CAPM Practice Exam Questions Flashcards
An approach called ____ is when Agile teams focus on the most valuable work they can complete within each iteration.
Timeboxing
What can be tailored?
Processes, engagement, tools, methods and artifacts
What cannot be tailored?
Stakeholders, deliverables
You are reviewing the CPI for a project and see that the value is 1.05. What does this mean?
The project is spending $1 and getting $1.05 in return.
What are examples of informal written communication?
Brief notes, social media, emails
A ____ is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure
Examples of explicit knowledge include ____.
symbols
What is the difference between crashing and fast tracking a project?
Crashing involves adding resources while fast tracking involves performing in parallel activities you would normally do in sequence
Projects can face a lot of uncertainty. It’s important to be on the lookout for negative risks. What’s another name for negative risks?
Threats
Which development approach is most useful when deliverables are modularized, or when there are deliverables that can be delivered by different project teams?
Hybrid
You’re given a project that has quite a bit of uncertainty. As the project progresses, the situation becomes clearer. Which development approach might yield the best results?
Hybrid
The expected monetary value (EMV) is calculated by multiplying ____.
Probability and impact
You have been managing a project for the last six months when your sponsor tells you the project needs to be abandoned because funding was pulled. What is the best way to approach this?
If a project is cancelled before completion, it is still essential to properly close it.
____ includes all costs incurred over the life of the product by investment in preventing nonconformance to requirements, appraisal of the product or service for conformance to requirements, and failure to meet requirements.
Cost of Quality (COQ)
What defines the approach for how a project is initiated, planned, executed, controlled, and closed?
Project management plan
You are negotiating with one of your vendors for better terms. You want to find a mutually acceptable arrangement that is amenable to both parties. Which conflict resolution technique should you use?
Compromising
Which EVM calculation indicates that your project is going better than planned?
CPI > 1.0
Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a ___ effect on one or more project objectives.
positive or negative
Your company is going to be working on a website similar to one done six months ago. What can you do to speed up the human resource planning for this project?
Use the previous project’s roles and responsibilities.
What are examples of earned value management measures?
Cost Performance Index (CPI), Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
You are a project manager for a mattress manufacturer. Your project team is in the process of designing new mattress springs, but a deadline is quickly approaching. Several of your team members begin to argue as they jockey for position? Which stage of Tuckman’s Ladder is your team in?
Storming
Eric is a Scrum Master starting on his first Agile project. Since he’s working with stakeholders, he wants to gain clarity on how he’ll know the deliverables are ready for customer use. What checklist will help him figure this out?
Definition of Done (DoD)
____ is used to gather more information from the market prior to sending out bid documents to a set of selected vendors.
RFI
A sprint retrospective ____.
gives the team time to explore their work and results in order to improve
What is the primary difference between management and contingency reserves?
Management reserves are for unknown events while contingency reserves are for identified risks.
You have implemented some key corrective changes. Where should these changes and the reasons for them be documented?
Lessons learned
Your team is working on the project and incorporates some upgrades and additional features without approval of the change control board. What is this situation called?
gold plating
You are setting up contingency funds for an identified risk. The risk would cost the project $400,000 and has a 15% chance of occurring. What contingency amount do you need to set aside?
You should set aside $60,000
You have a couple of team members who have been constantly arguing about the best way to approach a critical failure in medical software. Both approaches will solve the issue but one will take longer to write the code. This bug needs to be resolved immediately. What is the best way to resolve this issue?
Forcing
You are taking over a project that has been managed in a predictive manner. After the first week, you notice the customer is asking you for more frequent updates and they want to see what progress you’ve made. What is the best way to handle this?
Tailor your approach
You are a project manager working for a risk-averse company. During negotiations with a seller, what type of contract would be most favorable?
Firm fixed price
What are the five process groups?
Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing
You need to overlap 3 tasks to get the project done on time. What is this known as?
fast tracking
Adaptive project management is also known as ___.
Agile project management
What is meant by float and slack?
Float and slack both mean the amount of time that a task can be delayed without affecting the project end date.
Your team is decomposing the project scope and creating the WBS. They encounter a section that cannot be decomposed until additional information becomes available later on in the project. This is an example of what?
Progressive elaboration
If you’re a hands-on, top-down manager, what theory are you using?
