PMBOK Questionnaire Flashcards
What is the purpose of a project charter?
To formally authorize a project or a phase and document initial requirements which satisfy the stakeholder’s needs and expectations.
The concept of (the) _________ states that changes related to one requirement—scope, time, or cost—will at least influence one other element.
Triple constraint
What does the term best practice often refer to?
A specific sequence of work, described in terms of soft logic.
_________ are usually not a manifestation of unique organizational cultures and styles.
Individual traits and attitudes of co-workers
Which of the following is generally not regarded as an element of active listening? o Making eye contact o Paraphrasing o Interpreting the information o Interrupting when appropriate
Interrupting when appropriate
You were able to obtain measuring equipment with very high accuracy and precision. You used it to make a sequence of measurements directly at a production process output and depicted the results on the following control chart. (See Word Document)
Which statement is the best conclusion from these results?
o The process has high precision but low accuracy. It should be adjusted.
o The process has high precision but low accuracy. It should be improved.
o The process has high accuracy but low precision. It should be adjusted.
o The process has high accuracy but low precision. It should be improved.
The process has high precision but low accuracy. It should be adjusted.
Which document is developed along the risk management processes from identify risks through perform qualitative risk analysis to control risks?
Risk register
A facilitator should…
give guidance as required without interfering.
As the project manager in a software project which is currently initiated, you want to assess high-level risks. What should you do?
Develop the project charter and a risk management plan to start identifying risks based on those and other documents.
What should managers consider before conducting a performance-evaluation interview with a project team member?
Has the employee been provided with sufficient instructions and work tools?
Which statement describes best handling of assumptions during the initiating processes?
o It is the responsibility of the sales person in charge to identify all risks related to a customer project.
o Managing and organizing assumptions means avoiding risks right from the start of the project.
o Organizational, environmental and external assumptions should be addressed by the project charter.
o Risks are a sign of uncertainty. Avoiding all uncertainties means that a project should have no risks at all.
Organizational, environmental and external assumptions should be addressed by the project charter.
A WBS dictionary is a document which…
describes the details for each component in the WBS
You are in the process of planning a project and found that stakeholders often have varying objectives and requirements. This makes it hard to come up with a plan with which all objectives will be met. What is probably most helpful to ensure common understanding?
o Ask the project stakeholders to build focus groups in order to discuss and remedy conflicting interests.
o Create an exhaustive document describing your point of view and ask stakeholders to review it.
o Let each stakeholder write a statement of work, merge the documents to a project scope statement.
o Use your authorization as the project manager to clearly prioritize the different objectives.
Ask the project stakeholders to build focus groups in order to discuss and remedy conflicting interests.
Projects frequently do not meet customer expectations for which of the following reasons?
o Poor risk management by the contractor running the project
o Poor technical ability of the contractor running the project for the customer
o Technical inability and poor risk management by the contractor
o Unclear scope definition by the customer for whom the project is performed
Technical inability and poor risk management by the contractor
What is typical for critical chain project management?
o Management of buffers
o Management of total floats and free floats
o Management of leads and lags
o Management of resource over-allocations
Management of buffers
You are the project manager for the development of a new type of power plant. Your project is making fast progress, and it is getting nearer to the day of product acceptance. Which technique will be most important for product acceptance?
o Inspection
o Quality audit
o Impact analysis
o Team review
Inspection
What are the cost types in modern quality management?
Prevention costs – appraisal costs – failure costs
During the execution of a project to build a complex defense system, your team has run into a deep crisis.
The project’s goal and objectives have been challenging right from the start, but now you have discovered that your team members have become increasingly unaware of them. Being busy solving detail problems, they often fail to understand the overall requirements. Then they develop solutions which resolve issues in their area of limited responsibility, while causing new problems at the interfaces with other system components.
Meanwhile, the team members show signs of growing frustration, and time is running away. How can you help your team in this situation?
o Accompany your team members along a sequence of maturity levels from dependence through independence to interdependence.
o Ignore the low-level issues and focus on achieving the overall requirements, details can be sorted out during test and handover.
o If everybody simply does their jobs, then there should be no problem. Make sure that team members are fully aware of their accountability.
o Problems of this dimension have their origin in fundamental personal incompatibilities between team members. You should replace them all.
Ignore the low-level issues and focus on achieving the overall requirements, details can be sorted out during test and handover.
For a project, the following earned value data have been assessed:
AC: $ 4,000,000 CV: $ -500,000 SPI: 1.12 BaC: $ 9,650,000
What is the earned value of the project?
