change request must also be issued and worked through the ICC process. Per the situation, fast tracking is not the option that the team is pursing (they are pursing crashing). Fast tracking would be inappropriate since it would increase risks on the project and funds are available (CPI of 1.2) to crash the schedule.

The team is demonstrating the minimum business increment to a key stakeholder. Which agile ceremony is being performed here?

Iteration Review The Iteration Review meeting is used to demonstrate the deliverable to the Product Owner who is the key stakeholder in the scenario. Iteration retrospectives are used for lessons learned and iteration closeout, the daily standup is to understand the status of the sprint and Release planning is to plan the Release

An agile facilitator has been assigned to a new project where the specific requirements are uncertain and they must be discovered. However, there is no rush to put the final product into production. The sponsor emphasizes that it is more important to 'get the scope correct' before migrating any deliverables to the customer. What type of project management methodology would best suit this project?

Iterative Since the scope is uncertain and must be discovered, a more iterative approach is required to continually pull the customer back into the communication loop (iterations) during requirements gathering. Iterative is suitable when there is an anticipated high degree of scope changes (uncertainty), but a low frequency of desired deliverables (as in this case) by the customer. However, if the same situation were to occur (high uncertainty) but there was a HIGH frequency of desired deliverables by the customer, then an "Agile" approach would be more suitable. On the other hand, if the customer knows precisely what scope they want (high level of certainty), but they desire frequent releases of deliverables (increments), then an incremental approach would be more suitable. Predictive approach refers to classic, traditional waterfall (not agile). For the exam you should get comfortable knowing the difference between Iterative, Incremental, and Agile. (Agile includes both Iterative and Incremental). In addition, "Hybrid" refers to a combination of Agile plus Predictive (both being utilized in a single project).

As project manager you are managing stakeholder expectations through negotiation and communication, and addressing risks associated with the engagement of stakeholders. What process are you in?

Manage Stakeholder Engagement The question is describing the process Manage Stakeholder Engagement. Other activities performed in this process are the management of stakeholder expectations and clarifying/resolving issues. The question is asking for a process, and Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is a tool (not a process). Identify Stakeholders generates a Stakeholder Register. Identify Stakeholders analyzes and documents relevant information such as stakeholder interests, involvement, interdependencies, influences and potential impact on a project. Management Communications is a process in the Communications knowledge area which ensures timely collection, storage, creation, distribution, retrieval, and monitoring of project information.

You have identified a stakeholder that requires regular information on the project and is a member of the change control board. However their information needs are usually not of an urgent nature. Where on the power and interest grid would you place this person?

Manage closely. This person is high power (part of the CCB) and high interest (requires regular information), therefore Manage Closely.

The Vice President of Compliance has sent a project manager an email stating that their agile project is not in compliance with safety standards. What should the project manager to first?

Measure the extent to which the project may be out of compliance When confronted with an issue, the first step should be to gather information to fully understand the problem. The project manager should first assess to what extent (if any) the project is out of compliance.

The coach has observed that the number of software defects has been rising over time with one of the team members. What should the coach do?

Meet with the team to address the issue On agile teams the team (not an individual) takes ownership for issues, just as the team as a whole deserves credit for successes.

You have identified a new approach for the next project where there are several phases and several short iterations in a phase and each iteration delivers value to the customer. What will this value best be described as?

Minimum Business Increment Recognize that this scenario describes a hybrid approach since there are phases and iterations. Each product increment for an iteration will be describes as the Minimum Business Increment. You could argue that it could be called a deliverable, however the best answer is MBI.

Marcus, the Product Owner, is working with Team Facilitator Joann and her team. Marcus has begun prioritizing the user stories. The team is determining which user stories to include in the next sprint to create a functional deliverable. What does this functional deliverable refer to?

Minimum Viable Product The smallest collection of features that can be included to be functional are the MVP, which is what the scenario is describing. The smallest amount of value that can be added that benefits the customer is the MBI. The minimum feature that would be acceptable by the customer would be the MMF.

The Product Owner along with the rest of the team is reviewing the product backlog to evaluate stories and put priorities on the backlog items. Which of the following techniques would be most useful?

MoSCoW MoSCoW - (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have) - is a "prioritization method" often used in Agile for rating priorities. None of the other answers are prioritization techniques.

You are a project manager for a popular fast food chain. You have been assigned to a project that involves the rollout of a new food inventory tracking application to 72 retail chain outlets. Your project is 50% complete with a SPI of .88 and a CPI of 1.1. Your project is behind schedule and you suspect that the issue relates to the high variance between the desired stakeholder engagement and their actual engagement in the project. A high number of stakeholders are either resistant or neutral to your project. What process are you in?

Monitor Stakeholder Engagement When you are conducting variance analysis between plan vs actual, you are in the Monitor and Control process group - which places you in the Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process. Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is not a process, it is a tool. Control Resources is a Monitor and Control process that ensures that the physical resources (ex: machine and/or equipment) are at the right place at the right time. Exam Tip: Whenever the question states that you are conducting variance analysis, you are in one of the Monitor and Control processes. That will help eliminate answers from other process groups.

You are the project manager who is overseeing a construction project that is occurring in another nearby country. You and the team had decided to outsource 10% of the project to a seller and there are concerns that the seller is not delivering to the contract quality specifications. You are meeting with the team to discuss 'next steps' and are deciding whether it would be prudent to either drive or fly to the off-site seller location. You and the team are weighing in on the advantages and disadvantages of driving vs flying. What analytical technique is your team using?

Mutual Exclusivity Since the team cannot both fly and drive simultaneously, you are using the Mutual Exclusive technique. Driving and flying are two options that are mutually exclusive. Statistical independence refers to the theory that historical statistical outcomes will have no bearing on future outcomes (if you flip a coin 20 times and get 'heads', the result of the 21st flip will be statistically independent of the result of the first 20 flips). Statistical sampling refers to only inspecting a sampling of the total population of deliverables to save costs of inspection, however there is a balancing act between saving costs and identifying defects. Sensitivity Analysis is used in Risk Management (ex: Tornado Diagram) to assess which risks have the highest impact.

You are the project manager for a manufacturing project and have just started the Plan Cost Management process. You have never developed this type of plan before and decided to search for a template to help you jump start the process. What are you relying on?

Organizational Process Asset A template is considered an Organizational Process Asset (OPA). It is owned by the organization and the project team has control over it. The project team typically does not have control over Enterprise Environmental Factors which include risk tolerance of senior management, market conditions, political climate, infrastructure and government agencies, etc. Implicit knowledge refers to knowledge that can easily be documented. Tacit knowledge refers to knowledge that cannot be easily document and includes hands-on experience and personal insight. Tacit and implicit knowledge are both topics covered in the Manage Project Knowledge process located in the Integration knowledge area.