Theory X
You’ve been assigned to manage an existing project to upgrade your organization’s IT system. Your project team has already created the WBS, developed work package estimates, and drawn the project network diagram. What should be performed next?
Develop an initial project schedule.
You are examining several defects in the deliverables and want to examine the possible causes and effects of the problems. You tell your team you want them to work on which of the following?
Ishikawa diagram
You are working on an ordered list of user-centric requirements that a team maintains for a product. It is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum team. What is this called?
Product backlog
____ provide closure for sprints.
Sprint reviews
What are possible outcomes of a negotiation?
win-win, win-lose/lose-win, lose-lose
What is an example of a project document?
Project schedule
Your team is putting in new wireless devices in the hospital. You see that the new devices are set to operate on the same radio frequency as some heart monitors. The planned response is to change the wireless device frequency so that it does not interfere with the heart monitors. What type of risk response is this?
risk avoidance
Your project has a BAC of $120,000 and is expected to last one year. You are currently in month 4 and you have spent $50,000. The project is only 20% complete. What is the Planned Value (PV) of the project?
$40,000
Your team has some inexperienced contractors and they are asking how far the WBS should be broken down .The lowest level item in a WBS is known as what?
work package
You’ve hired an expert contractor to complete the difficult piece of a work package that has been identified as a risk. What kind of risk response is this?
Transfer
You are looking over the latest cost figures. The CPI is 1.3 but the SPI is 0.8 which is raising a concern. You are in what process group?
Monitoring and controlling
You’re working on a 1-year proejct and the information is given.
PV = $20,000, EV = $25,000, AC=$24,000, BAC = $120,000
What is the schedule variance?
$5,000
SV = EV - PV
What form of contract is the most common?
Firm fixed price
In which situation would you use escalating opportunities?
The project team or the project sponsor agrees that an opportunity is outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.
You are the project manager at a large commercial institution. During the execution of your project, you notice you’re being inundated with frequent changes to the project charter. Who should primarily be responsible for deciding whether the changes to the project charter are necessary?
Project sponsor
Your team is working on the project and a number of changes to the scope have been made at the request of a key stakeholder but not approved. This is an example of ____.
Scope creep
A key change to the project scope has been approved and the project manager must update all but one of the following documents. Which document will not be updated?
Project charter
Which document authorizes the use of organizational resources to complete a project?
Project charter
What are some components of a project budget?
Cost baseline, management reserves, work cost estimates
The local government is reviewing the environmental impact statement for the project work, since they are concerned about some of the chemicals being used. In this situation, the local government is ____.
A stakeholder
The project manager has not been overly concerned about quality and now there is rework to be done. This is considered what?
Cost of poor quality
Slack is also known as ___.
Float
What do you call the iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available?
Progressive elaboration
Alexandria says you can move to project closure once all of the deliverables have been completed. Raj says you have to wait until the deliverables are accepted. Who is correct?
Alexandria
The project manager has tasked you with maintaining the risk register. What is the risk register?
A list of all the risks that have been identified in the project, which may be updated and expanded throughout the project
What is a secondary risk?
A new risk that is created when responding to the first risk that’s solved.
A key characteristic of Agile teams is that they should be ____.
Self-directed
What is a risk strategy applicable to both threats and opportunities?
Acceptance
Your project is dependent on the city government passing a new regulation. What is the risk response to this regulation?
Acceptance
Olivia is in the process of negotiating a new contract with a vendor. What is her optimal outcome?
win-win
What is the primary objective of a daily standup?
Review project team’s progress from the previous day, declare intentions for the current day, and highlight obstacles encountered or anticipated.
Which issue typically causes the most conflict over the life of a project?
Schedule
___ is the deliberate adaptation of the project management approach, governance, and processes to make them more suitable for the given environment and the work at hand.
tailoring
Your team has just completed its final deliverable. What comes next?
Formal closure
You had 14 stakeholders at the project’s beginning but 3 of them no longer need information. What is the difference in the number of communication channels between the start of the project and now?
36
When team members assign abstract, but relative, points of effort required to implement a user story, they are engaging in ____.
story point estimating
Which position issues the project charter?
Project sponsor
What describes where the project stands at specific points in time?
Status reports
What is the formula for Cost Performance Index (CPI)?
EV/AC
Examples of tacit knowledge include ___.
Experiences, Insights, Beliefs
What is the role of a project manager in a Scrum environment?