$3,500,000
During execution in a project to build a major road bridge, your team found a major flaw in the technical drawings. On an ad-hoc base, they had to find and implement a workaround to avoid delays and mitigate technical problems. What should you do next?
o Meticulously document the problem and the workaround to create a requested change to the project management plan, which will then be passed to the body responsible for the change control decision.
o The workaround was performed on a technical level only. As long as it does not influence the function of the bridge or the organizational configuration of the project, a change request will not be necessary.
o A retroactive formal change request side is not reasonable. Create some additional documents describing the workaround and sign them by yourself, you can present them during the next regular CCB meeting.
o It is normal in projects that during project execution inconsistencies arise between planning documents and actual implementation. This is no problem as long as the functional status of the product is maintained.
Meticulously document the problem and the workaround to create a requested change to the project management plan, which will then be passed to the body responsible for the change control decision.
You recently took over the assignment for a project. The project charter has been developed. What is an appropriate next step for you?
Develop management plans.
. You scheduled a kick-off meeting in order to announce the start of your project, present the plan and develop consensus on it. Another topic will be explanation of each team member’s role. In addition, you planned some time for discussions.
You published the agenda of the kick-off meeting some weeks ago to all invited attendees.
Now, short term before the event, you receive various cancellations by team members, who say that they cannot join the meeting. But they will be with you when project work will start.
You should insist on the presence of the team members to the appointed date.
During a meeting, a discussion came up: To which degree does your project have to be compliant to the processes enumerated in the PMBOK® Guide? What should be the guiding principle to answer this question?
The project team must select appropriate processes required to meet the project requirements.
During code inspection in a major software development project, a project management team identified frequent occurrences of critical programming errors. These errors are scattered across the code and occur without a discernible pattern. Which tool is most likely to help the team identify areas of error concentration in order to develop a prioritized response strategy? o Checksheet o Influence diagram o Decision tree o Process decision program chart
Checksheet
The term baseline is used in both disciplines project management and configuration management. Which statement is not true?
o Baselines in system configurations are often also referred to as deltas.
o In configuration management, baselines are used to control change.
o Project management baselines are used for performance measurement.
o In project management, baselines help assess variance and trends.
Baselines in system configurations are often also referred to as deltas.
In a project, a cost incentive contract has been awarded to a contractor with the following parameters:
Target cost: $1,000,000 Target contractor fee: $100,000 Cost benefit sharing ratio: 80%/20% Price ceiling: $1,200,000
What is the point of total assumption (PTA, breakpoint) of the project?
$1,125,000
What is typical for high-context cultures?
A message has little meaning without an understanding of the surrounding context.
What do you expect when you are submitting an invitation for bid to sellers?
Offers which are similar enough to allow a selection based on price.
What is important for quality auditors? o They must be in-house personnel. o They must be third-party staff. o They must be mandated by the auditee. o They must be properly trained.
They must be properly trained.
What is best used to calculate the profit from an internal project?
o Discounted net revenues from the product over n years minus project costs for internal charges
o Discounted net savings from the product over n years minus project costs for internal charges
o The economic value added (EVA) to the organization taking into account taxes and capital costs
o The reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) of the current product compared with its predecessor product
The economic value added (EVA) to the organization taking into account taxes and capital costs.
You are running a major project with four sub-projects. Each of the sub-project managers has developed a risk management plan, identified many risks, analyzed them and planned for risk response.
It is now two months later. What should you not do?
o Ensure that they handle all risks to save you from project level risk control.
o Make sure that the sub project managers monitor their project work for new and changing risks.
o Make sure that the sub project managers keep track of the identified risks and those on the watch list.
o Make sure that the sub-project managers monitor trigger conditions for contingency plans.
Ensure that they handle all risks to save you from project level risk control.
What is the meaning of the acronym CSOW?
A statement of work that has been formally agreed upon by both parties and is therefore part of a contract.(Contract Statement of Work)
You monitored figures on cost and planned/earned value for each individual project week until the data date at the end of the sixth week. What is the status of this project at this date (schedule and budget)?
Project week
Actual costs
Earned value
Planned value 1 $65,000 $61,000 $67,000 2 $85,000 $79,000 $89,000 3 $100,000 $102,000 $110,000 4 $125,000 $124,000 $121,000 5 $135,000 $133,000 $139,000 6 $125,000 $120,000 $131,000
The project is behind schedule and over budget.
During risk identification sessions, you and your team identified more than 150 risks for your project. You are afraid that evaluating each of these risks quantitatively will cost you an enormous amount of time, while not all of them are really relevant and important enough to justify such a measure. What should you do next?
Use qualitative risk analysis in order to prioritize risks for further action, such as quantitative risk analysis.