You are managing a project that is running behind schedule and over budget. You are discussing various options to bring the project back in line with the baseline plan. There was another project you had worked on a couple of years ago with similar results and you want see how the project got back on track. Where would you find this information?

Organizational Process Assets. You would actually look at all of the above documents! The all-inclusive answer is therefore, the OPAs, which encompass all historical information on prior projects.

A project manager is leading an agile project and has just completed the fifth iteration. A new senior executive has recently joined a department that will be impacted by the project. What should the project manager do first?

Perform stakeholder analysis New stakeholders should first be studied to assess what type of stakeholder they are (ex: positive or negative), and to formulate strategies on how to engage the stakeholder. The other answers may eventually be necessary, however they are not the first thing that the project manager should do.

In which stage of the Tuckmann model do team members have the least conflict?

Performing In the Performing stage all team members are working together as a well functioning unit and there is less likely any reason for conflicts. The max conflict will be in the Storming stage.

Which of the following best represents a servant leader?

Performs administrative work and non-value-added work for the team One responsibility of a servant leader is to remove impediments and Admin work and non-value-added work would be an impediment that the team facilitator would perform. They do not assign tasks (teams determine the tasks that they perform). The team does not develop the product backlog (the Product Owner does). There is no daily retrospective meeting, the retrospective is one time at the end of each sprint, led by the team.

You are called in to try and fix a failing division of your organization. The prior leader of the division was a man of great virtue and allure. Everyone loved his charismatic personality and wit. However he didn't know how to run a business and was reluctantly let go after many years of failing results. The type of power that this leader exhibited was which of the following?

Personal Because people were following him due to his personality and charisma (even though he didn't really know what he was doing business wise) is known as a personal or charismatic power. Legitimate power is based on your position or title. Expert power is where you are recognized as the subject matter expert. Situational power is where people follow you because of how you take control in a particular situation.

As project manager for a Post Office you are currently in the process of acquiring a team to reengineer the business process workflows of the Post Office. The goal is to eliminate unnecessary steps in the processes and to streamline the processing of incoming mail. You and your team have concluded that a new high performance mail sorter machine will contribute to streamlining the processing of inbound mail. The identification of the new mail sorter machine would be considered what type of deliverable?

Physical resource assignment A sorter machine would be considered a physical resource, hence Physical Resource Assignments is an output of the process that this question places you in (Acquire Resources). Project Team Assignments would not be applicable since that addresses people resources. Updates to the Project Calendar would not be appropriate here either since those updates relate to the approved working schedules (ex: days, hours, holidays, weekends). However, updates to the Resource Calendar would be appropriate but that was not referred to on the answer set. For the exam it is important to remember the difference between the Resource Calendar (stores the availability of resources) and the Project Calendar (stores the available working hours, days, holidays for the project team). Updates to the WBS would not be appropriate here since the WBS does not capture information related to resources.

A critical success factor on the development of a new airline reservation system is to achieve a quality standard of sub-second response times when agents are making customer reservations. What agile strategy would best help achieve this high quality standard?

Plan for small batches of incremental deliverables to catch quality issues earlier in the project life cycle By planning for frequent, small incremental deliverables, agile methods can focus on small batches of work to help quickly uncover inconsistencies and quality issues earlier in the project life cycle. By catching the issues early (in a small size), then the overall cost of change is considerably lower. Establishing a quality control team and/or developing a Quality Management Plan (QMP) is more suitable for a classic waterfall (predictive) project. In addition, developing a QMP without implementing it will serve no useful purpose. Focusing all of the quality effort on one single iteration is inconsistent with the explanation of the correct answer for this question.

As project manager you are in the process of acquiring your project team. When the Project Charter was originally developed by the sponsor he set a prerequisite that he would fund the project only if a specific subject matter expert (SME) was preselected and approved to be a member of the core project management team. This preselection of the SME is considered which of the following?

Pre-assignment Pre-assignment is a tool in Acquire Resources. Pre-assignment is normally documented in the Project Charter by the sponsor after receiving approval from the appropriate functional manager. Remember, on the exam you are a PM in a matrix organizational structure, hence you do not have permanent direct reports. Your team is temporary for the duration of the project. Tight matrix and co-location both refer to the same thing (co-location of staff into one location). Virtual teams are teams that are geographically dispersed.

On an agile team, who typically performs the grooming of stories?

Product Owner Grooming (prioritizing) of stories (requirements) is performed by the Product Owner. The Product Owner represents the Sponsor. Project Owner is a made-up job title. The Scrum Master is a servant leader supporting the team and removing team obstacles. The Sponsor is financing the project.

You have been assigned to lead the upgrade of a payroll software package. The project is sensitive in that it impacts employee paychecks. You are assessing what resources you will need for this highly complex project and are concerned that the organization does not have a pool of talent that meets the needs of the payroll project. Who is responsible for ensuring that team members are adequately trained to fulfill the project needs?

Project Manager The project manager is responsible for ensuring that the project team members are adequately trained for the project. The sponsor is responsible for providing the funds for the project and approving changes to the performance measurement baseline. The functional manager owns the resources, however they are not responsible for providing the training to satisfy your project needs. Senior management is responsible for settling disputes related to conflicts in priorities or insufficient project resources.

You are a project manager for a large high visibility project and you are reviewing your resource management plan to fill certain roles on your project. These roles require highly specialized skill sets and you want to make sure that you acquire the best resources with these skills. You reach out to your fellow PMP's as well as other Functional Managers and also the Human Resource department but you are told that no one in the entire company have those skillsets. You do not have the budget to hire specialized consultants and so after discussion with HR, Functional Managers and PMO the best course of action seems to be to identify resources that have similar skills and train them. In this case who will be responsible for ensuring that these team members receive appropriate training?

Project Manager The responsibility for ensuring that team members receive the right training always rests with the Project Manager (for the PMP exam). Assume the PM is 'large and in charge' and in the absence of the contrary they are the ones that need to get the best out of their team.

The sponsor and the product owner are in a meeting to work out high level plans for capturing market share for the sales of their new electric vehicle. They are validating the business case and outlining high-level functionality that is believed to be in high customer demand. What agile project artifact will they use to capture their vision?

Project Overview Statement A "Project Overview Statement" will best capture the vision described in the question. Another possible correct answer would be the "Agile Project Charter". The Product Backlog is developed later during the "Initiation Stage".

If a shared drive is created for the team members of an Agile team to share documentation as well as to ensure that all the latest versions of project documentations are available to stakeholders, what communication method is being utilized?