Scrum doesn’t include a project manager role
What’s the best reason to use an RFQ versus an RFP?
An RFQ can be used when the primary deciding factor is based on pricing, while an RFP can be used to gather different approaches to delivering the same results.
You are in the process of verifying your deliverables for correctness. What process group are you in?
Monitoring & controlling
The project scope has been completed and met with formal approval. The next day, two key stakeholders realize that a key piece of information is listed incorrectly. They ask you, the project manager, to change it. How should you respond?
Ask them to submit a change request.
You need a quick way to estimate a project so you find a similar project in the historical records. You’ll use this to develop the estimate. What form of estimate is this known as?
Analogous
What allows organizations to measure their performance in certain areas and compare them over time?
metrics
A template, document, output, or project deliverable is ___.
An artifact
You are working on a matrix that ranks the chance of a risk happening and how bad the effect will be. What are you designing?
A probability and impact matrix
You’re managing a project with a restricted budget. The PMO wants the most accurate budget that you can get so that they can make the funds available. Which is the most accurate form of budgeting?
Bottom-up estimating
You’re working as an IT project manager for a large telecom company. You want one of your vendors to provide services for your project, but the work isn’t clearly defined. What type of contract should you use?
Time and material
You are building the project schedule and are making an estimate for a critical activity. Using the information below, what is the PERT calculation?
Pessimistic: 18 days, Optimistic: 7 days, Most likely: 10 days
11 days
What are the 8 Project Performance Domains?
Stakeholders, Team, Development Approach and Life Cycle, Planning, Project Work, Delivery, Measurement, and Uncertainty
Disciplined, rational, logical, evidence-based thinking are included in ___.
Critical thinking
What is an approach that is both iterative and incremental to refine work items and deliver frequently?
Agile Life Cycle
In ____, the work is organized into small sprints and leverages the use of Kanban boards to visualize and monitor the work.
Scrumban
What is another name for a burn chart?
Burnup
You need to add additional labor to get the project done on time. What is this called?
Crashing
The vendor you initially selected is having production problems and cannot deliver the parts at the needed date. One of the other vendors can send the parts but at a premium price. The change control board approves of the change and you get the parts. This is known as what?
Workaround
You’re speaking with a senior executive who appears to be risk averse. Which business justification analysis method is this executive most likely to be concerned about?
Payback period
What is the primary difference between accuracy and precision?
Accuracy deals with correctness while precision deals with exactness
The most unusual activity relationship is ______.
Start to finish
As a project manager in a strong matrix organization, your authority is _____.
moderate to strong.
You meet with the team and discover that due to a misunderstanding the project will be completed late. What should your next step be?
Notify the project sponsor of the problem and the solutions you are considering.
What is risk threshold?
The measure of acceptable variation around an objective that reflects the risk appetite of the organization and stakeholders
The PMO is considering a new project that your company has not worked on before and wants a rough estimate by tomorrow morning. Which estimating technique should you use?
Order of magnitude
Which Agile and lean framework deems it more important to complete work than to start new work?
Kanban
The Agile Manifesto values customer collaboration over contract _____.
negotiation
Your organization is considering a new project to work on but the PMO wants you to review it to see if it is a good financial decision. Which project selection method should you use?
Cost-benefit analysis
You are examining a control chart and notice eleven consecutive points are all above the mean but within the control limits. This could be related to which quality issue?
Rule of seven
Tuckman Ladder describes the stages of ____.
Team development
The processes in this process group complete the work defined in the project management plan.
Executing
As the PM in a weak matrix, you are working on a project which will be sharing a number of resources from different functional departments. Who has the authority over these resources?
The functional managers of each department
The majority of a project’s time and budget is spent on project ___.
executing
You’re halfway through your HR systems implementation project when your customer asks you to add a few more features, but they don’t want to change anything else on the project. What is the best description of this situation?
Scope creep is uncontrolled changes to scope without adjusting your schedule, budget, or resources.
Your project is nearing completion when a previously undocumented risk is identified. The risk could negatively affect the outcome of the project. Which is the best action to perform next?
Analyze the risk
You’ve been managing your current project team for a month. Some seem less motivated than others. Upon further inquiry, you find out that they haven’t received a raise in three years. This leads you to believe that ___ may be causing motivational issues on your team.
Hygiene factors
Are project managers and program managers the same thing?
