Important Questions for PMP Certification Exam

1. Scope

A project stakeholder is trying to add some scope to your project. The project sponsor specifically said this scope was not part your project when the charter was signed. What should you do?

• A: See if you have made enough progress that would allow this change to be made
• B: See if you have any cash reserves that would allow this change to be made
• C: Reject the request, the scope cannot be added
• D: Talk to the sponsor again

2. Time

You are in the process of developing the schedule for the project, and have been given the following activity duration estimates. However, the project sponsors would like you to shave a few weeks off the project duration. Which activity should you shorten in order to reduce the overall duration of the project?

Activity	Estimate
Start – S	2
Start – T	9
Start – U	14
S – W	4
T – S	Dummy
U – X	1
T – X	10
W- End	8
X – End	1

A- Activity W-End

B- Activity Start-S

C- Activity T-S

D- Activity T-X

3. Cost

You are a project manager who is in charge of a technical documentation project. The project is 30% complete after 2 months and has cost $53,000. The budget for the project is $90,000 and is scheduled to last 6 months. How is the project performing?

A- The project is behind schedule and over budget.

B- The project is ahead of schedule and under budget

C- The project is ahead of schedule and over budget.

D- The project is behind schedule and under budget.

4. Quality

Quality costs are the total costs incurred by investing in preventing non-conformance to requirements. Failure costs are often categorized into external and internal. Failure costs are also known as:

A- Sunk Costs

B- Indirect Costs

C- Cost of Poor Quality

D- Cost of Noncompliance

5. Human Resources

Theory X management is based upon an assumption that:

A-  Quality improvements lie in the hands of quality circles

B-  Profits are tied to meeting the project’s baseline milestones

C-  Absenteeism is tied to poor working conditions

D-  Workers are inherently unmotivated and need strong guidance

6. Communications

You are holding a kick off meeting for the build out of a new data center. This will be the largest, most costly and most complex project you have worked on in your career. You have counted up the number of stakeholders, vendors and project team members to be 52. In order to stress to the group how important and difficult communication will be on the project you want to tell them how many channels of communication exist on the project. What would you tell them?

A- 1326

B- 2704

C- 52

D- 2625

7. Risk

Due to unforeseen circumstances your supplier has run out of the cement needed for your construction project. What is the BEST strategy for dealing with this issue?

A- Refer to the risk register.

B- Transfer the risk.

C- Implement the contingency response strategy.

D- Implement a workaround.

8. Procurement

You are working with your Procurement Department trying to decide whether to buy or lease an item needed in an upcoming phase of your project. The item costs $2000 plus $50 a day to run. You can rent it at a rate of $150 a day. How long will it take for the lease to match the purchase price?

A- 10 days

B- 20 days

C- 30 days

D- 40 days

9. Integration

As the project manager for the Walk Fast Shoes project, you are adding to the project charter to document the boundaries of the project. The BEST source of information at this stage of development is:

A- Lessons learned from past projects

B- Standard guidelines

C- Project sponsor

D- Various stakeholders

10. Professional Responsibility

You notice a mistake on one of the invoices going to your client from your company’s accounts receivable department. You know your company is overbilling hours for last month, but you also know the customer is clueless and depends upon you to reconcile these invoices. Your best response to this would be:

A- Tell your A/R department that their invoice is wrong and make sure they correct the error at once.

B- Cover-up as best you can, since the customer will not know the difference, and probably doesn’t care.

C- Ignore the situation; it is not your problem

D- Tell the customer that he will be getting an invoice that has a mistake on it and that he should take it up with the A/R dept.

Answers :

1- C

Justification:

The best choice is to reject the change. The sponsor specifically did not want this scope as part of the project. Even if you have time or cash, they are not to be used for this purpose.

2- A

Justification:

Since the path “Start-T, T-S, S-W, W-End” has the longest duration, this path is considered the critical path of the project. In order to reduce the duration of the overall project, one should reduce the duration of the activities on the critical path. Hence, based on the available choices, one should reduce the duration of Activity W-End.

3 – A

Justification:

The project is behind schedule; since after two months, less than one-third of the work is complete. It is also over budget, since more than one-third of the budget has been exhausted and there is two-thirds of the project left to go. This assumes that an equal amount of work has been planned for each month of the project.

Use Earned Value formulas:

Actual Costs (AC) = 53K.

Planned Value (PV) is 2 months into 6 months project i.e. one-third of 90k = 30k.

The Earned Value (EV) = 90k * .3 = 27k.

Cost Variance CV = EV – AC = 27k – 53k = -26k, minus implies over-budget.

Schedule Variance SV = EV – PV = 27k – 30k = -3k, minus implies behind schedule.

4 – C

Justification:

Failure costs are also called cost of poor quality. PMBOK 4th. ed. pg. 195

5 – D

Justification:

McGregor’s Theory X theory states that workers are lazy and unmotivated and need to be excessively managed in order for them to be productive.

6 – A

Justification:

Communication Channel formula is N(N-1)/2 where N=Number of people involved on the project. Number of communication channels is 52(52-1)/2 52*51=2652 2652/2=1326 PMBOK Pg. 253.

7 – D

Justification:

In this situation, you would need to come up with a workaround. A workaround is similar to a contingency response strategy, but differs in that the risk was unexpected and a response was not planned prior to the risk event. Hence it will not be in the risk register. Contingent response strategy is a means to address specific identified risks through a formal process and provide resources to meet risk events if they occur. The question states the problem was unforeseen.

8 – B

Justification:

The calculation is as follows. Let D = number of days.

150D = 2000 + 50D

150D – 50D = 2000

100D = 2000 => D = 20 days. So if you need the item for more than 20 days, it is cheaper to buy it.

9 – C

Justification:

The project sponsor should be able to provide authoritative background information about the project. They will also refer you to the best contact for specific details. PMBOK 4th. ed. pg. 25

10 – A

Justification:

It is best to handle the error yourself, before it gets as far as the customer. If he depends on you to manage invoices, you would be doing your job by handling it