Pull Given that the documents are saved in a central repository where they can be retrieved as and whenever needed, this is a Pull Communication. Note that Formal Written and Informal Written are not communication methods.

You are a project manager working for a computer manufacturer. Your project involves the design and manufacture of a new, innovative, hand-held pocket computer. It will be designed to be faster than any of the competition in the market place, and it will offer ultra-high quality with high reliability. Quality is paramount for the success of this project. The sponsor approaches you to ask you why you have been spending such an enormous amount of project time in planning. What would be your best response to the sponsor?

Quality should be planned into a project, not inspected into it Cost of conformance implies considerable upfront planning and building in quality processes that are designed to prevent defects from occurring rather than relying on inspections to catch and repair the defects after the fact. The other answers are good practice, however the best answer is that quality should be planned in rather than defects caught during the inspection phase. His is the way PMI thinks

Which of the following is a bid document?

RFP Examples of bid documents are RFP (request for proposal), which is the correct answer here, RFI (request for information), RFQ (request for quote) and IFB (invitation for bid). All the other options listed are types of contracts.

A serious argument between two team members has occurred during a Scrum sprint, and voices and emotions are running very high. How should the scrum master handle the situation?

Refer to the team charter for guidance There are two good agile solutions to this situation. One would be to refer to the Team Charter for guidance on how conflicts should be resolved and how decisions should be made. Another acceptable answer would be to 'do nothing' and let the team members resolve the conflict on their own.

You are the project manager on a project that involves purchasing low cost components from over 12 countries. You are in the middle of negotiations with one of the vendor sales representatives and he offers you a free paid trip to the Bahamas if you assist him in expediting his proposal. What should you do next?

Reject the trip, and report the incident to your senior management This essentially constitutes a bribe, and if the project manager accepted the trip it would represent an ethics violation. So, the best course of action is to decline the trip and be transparent by reporting the incident to senior management. The other answers do not emphasize transparency (communicating your situation).

Story points are ___________________?

Relative estimates of stories, not duration estimates Story points are "relative estimates" of the size of stories, not duration estimates.

You are managing a self-organizing team with cross functional skills. Which of the following will be your main focus?

Removing obstacles and barriers to progress As a team facilitator you are a servant leader and one of the key roles of a servant leader is to remove impediments and obstacles (not to delegate, estimate timelines or estimate budget).

You are working on a project that is three weeks behind schedule and $10,000 over budget. However, you are less than half-way through the project and you know there are plenty of opportunities to bring the schedule back on track and reduce costs to meet the budget. Senior Management is asking for a status. How should you respond?

Report the project is 3 weeks late and over budget by $10,000. Include corrective actions and preventive actions to meet schedule and budget. As a PM, you are always being proactive, communicating with and engaging your stakeholders. The best way to engage them in this situation is to give them the information they need and provide recommendations and options for improvement. You should not dodge the question and should always behave in an ethical and honest way. The distractor in this question is to acknowledge and get back to them late ... why would you wait until the end of the week when you have the answer now?

You are preparing to go overseas to attend a project kickoff meeting with the customer and other subcontractors. There will be a formal reception with dinner, and this will be followed by a short announcement and statements from both the customer and your sponsor. Your sponsor is asking for advice on content for his message, along with any other advice you can provide. Which of the following is most important?

Research cultural practices for this part of the world, and make sure your entire team is very aware of prevailing customs. Also, the team needs to know practices and even gestures that are considered positive, and those that are not. The correct answer is: Research cultural practices for this part of the world, and make sure your entire team is very aware of prevailing customs. Also, the team needs to know practices and even gestures that are considered positive, and those that are not.

The Product Owner is meeting with a group of stakeholders to understand their key concerns and requirements for a new application that is being planned for the company. This new application will replace an internal time-tracking and billing system that's been in use for about five years. One of the department managers is quite worried that the users in her department will be resistant to having to learn a new application, since they are already working long hours, and feel they have too much to do on their plates already. Another department manager has heard that the new application will not work on the version of Windows her people are currently using, and she's concerned about problems that might occur when they change operating systems. The concerns of these department managers are best described as?

Risks The stakeholders' concerns are risks, because they are uncertain, or about probabilities. If they knew for sure these problems would occur, then they would be "issues." "Assumptions" are things we assume to be true to guide planning. "Constraints" are anything that limit our options for planning. They are usually things given to us by upper management such as a budget constraint or a schedule constraint. Assumptions and Constraints are captured in the Assumptions Log.

ou are the project manager in the Human Resources department overseeing a project that involves securing sensitive payroll and employee performance data. You have a key stakeholder that you need support from to ensure the success of the project. The stakeholder is a subject matter expert in the payroll functional area, and has not been supportive of the project. Through various strategies you have attempted to shift this stakeholder from being resistant to supportive and have achieved no success. You are trying to determine the basic underlying reason that your stakeholder engagement is not having the desired effect. What tool and technique are you using?

Root Cause Analysis You are in the Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process, and you are using the Root Cause Analysis tool. You are trying to determine the underlying reason (the cause) for not achieving the planned (effect). Stakeholder Analysis is used to determine the specific position that an individual is taking at any point in time (ex: unaware, resistance, neutral, supportive, and leading). Alternatives Analysis evaluates your available options to respond to wide variances in the desired stakeholder engagement. Multicriteria Decision Analysis refers to a technique whereby you would establish criteria (and possibly weight them) to help prioritize your stakeholder engagement strategies.

You are the scrum master on a health care project. The sponsor has no agile experience and has asked you to provide him with a detail project management plan. What should you do first?

Schedule a meeting with the sponsor to educate him on Scrum methodology and agile principles View this as an opportunity to educate the sponsor on agile principles. The question is asking for what you should do FIRST. Educating him on agile principles should occur before providing detailed information such as the information radiator, product roadmap, and product backlog.

Your project charter has just been approved but as you are performing Data analysis of your stakeholders it becomes apparent that a large number of stakeholders are resistant to this project. You find this quite perplexing, as this project would be a benefit to most of those stakeholders. What would be the best approach to handle this situation?

Schedule a meeting with them and clearly outline the goals of the project as per the Project Charter and discuss the items in the Benefits Management Plan. Stakeholder engagement is the key here, especially as there is a large number that are resistant. Perhaps they don't fully understand the benefits that they will enjoy after the project is complete. By meeting with them and going over the goals of the project and the benefits of the project that might make at least some of them supportive. You don't ignore a stakeholder, you engage them. Outlining roles and responsibilities will not engage anyone.

You are working with the team on the development of the Scope Statement. There is confusion as to how the document should be formatted. What document would assist the team in resolving this issue?