No, project managers fulfill functions necessary for projects to run effectively and efficiently while program managers provide leadership and direction for project managers heading the projects within their programs
Your project has been accepted by the customer and you are beginning the close out process. One major step is to gather the project records for the archiving process. What needs to be gathered?
Faxes regarding purchase orders, emails with the vendors about project work, contracts
Why is a work breakdown structure (WBS) necessary?
It captures all of the work necessary to complete project deliverables.
___ are individuals or groups with a vested interest in the outcome of a project.
Stakeholders
Andrea wants to get pricing information for one hundred photographs for an event. What does she need to do?
Issue a request for quote.
Traditional project management is also called ___.
Predictive project management
What document should you review first to understand why a project was funded?
Project charter
The project you are working on has a BAC of $100,000 and is scheduled to last 3 months. The current SPI is 0.7 and is in week 9. What statement is most likely true about this project?
The project is behind schedule
You have a couple of team members who are constantly arguing about the best way to approach problems in the design of the software. What is the best way to resolve this issue?
Collaboration and problem solving
You are working on a chart which shows each team member’s involvement with a given activity. What are you working on?
RACI chart
You’re managing a telecom project where you’re faced with a potential threat that could derail your project if it isn’t properly addressed. What is the best way to deal with this?
Transfer
What is the best way to describe the difference between an Agile approach to planning and a traditional approach?
In an Agile approach, the product owner creates a product backlog and pulls user stories from the top for a time box sprint. In the traditional approach, deliverables aren’t executed until the detailed project management plan is approved.
___ helps you identify which tasks must be completed on time in order for the project to meet its deadlines.
Critical Path Method
What type of contract or agreement would be ideal for a staff augmentation?
Time and materials
A _ is a methodology that converts an organization’s value drivers such as customer service, innovation, operational efficiency, and financial performance into a series of defined metrics.
Balanced scorecard
Who is not a stakeholder?
Competitors
What are some communication methods?
Pull, interactive, push
If a buyer is mostly concerned about price, what type of bid document should they use?
RFQ
A vendor conference is also known as a ____.
Bidder conference
Which performance domain addresses activities and functions associated with stakeholders?
Stakeholder
What is the primary difference between a project team and a project management team?
A project team includes people who are performing the work of the project to achieve its objectives while project management team members are directly involved in project management activities.
What is the purpose of a project charter?
It authorizes the project.
Which performance domain organizes, elaborates, and coordinates project work throughout the project?
Planning
You are a consultant working on a project. They need some equipment that your friend sells. You could save the contractor money by convincing your friend to sell the equipment at a lower profit margin. Since you have the ability to buy these from the project budget, no one would be aware of the savings. What should you do?
Do not influence the decision and follow the set procedures for such purchases.
What are some agile estimated methods?
bucket systems, parametric estimating, affinity estimating
___ is a thinking strategy to explain a process, framework, or phenomenon.
Model
The SPI is 0.80. What does this mean?
SPI means the project is behind schedule and only 80% of the planned value is done.
What best supports the management of large programs with interrelated or similar or different projects?
Portfolio management
A scrum master ___ ___assign tasks to individual people.
does not
PERT stands for ____.
Performance Evaluation and Review Technique
When is it best to hold a kickoff meeting?
After the project charter is created
What should always be one of the first considerations for a sponsor, the stakeholders, and a project manager, as it deals with one of the most critical factors in project success or failure? (Question format)
What benefits will be gained, and to what extent are those benefits considered to be not only only a priority but actually both measurable and achievable?
Your sponsor has just told you that they have been informed by the finance department that if costs exceed US$14,000,000, the project will receive no further funding for this fiscal year. This is an example of which of the following?
Constraint
The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements is a definition for ___.
Project management
Activities that occur repetitively within an organization and produce deliverables that are similar or even identical are most likely referred to as ___.
Operations
During a status meeting, your construction manager told the team that workers ran into a very hard substance. They aren’t certain what this might be, but they found a similar substance throughout the area of the foundation. This is an example of a ___.
Issue
What refers to the establishing alternative sets of plans to account for possible impacts to project time, scope, or cost?
Risk management
Activities within an organization that work together to achieve some prioritized or strategic value might be best considered as ____.
A portfolio
Activities within an organzation that are managed as a related thread that leads to a common set of deliverables is best thought of as ___.