Scope Management Plan The questions refers to the term 'how', so that directs us to a plan, which eliminates 2 of the 4 answers. The plan spells out 'how' we should format the Scope Statement. There are only two plans on the answer set. The Scope Management Plan describes how to construct and format the Scope Statement. The Requirements Management Plan is more focused on the collection, analysis, documentation, and control of requirements, as well as the formatting and construction of the Requirements Documentation. The Project Charter contains high level information related to the project - and does not contain how-to instructions on doing anything. There is no such thing as a Plan Guideline Charter. We suggest that you study the index of the PMBOK guide (and glossary) to familiarize yourself with the universe of PMBOK terms. This will help you eliminate 'out of place' answers.

A project managers roles and responsibilities are broad and deep spanning a variety of knowledge and skill disciplines. What responsibility would least likely be assigned to a project manager?

Selecting which projects offer the greatest return on investment and which should be prioritized as such In general, it is not the project managers direct responsibility to identify and select the appropriate projects for the organization. That responsibility is typically owned by the Program or Portfolio Manager, however the project manager is often involved and assists in project selection. Collecting requirements, adhering to the baselines and setting clear goals with the team are the project managers responsibility. This is not to say that the project manager would never directly be involved in selecting projects. It's just the best answer of the four provided.

Your sprint has just been cancelled due to major issues that were discovered and you want to discuss with the team what they could have done differently to prevent this from happening in the future. What will be the best way to do this?

Set up a Sprint Retrospective The retrospective is a lessons learned meeting and since the sprint has been cancelled, a retrospective ceremony will now be set up to discuss lessons learned. There will not be a sprint review since nothing has been delivered. You do not add lessons learned to a daily standup. You may well analyze documentation to understand what went wrong, however this will be discussed during the retrospective

An agile team is seriously exploring the use of a new best practices tool on their next agile project. What should the project manager consider doing to best assess whether the tool is compatible with the team?

Set up an iteration as an architectural spike An architectural spike is used to explore options by conducting a 'proof of concept' pilot test. It is often performed as the first iteration to quickly assess how viable the option is. In this situation the team could use an architectural spike to assess how compatible the new tool is with the team.

A team of software developers are discussing ways to improve an activity on a large software development project. They consider various options and decide on one that provides the most efficient way to process transactions and immediately start implementing this update without the knowledge of the project manager. Which of the following is not true?

Since the developers have made improvements to the process this should be perfectly fine. The project manager does not need to be told about every little technical detail about the project. Did you catch the word "not" in the question? Three of the answers are true, however one is not true. The developers cannot simply start adding features to improve processes that were not part of the original scope of the project. This constitutes Gold Plating and should always be avoided. The Project Manager should have been informed, an impact analysis performed and a change request submitted to the CCB.

You have been managing projects for over 20 years using the predictive project management life cycle, and you have now been assigned to your first agile project without any formal agile training. A key customer approaches you and askes when she will be invited to inspect deliverables for acceptance. You remember that in PMBOK the process is referred to as "Validate Scope". What is the similar process referred to in Scrum?

Sprint Review In Scrum the process is referred to as a Sprint Review. During the Sprint Review the sprint team demos the increment (deliverable) to the customer (Product Owner) seeking customer acceptance of the increment. At that time new requirements are also collected (as needed). A retrospective is a subsequent "lessons learned" meeting to discuss what went well and what did not go well during the most recent sprint, and any necessary adjustments are made during the next sprint planning session to be applied to the next sprint.

A project manager has been reassigned to another department, and you have been asked to take over her project. You have heard rumors that a few of the key stakeholders on her project are problematic in their assertion of their power and influence. You want to quickly get up to speed on your new stakeholder base to determine who is aware and supportive of your project and who may be resistant to your project. What is the best tool to use?

Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix The Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is a tool that will plot out the current engagement level of each stakeholder (unaware, resistance, neutral, supportive, and leading). The question is a subtle bait-and-switch question. The situation indicates that there is an issue with stakeholders exerting their power and influence which may lure you into the Power/Influence Grid answer, however the question itself is asking for a tool to help you quickly determine which stakeholders are aware, supportive and resistant to your project. Plan Stakeholder Engagement is a process, and not a tool (the question is asking for a tool). OPA's are never a tool (they are only inputs or outputs). EXAM TIP: OPA's are typically inputs to Initiating and Planning, and outputs to Executing, M&C and Closing. This is because OPA's heavily influence your project planning (inputs), and are updated (outputs) when you are executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing.

You have assembled a project team and are now assessing how best to interact and communicate with the team members. You are using a tool that displays gaps between current and desired interaction levels. What tool are you using?

Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix The Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix will display gaps between the current engagement level and the desired engagement level of stakeholders. The five levels of potential engagement are: Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive, Leading. For the exam you should memorize these five levels and associate them to the Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix. The Salience Model uses circles to show the potential overlap between Power, Legitimacy and Urgency among stakeholders. The Team Charter documents guidelines for acceptable team behavior. The Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) will chart out the roles & responsibilities of team members related to activities, work packages, project phases, etc. Exam Tip: On the RAM/RACI chart there should be ONLY 1 person held "Accountable" for any given activity, work package, phase, etc.

You are assessing your key project stakeholders and documenting their project level characteristics such as unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive and leader. What document would you refer to for guidance in how to manage a resistant stakeholder?

Stakeholder Engagement Plan Any PMBOK document that describes 'how' to do anything is almost always a 'plan'. In this situation the Stakeholder Engagement Plan will address the needs in the question. The other three answers are NOT plans. This is a form of bait-and-switch question. Were you lured into Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix? While the Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is a tool used to document stakeholder characteristics such as unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive and leader, it does NOT offer guidance on HOW to manage a resistant stakeholder. Manage Stakeholder Engagement is a process, not a document or a plan.

You inherited an ongoing construction project midway through the project. You have been grappling with getting up to speed on the charter and the overall project plan. Two weeks into the project you begin to receive key stakeholder feedback that their needs and expectations are not being addressed on the project. What plan or document is most likely missing which might account for this issue?

Stakeholder Engagement Plan The Stakeholder Engagement Plan documents the NEEDS, EXPECTATIONS, interests, and their potential impact on the project. In this situation the stakeholder's needs and expectations have apparently not been identified and documented. The other answers do not specifically address the issue outlined in the question. The Communications Management Plan documents the specific communications requirements of the stakeholders (who, what, how, frequency), but it does not specifically address the stakeholder needs related to the project deliverables and the stakeholder expectations. The Team Charter documents the team values, agreements, and their behavioral operational guidelines (ex: turn off cell phones in meetings). The Stakeholder Register documents the identification, assessment and classification of stakeholders that are capable of impacting, influencing and/or who are affected by the project. The key here is that the Stakeholder Engagement PLAN addresses HOW you will engage the stakeholders, which includes documenting their needs and expectations. The Stakeholder Register simply documents/assesses WHO they are and WHAT they are (positive or negative stakeholder) and to what extent they are aware or involved in your project.