A program
What best describes how a project can be a vehicle for change?
A project manager attempts to minimize risks, takes a step-by-step approach to the execution of tasks, adapts to the needs of the organization, and involves stakeholders in the definition of deliverables and processes.
If you are trying to establish the scope of a project ,refine the objectives, and define the courses of action required to attain the objectives, you are attempting to manage which of the following Project Management Process Groups?
Initiating
What is a specific approach to project management in which a team has constant communication with stakeholders, determines which of several requirements can be started next ,and then quickly demonstrates working features?
Adaptive project management
You have been asked to work with a project sponsor, a team, and subject matter experts to develop an appropriate project delivery strategy and to implement that strategy in a way that maximizes the value of the project to the organization. You are being asked to apply which skills of the PMI Talent Triangle?
Business acumen
Which performance domain deals with activities and functions associated with the initial, ongoing, and evolving organizations and coordination necessary for delivering project deliverables and outcomes?
Planning
What type of meeting is called to establish a final project schedule, considering all the constraints and scope requirements of the project?
Planning meeting
Anyone who is either positively or negatively affected by the potential outcomes of the project is considered a ____.
Stakeholder
A code of ethics states, “It is our duty to make decisions and act impartially and objectively. Our conduct must be free from competing self-interest, prejudice, and favoritism.” This concept is a part of which component of project management ethics?
Fairness
You have been asked to make time to plan thoroughly and prioritize diligently and to manage project elements, including your schedule, cost, resources, and risks. You also need to identify and assign resources necessary for the project. You are being asked to apply which skills of the PMI Talent Triangle?
Ways of working
You are the project manager for special effects for a video production specialty company. Your project team handles contract work for other production companies. Each request is given a project number, and your team works on 8-10 projects at a time. Each request goes through all the typical project stages. You work directly with your client for each request and you hire specialists as needed. You are most likely to be in which type of organizational structure?
Projectized
What is a central group in an organization that issues standard document templates, oversees project management software that is used, and regularly reviews project documentation that is submitted to be sure that the project is following the standard internal approaches for project management in your organization?
PMO
Stakeholder analysis can identify to what extent a certain stakeholder could choose to decide things about a project. This particular dimension of stakeholder analysis has to do with the ___ of the stakeholder.
Power
You are the project manager for digital marketing for your university. Your project team represents digital marketing specialists from each of the component colleges. Each of them reports to a dean within their college, but these specialists report to you for purposes of carrying out any digital marketing efforts; they must have your authorization to engage in specific digital marketing projects for their colleges. You set the standards for the university for all digital marketing efforts, and you report to the VP of marketing and communications, with whom you work to prioritize the projects according to university strategic goals. You are most likely to be in which type of organizational structure?
Matrix strong
You call your new project team to a conference meeting and explain the project. You talk with the team members about how valuable each of them is to the team, the specific traits of each that you particularly find helpful, and your desire to help them grow and develop in their careers through this project. In particular, you tell them that they’re part of an elite team of specialists who are capable of achieving significant excellence and that you are here to help them to do that. Which skills of the PMI Talent Triangle are you applying?
Power skills
All project managers must become certified internally by a central group that has the authority to assign project managers to specific projects within all divisions of the organization. This central group provides training for junior project managers before they are assigned to their first project. This structure suggests that this central group is known as a ____.
PMO
Stakeholder analysis can identify the degree to which a stakeholder’s role is directly associated with a project or whether their role is less involved in a project’s definition or execution. This particular dimension of stakeholder analysis has to do with the ___ of the stakeholder.
Proximity
A tool used by project managers is a grid that shows resources across the top in columns and tasks down the side for each row. In each cell is a code that indicates who has what responsibility, who should be informed about the task, where to go to find out if a task is complete, and who can provide special expertise about a particular subject. What is the name for this specific tool?
RACI
In your organization, senior-level executives who represent all functional areas of the organization are set up to review all pending proposals for projects and determine which are resourced and allowed to begin. The group meets periodically and evaluates the extent to which a given project, or a major change to an existing project, would bring priority value to the organization. This structure suggests that this group would be known as a ____.
Steering committee
This person is a member of your project team who works with you to direct the project. This person essentially “owns” the project and is accountable for its value to the organization. This person started the original idea of the project and is responsible for making certain that resources are made available to it. This person is known as the ____.
Project sponsor