This project involves small teams working in short iterations. Your team is currently planning the work of one of these iterations. Which of the following estimating methods would they use?

Story-pointing This is an agile project and the only agile estimating method shown is Story-pointing. The other options are relevant to predictive projects.

In which of the following organizations will communication be most challenging?

Strong Matrix. Communication is most challenging in any of the Matrix organizations since there are pooling of resources. In this case Strong Matrix would be the best answer. Note that Tight Matrix is not a type of organization, it simply means team members are co-located.

You are the agile coach on a development team. During a daily standup meeting several of the development team members were not able to provide their daily updates due to delays in the design team providing them with the required design inputs. How should you best handle the issue?

Suggest that the development team set up a meeting with the design team to identify and resolve their bottlenecks The agile coach is a servant leader who supports and facilitates agile teams. The agile coach is not a command and control project manager, as would be the case on a traditional waterfall, predictive project. The agile team is responsible for resolving their own issues, and the role of the agile coach is to guide, facilitate, and support the team.

An agile project is overbudget and behind schedule, and standup meetings have been slipping beyond the designated 15 minute time box. During a recent standup meeting a new team member disrupts the meeting by asking for clarification on the roles and responsibilities of other team members. What should you do as the coach?

Suggest that the new team member discuss the topic with you separately, and continue with the standup meeting The team should adhere to the standup meeting ground rules. In this case, limit it to 15 minutes, and every active team member should answer three questions: 1) what did they accomplish the day before 2) what will they work on today 3) what obstacles are they encountering. Resolving time consuming obstacles should be taken offline and worked in a separate meeting so as not to disrupt the productivity of a standup meeting.

You are a project manager for the Human Resources department, and you have been assigned to develop a new system which will track, store and report out on employee training needs for the entire organization. The sponsor had recently signed the project charter and you are now working through the planning processes. You quickly realize that your stakeholders are experiencing difficulty in communicating their specific requirements, and thus you are anticipating many changes to the project documentation as you progress through the planning processes. Which of the following project artifacts would you least expect to change as you progress through the various planning processes?

Team Charter Of all of the project artifacts listed the Team Charter is the least likely one to require modification as the project progresses. The Team Charter records the team values, agreements, operational guidelines as well as clear expectations with respect to acceptable team member behavior. The Requirements Traceability Matrix and Scope Statement capture (among other things) detail project requirements, and these are expected to change since the stakeholders are having difficulty communicating their requirements. Resource Requirements will likely change as the customer requirements are more fully captured and documented.

Which of the following is not true regarding an agile team's cultures and values?

Teams consists of generalizing specialists that are I-Shaped While agile teams do consist of generalizing specialists, they are also referred to as T-Shaped (rather than I-Shaped). The "T" indicates that while they have a specialty, they also have generalized skills in various areas, thus enabling team members to assist one another (example "Swarming"). I-Shaped refers to specialists who are limited in how much they can assist other team members in other skilled areas.

Your Agile team has just completed the fourth sprint and so far, everything has been going extremely smoothly. The team has been working very diligently and efficiently and ensured the sprints have been going without any delay. One particular team member, Julie has done an outstanding job. What would be the best type of reward in this situation?

Thank the team for their performance and organize a pizza party for the team It is always best to reward the team over rewarding the individual, so a pizza party for the team will be better than a gift card to an individual.

Who is ultimately accountable for the work delivered on a project?

The Product Owner because they prioritize user stories and accept or reject the deliverable Based on the option choices you have to determine that this is an Agile question - it is not clear from the question itself; you have to look at the options choices. In Agile the Product Owner is ultimately accountable for the project because they prioritize user stories and they accept, reject or request changes.

James is managing a high visibility project but many of the stakeholders are confused about the latest results of the project. James has been communicating all project information to all the stakeholders and he himself is a little bewildered as to why there is so much confusion. When some stakeholders confront him regarding this confusion, James tries to explain that he sent all the information to them and they just need to look at all of the emails attachments that he forwarded. What is the main problem here?

The Project Manager should have done a better job of understanding the information needs of the stakeholders and should only send them the relevant information needed James should be providing the relevant information to the appropriate stakeholders, not ALL information to ALL stakeholders as the scenario is suggesting. Stakeholders are confused because they have an overload of information much of which might not pertain to them. The stakeholder engagement plan simply shows how to engage stakeholders on a project and contains the 5 engagement levels (unaware, resistant, etc.).

The product backlog has just been developed and is now ready for prioritizing. Who is responsible for grooming the product backlog?

The person who represents the sponsor The Product Owner is responsible for grooming (prioritizing) the items in the product backlog. The Product Owner is "the person who represents the sponsor". "Project Owner" is a made-up term. Exam questions can be tricky when PMI rearranges terms to confuse you. Always read the answers very carefully.

Which of the following is true regarding the product backlog?

The product owner is responsible for grooming the product backlog The product owner is responsible for prioritizing stories (grooming) in the product backlog. The stories at the top of the product backlog are better defined and have a higher priority than those at the bottom.

Which of the following would be regarded as a defect?

The product works perfectly but does not meet the customer's requirement The best answer would be option B due to the definition of quality (the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills REQUIREMENTS). If the product does not meet requirements then it is a defect (even if it works). For example if the customer asked you to build a 4 door car but you built a perfectly working 2 door car, then that would be a defect even though the car works perfectly. Seven or more data points above or below the mean is perfectly fine in a control chart (if there were 7 CONSECUTIVE above or below then that would violate the rule of 7). A simple error by a team member is not necessarily a defect.

You are team facilitator with many years of experience of managing agile projects and have just been hired to lead an organization through their first agile project. Which of the following would be the best advice you will give the team facilitator?

The sprints should be planned during Agile Release Planning and tasks will be prioritized during the Sprint by team members with T-shaped skills Although the team facilitator and the agile team must work together (collaborate) it is actually the Product Owner who is responsible for prioritizing user stories during Agile Release Planning to create the product backlog. The team members will be prioritizing the sprint backlog during the sprint. The team facilitator does not delegate tasks to team members.

A sprint team has just completed an important sprint, and now will be demonstrating how the deliverable works to the customer while seeking the customer's acceptance. Who should demo the deliverable to the customer?

The team The team demos the increment (deliverable) to the customer (the Product Owner) during a Sprint Review meeting. The Product Owner represents the sponsor, so they are in the position and authority to accept the deliverable. Product Manager is a made-up term.

A 4-week sprint is currently underway, and a team member needs to start a new work task. How will the team member determine what their next work assignment will be?

The team member will go to the Sprint backlog and select the next available, highest priority story to work on Agile team members typically refer to the Sprint Backlog (not the Product Backlog) to retrieve their next work item. The Resource Management Plan and the RAM are both used in traditional waterfall (predictive) project live cycles, rather than on agile projects. The Scrum Master is a facilitator and does not delegate work to team members.

Senior management has just signed off the charter for a new project. While the project consists of some well-defined scope elements, there are other work items that are both complex and not well understood. What would be the best approach for identifying the appropriate project management life cycle?

The team should propose the most appropriate project management approach The overall team should make the decision since that emphasizes a collaborate approach for identifying the best solution. The team approach leverages a variety of individual experiences that is more apt to flush out the most optimum solution.

The scrum master and a key customer are reviewing the information radiator, and they both notice a sharp upward spike on the velocity chart on the most recent sprint. The scrum master mentions that the velocity spike is highly unusual when compared to the prior four iterations. The customer then suggests that the team should strive for a similar high velocity on all of the remaining sprints. What would be an appropriate response by the scrum master?

The team should strive for the prior lower productivity since that would represent a sustainable pace The 8th principle of the Agile Manifesto promotes a sustainable pace of team productivity in order to avoid team burnout and staff turnover. The question states that the velocity spike is "highly unusual" as compared to the prior four iterations, so the best answer is to reduce the velocity to a pace that can be sustainable over the duration of the project. Accurate forecasting is best performed when using consistent historical velocities. Encouraging overtime to push the velocity higher could lead to team burnout and turnover.

David just started working in a functional organization. His Functional Manager, Maude has delegated his tasks for the week. As David is performing those tasks Maude is regularly asking about the status of those tasks and demanding he show her what has been done so far. She assumes that her workers are lazy, do not like to work, and she is often standing behind David's shoulders making sure he is performing the work. What type of manager is Maude?

Theory X Maude is a micromanager, and therefore this describes Theory X. Theory Y is a 'hands off' type of manager who has trust and faith in their workers and believes they are self-disciplined. Theory Z is an extension of Theory Y that institutes a job for life concept. Expectancy Theory is a theory that assumes workers are going to be motivated by certain expectations such as a reward or a bonus.

You are the project manager on a large construction project. Lately, much of the work being performed has not been interesting or exciting, and you have been having difficulty motivating your workers to perform well. You have concluded that some of the workers simply do not like their job, and you often have found yourself having to resort to an authoritarian leadership style. What type of management theory/style are you using?

Theory X Theory X management style assumes that workers are inherently lazy, they do not like to work, and they must be watched very closely. Theory Y assumes people are self-motivated, have a desire to grow, and they can be trusted to work alone. Theory Z is a management theory adopted by many Japanese companies, and usually equates to the company offering a 'job for life' to gain commitment. Theory XYZ is a made up theory.

An agile coach is conducting a high-level training session for his new agile team. The topic being discussed emphasizes the importance of understanding the various project constraints and how they are addressed on typical agile projects. Which of the following is most likely true on typical agile projects?

There is tremendous flexibility in changing the scope between iterations In general, on a typical agile project, 'scope' is the most flexible constraint when compared to schedule and budget. Typically, the customer has the flexibility to change scope between iterations to ensure that the increments have maximum business value. There is typically less flexibility with the schedule and the budget on agile projects. Parametric estimating is a tool used on 'predictive' projects (not agile projects).

You are working on a project for an external client and are about half way through the project. Your client has hired other vendors as well and you have all been diligently working with one another to ensure the goals of the project are being met and requirements satisfied. Your client contact calls you into a meeting and you are informed that Senior Management has decided to cancel the project. Per your contract, they will be terminating your contract early but will reimburse your organization for all the expenses incurred by you and your team and will pay for the work that you have provided. How should you respond in this situation?

This is a Cancellation for Convenience and your client is well within their rights to terminate early under this clause. You should start the closing procedures The buyer has the right to Cancellation for Convenience if negotiated in the contract. It will state the reasons for early termination (in this case the scenario states "per your contract"), and so you would start performing closing processes. There's no evidence here to state your authority level and so you cannot assume you do not have the authority and that you would need to escalate to PMO. This is not a cancellation for cause, which is the same as a breach of contract.

A senior team member is assisting a junior team member fix an issue. The senior team member states that she has come across this issue before and mentions the steps needed to resolve the issue without providing any explanation. Which of the following best describes the knowledge transfer here?

This is tacit knowledge because the senior team member is simply using her past experience to resolve the issue This is tacit knowledge since the senior team member cannot codify why the solution will work but knows that it will, based on her experience

You are planning the work of the next deliverable and you know that due to various external factors this stage of the project is going to be very time constrained. You are in the process of analyzing your stakeholders and trying to determine the best ways to engage your stakeholders. You are currently analyzing which stakeholders your team would need to reach out to quickly because they are a major decision maker on the project and due to the time constraints you want to reach out to them early to make them aware that decisions during this stage need to made quickly. Which category of the Salience model are you analyzing?

This would be the Urgency classification. Notice the question is simply asking what classification you are analyzing (not where the stakeholder should be) on the salience model. The 3 classifications are Power, Legitimacy and Urgency. Stakeholders that fall into all 3 would be definitive. But that is not what the question is asking! The question is asking which one of the 3 are you analyzing in the scenario? In this case it is the Urgency.

What conflict model identifies a team member as being competitive, collaborating, accommodating, or seeks to avoid conflict?

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model The questions describes the quadrant of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model. Competitive is also referred to as "shark", collaborating as "owl", avoiding as "turtle", and accommodating as "teddy bear'.

Based on the Salience Model which stakeholders require the most amount of attention?

Those with power, legitimacy and urgency. The question is asking about the SALIENCE model, which considers three variables at once (power, legitimacy and urgency). High power and high interest is used in the stakeholder classification grids, which only consider two variables at a time (power/interest, power/influence and impact/influence). In the salience model the intersection of all three variables (power, legitimacy and urgency) are the stakeholders who need the most attention.

You are working on a large IT implementation project for a Fortune 500 client. This has been a two-year project that has involved the implementation of many modules for many of the client's functions. You are now in the final 'go live' stages of the project and, for a smoother transition you want all the remaining team members to be in the same physical location. You want to be able to resolve all issues and conflicts without any delay and so you reserve a large conference room for the next three weeks to house all the team members. This is an example of which of the following?

Tight Matrix Placing all team members in the same physical location is known as a Tight Matrix (aka Co-location). This is not micromanaging (theory X), nor are you doing this for team building at this stage (you are towards the end of the project!). Although you want to resolve all issues and conflicts immediately, the act of placing all team members in one place is not Conflict Resolution. It is Tight Matrix.

You are managing the upgrade of a sweet corn factory. The upgrade involves changes to software, hardware and heavy equipment. You have been just notified that a larger company has just acquired the factory that you are working for. Senior management would like to temporarily pull together key personnel and SME's from various geographical dispersed locations into a local war room to discuss impact assessment as well as next steps. What is senior management referring to when they request a war room?

Tight Matrix Relocating employees to a single location (temporarily or permanent) is referred to as co-location. A synonym of co-location is "tight matrix". A matrix organizational structure refers to a structure whereby the PM has two bosses and communication channels can be complex. RAM refers to Responsibility Assignment Matrix and it is a tool in Plan Resource Management. Negotiation is a tool in both Acquire Resources and Conduct Procurement.

You are the project manager on a software development project whereby the requirements are in a state of flux due to changing government regulations impacting your project. You have decided to use Iterative Scheduling as an Agile approach to better adapt to the changing business environment. Time-boxing your incremental iterations is key to making adjustments in a rapid manner. What is a key benefit of time-boxing periods for scheduling purposes?

Time-boxing minimizes scope creep Time-boxing is an Agile term. It refers to establishing fixed time-boxed iterations (ex: 2 week Sprints) where a set of requirements is worked on to develop one or more deliverables. With time-boxing scope creep is minimized since the team is ONLY permitted to work on a sub-set of requirements being worked during the current iteration (time-boxed sprint). However, time-boxing welcomes changes throughout the development life cycle. Change requests must be queued up and prioritized to make it into a subsequent time-boxed iteration. It forces the team to process essential features first, and non-essential features last (not the other way around). The other two answers refer to a different scheduling technique which emphasizes 'on-demand' scheduling using the Kanban system. Work items are pulled from a public Kanban board (essentially a To-do list) by team members and placed in the work-in-process queue until the work is 'done

What are the five elements of the Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix?

Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive, Leading The five elements of the Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix are: Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive, and Leading. Aware and Cooperative are not elements of the matrix. If you are presented with an actual diagram on the exam you should recognize that the letter "C" corresponds to where the stakeholder "Currently" is in the matrix, and the letter "D" corresponds to where you "Desire" the stakeholder to be in the matrix.

Michelle has worked diligently with her team to plan the Sprint Review Meeting. Hillary, the Product Owner approaches Michelle and mentions that Allie, a new Senior Director, who recently joined the organization would like to attend the meeting. Whilst Michelle has never heard of Allie before, she tells Hillary she is looking forward to meeting her. What should Michelle's next step be?

Update Stakeholder Register A new stakeholder (Allie) has been identified so the next step is to update the Stakeholder Register. The other options may be viable to engage the stakeholder.

One of your team members has identified a potential issue that could affect the project. You perform the probability and impact of the potential issue and determine a response strategy. What should you do next?

Update the Risk Register A 'potential issues' is a RISK, and once you have performed a probability and impact assessment the next thing you do is to update the Risk Register. You do not need to immediately inform your key stakeholders - you may need to inform them at some point depending on the nature of the issue but the question is asking what you should do NEXT. Options A and B are distractors since they would be performed on an actual issue.

You are the scrum master on a software development project. You and the product owner are in a meeting with your key users using a template that uses the format: "As a , I want , so that ." What agile technique are you using?

User Stories The template in the question is used for developing STORIES on an agile project. User stories describe a feature and/or functionality desired by the customer during the requirements gathering process. Collect Requirements is a PMBOK process using traditional (predictive) project tools such as interviews, focus groups, brain storming, etc. Delphi refers to collecting information in an anonymous fashion. Blogs is a PMBOK project reporting tool & technique used in the process "Manage Communications".

An agile project has just completed the fourth iteration, and the team is now forecasting the number of iterations required to complete the project. What technique would best assist the team in the forecasting exercise?

Using the velocity of the prior iterations, forecast the remaining project iterations Forecasting on agile projects relies on real, empirical data obtained from prior iterations. Once we know the velocity (story points per iteration) of the prior iterations, then we can forecast the number of iterations needed to complete the project based on team productivity (velocity). This assumes little to no turnover in team membership, and that the past velocity has stabilized and is sustainable going forward. Budget forecasting can also be performed using this same technique.

Your team is in the process of testing a deliverable and the customer is observing them. The testing has not been going according to plan and many defects are being detected which are all being duly noted and submitted back to the appropriate technical team members to fix. Some of these fixes have an impact on the project and so you are performing an impact analysis and submitting the request to the CCB. What is the customer performing?

Validate Scope This question is asking what the CUSTOMER is performing. If the customer is observing while the team is testing that means they are Validating Scope. The team themselves will be performing Quality Control, and the PM here is doing Change Control. Anytime the customer is involved in testing or validating in any way (including just observing) it means they are validating scope.

You are approached by a team member who is confused about what she needs to accomplish on your project. She is asking about what control account to charge her time to while working on a work package. She is also asking questions about what the minimal acceptance criteria is for deliverables associated with that work package. What is the best document to refer her to?

WBS Dictionary The WBS Dictionary will clearly lay out the acceptance criteria for deliverables and what control account the work should bill their time to. The Project Charter is too high level of a document to answer the questions. The WBS is merely a graphical view of the decomposition of work elements, and it will not address questions related to deliverable acceptance criteria. Team Charter is an output of Plan Resource Management and is focused on addressing standards for team behavior.

All of the following are examples of cost of conformance except for which one?

Warranty work Warranty work is an external failure cost, which is a cost of non-conformance (external failure cost meaning that the customer is finding issues). All of the other options are preventive costs, which are costs of conformance.

Senior Management are asking for your advice on whether Agile would be the right approach for the next systems implementation project. What advice would you give?

We should use an agile suitability questionnaire to assess whether Agile would be the right approach Agile will not work in every organization in every situation. It is best to first use an Agile Suitability Questionnaire to assess the culture, team skills and nature of the project to determine if agile will be suitable. It is incorrect to state that every IT project works best in Agile (the organizational culture has to allow for it too). You do not necessarily need to hire an agile coach to determine this. It is true that a cost baseline or schedule baseline cannot be established in agile, but that is not the reason to decline agile.

What would not be on the agenda for discussion at a Retrospective meeting at the end of an iteration?

What features should have been included in the product increment? "Reviewing" stories and features that should have been included in the product increment, (or not included) - are not topics for a Retrospective. (They would be topics for a Review Meeting.)

An agile team is estimating story points during a sprint planning session. The scrum master would like to play a team game which would anonymously solicit estimates from individual team members, while also ensuring that individual estimates are openly shared and discussed without revealing the names of the team members. What game should the scrum master play?

Wideband Delphi Delphi is used when the exercise needs to be 100% anonymous. Wideband Delphi is a variation of Delphi in that the initial collection of data (estimates) is anonymous, however once the estimates are gathered by the agile project leader, the estimates themselves may or may not be openly debated, depending on which game is played. An objective of both techniques is to reliably collect information while simultaneously avoiding the risk of "Group Think" or the "Bandwagon Effect". For example; by keeping the collection of estimates anonymous, there is less likelihood that a senior team member's estimate will influence the estimate coming from a less junior level team member. Secret Monopoly is a made-up term, and MoSCoW is a prioritization technique.

You are a project manager of a very small project for a manufacturing company. The sponsor has informed you that she feels that the PMBOK framework is overkill for her small project. You then decide to cherry-pick and include only those processes and procedures that are needed for your small project. Planning your project's earlier phases in high detail, and planning for the later project phases in low detail describes which of the following?

You are applying the rolling wave technique This is a classic bait-and-switch question. A popular technique in protecting yourself against the bait-and-switch is to read the last sentence first (the sentence ending with a question mark). On very long questions it's often helpful to read the last two full sentences. The bait here is attempting to lure you into the "tailoring" technique answer, however the actual question (the last sentence) is referring to the "rolling wave" technique. Rolling wave pertains to planning in detail the early phases of a project, while doing high summary level planning in the latter phases in a project. Tailoring is the technique used to carefully select ONLY the PMBOK processes which are applicable for your project. Progressive elaboration is a generic phrase referring to start small and progressively elaborate as we learn more over time. Rolling wave is a form of Progressive Elaboration. Delphi technique refers to gathering information anonymously and usually is applied when there are schedule or personality conflicts on a project.

You are managing a high visibility project in your company and senior management is regularly interested in the progress of this project You have set up status meetings every two weeks to explain to them the progress and status of the project. In this particular meeting, you are providing the following metrics: PV= 45,200; EV = 39,800; AC = 37,300. Which of the following is true?

You are behind schedule but under budget Since EV (what you have achieved so far) is less than PV (what you should have achieved so far), you are behind schedule. But since AC (what you have spent so far) is less than EV (what you have achieved, and therefore should have spent so far), you are under budget.

You are managing a project to implement a new website for a customer. This new website will have many new functionalities that was not present on their old website and it will also be much easier for your customer to add and advertise new products to sell to their customers. You are in the User Acceptance Testing phase of the project and most of your customer contacts that are involved in the testing are really impressed with the new website. One person however is not happy and is very vocal about some requirements that were not delivered. Moreover he is stating that the website cannot go live until those requirements are implemented. You are wondering who this person is but you notice that the other client contacts are nervously agreeing. In reviewing the requirements documentation you see that those requirements are not listed. What is the most likely reason for this?

You failed to identify this person as a key stakeholder. The fact that everyone is agreeing with this person means that he must be an influential person in the customer's organization. And the fact that you don't know who this person is implies that you missed identifying him as a key stakeholder. The requirements are all collected and the work was complete according to the requirements so the other options are incorrect. The person isn't attempting scope creep; no one got his requirements in the 1st place.

You are planning the communications of a project where there is a lot of uncertainty about how the project is going to progress, and the customer themselves are unsure about their detailed requirements. Due to this you recommend an approach where there are many short-term deliverables and the customer is highly involved during and at the end of each iteration. Which of the following is true?

You have decided on an Agile approach and have determined that daily stand up meetings will be the best way to communicate the achievements and issues of the previous day and plans for the current day. This scenario best describes an Agile environment where daily stand up meetings are a key tool to understand the issues and achievements of the prior day and plans for the current. The key here is that there is UNCERTAINTY, the customer is unsure about their requirements and they are continuously involved. The best approach is to use rapid iterations (or Sprints) which is Agile. Predictive is used for well understood projects where much of the detailed planning is performed early on in the project. Weekly status meetings are not effective in an Agile environment.

You are the project manager overseeing the development of a new ecommerce web site for your organization with a hard, mandated go-live date. Senior management has very high expectations that the new site will bring in new revenues for the organization. Unfortunately, you have learned that one of your key subcontractors is falling behind schedule on their work which may potentially push your scheduled go-live date out by 30 days. The project sponsor happens to be in your office area and drops by your office to share with you the great feedback that she is receiving on how well your project is going. How should you respond to the sponsor's praise?

You mention to the sponsor that there is an issue with your subcontractor, and that if you and your team are unable to resolve the issue the project may be delayed by 30 days. It is not enough to simply mention to the sponsor that there is an issue with your subcontractor, however you and your team are on top of the issue. We also need to be totally transparent and inform the sponsor that the project may also be delayed by 30 days. Once again, transparency is the key on exam questions. We don't cover up, conceal, be deceitful, or be untruthful about events. The other three answers are not as honest and transparent as we need to be.

Your project is currently over budget and behind schedule with an SPI of .75 and a CPI of .85. Senior management and the customer are not happy, and they are considering cancelling the project. They are performing ROR calculations to justify the continuation of your project and one senior manager continues to complain about the money that has been spent thus far on the project. What would be your best response to this senior manager?

You should explain to the senior manager that the money that has been spent thus far should be considered sunk costs and that the team should focus on evaluating the return on investment of any new monies spent looking forward. Money already spent is considered a sunk cost. Best practices suggest that the team should not consider sunk costs in their financial forecasts. It's water over the damn, and decisions now should be looking forward using project selection techniques such as cost/benefit analysis, payback analysis, ROI and maximizing NPV. Empathizing with senior management is a great interpersonal skill, however it does not solve the problem. Cost/Benefits analysis is a valuable technique however benefits should exceed costs, not the other way around. Removing team members should not be the first choice of action.

Your organization is new to agile management and Senior Management want to know what your responsibilities will be as a team facilitator. What will you not tell them?

You will be transparent and will communicate clearly the expectations and tasks of each team member The team facilitator is a servant leader who ensures that impediments are removed, and the team has the tools and information to perform their work. They do not delegate tasks or expectations to the team.

You are the project manager of an agile team in a tight matrix arrangement. Which of the following is not?

You will collaborate with the team and assign tasks according to team member's skill sets and aspirations In agile the team members determine the work that they will perform, you will not assign tasks to team members. Tight matrix implies the team is co-located and so osmotic communication will be prevalent. There is frequent communication between the team and stakeholders (frequent feedback loops).