Your management announced that they want to put you on a stretch assignment. In this situation, you should consider that…
key stakeholders must have timely and complete information regarding your qualifications to make decisions regarding your suitability for the assignment.
Which is not a point used for three-point estimation? o Optimistic estimate o Most likely estimate o Budget estimate o Pessimistic estimate
Budget estimate
During project planning, you are presented with the following diagram that depicts a cumulative likelihood distribution for the duration of a project:
(See Word Document)
What kind of conclusion can you draw from the information depicted in it?
The likeliness that the project team will meet the deadline or will finish earlier is at 80%.
You identified a technical risk in your project and assigned a contingency for that. Planning contingency reserves is part of which risk response strategy?
Active risk acceptance
You are going to take over a new project as the project manager in an enterprise unknown to you. What should you investigate during the chartering process? o Enterprise environmental factors o Project management plan o Project risk register o Team performance reports
Enterprise environmental factors
A project was budgeted at $1,000,000. Meanwhile, the project is executed, and the following current figures have been assessed:
PV: $500,000 EV: $450,000 AC: $550,000
Assuming that the cost variance was caused by one-time cost drivers, which are no more effective, what estimate at completion (EaC) can you derive from these figures?
$1,100,000
Being the project manager in a high-risk electronics project with a lot of new technologies, you developed a risk management plan and identified risks which you documented in a risk register. Then, the risks were analyzed and response was planned.
During risk control meetings, it gets obvious that the documents you created are not very helpful. What have you probably done wrong?
o You failed to use an RBS.
o You did the first processes alone.
o You did not identify Triggers.
o You did not calculate EMVs.
You did the first processes alone.
Which is generally not regarded as one of the three categories of culture that managers should master? o National culture o Organizational culture o Project culture o Functional culture
Project culture
Post-mortem analysis after scheduled finish date of a project shows a CPI of 0.8 and an SPI of 1.25. What is a plausible explanation for that?
The project was terminated early. At that time, it was over budget and ahead of schedule.
Some colleagues told you that they are planning, executing, monitoring and controlling a project by use of milestones only with duration’s between 1 and 4 weeks. What do you think?
Fuck that, the approach is erroneous. A milestone is a significant point with zero duration to highlight achievements.
Together with your team, you applied three-point estimation on a critical path which consists of two activities.
The following duration uncertainties are all calculated assuming a ±3sigma confidence interval.
The duration uncertainty—defined as pessimistic minus optimistic estimate—of the first activity is 18 days; the second estimate has an uncertainty of 24 days. Applying the PERT formula for paths, what is the duration uncertainty of the entire path?
30 days
You are just leaving a meeting during which you have been assigned as the manager of a project to build a sub-station that is part of a major electric power distribution system. The decision to run the project has been made before your assignment and without your involvement. Some basic decisions on deliverables, staffing, budgeting and on the completion date have already been made as well. What should you do first?
Obtain a project charter which links the project to the strategy and ongoing work of the organization and documents the initial decisions.
What is the purpose of the following diagram? (See Word Document)
Comparing the relative importance of variables that have a high degree of uncertainty with those that are more stable.
Diagram - Sensitivity Analysis or Tornado Chart
Which is not a goal in both project management and quality management? o Prevention over inspection o Customer satisfaction o Management responsibility o Triple constraint
Triple constraint
Projects may be initiated by all of the following except... o the project team o a sponsor o a PMO o a portfolio review board
the project team
During planning processes, you used Monte Carlo simulation to quantitatively assess cost and schedule risks of your project. During risk control, you repeat the technique, and it leads to different results. What should not be the reason for that?
o Some assumptions during planning have meanwhile become fact-based knowledge, so that the risks related to them have vanished or have become certain problems.
o New risks may have been identified. These influence the input data used for Monte Carlo simulation in a way which was not predictable at the time when the simulation was run.
o Some constraints have been identified originally, but their influence on the project was unclear when the simulation was run for the first time. By now, the team understands these constraints much better and has been able to adjust the simulation.
o Some dummy activities in the network logic have an element of uncertainty, which gets bigger over time. While the project proceeds, it gets even harder to predict how the team members assigned to them will perform.
Some dummy activities in the network logic have an element of uncertainty, which gets bigger over time. While the project proceeds, it gets even harder to predict how the team members assigned to them will perform.
As a project manager you can assign any one of two team members to a highly coveted task. Both are equally capable, but one of them is a member of your ingroup. To the other one, you have far more distance.
How should you behave?
You disclose the situation to stakeholders and solicit a joint decision.
Which statement is false? Progressive elaboration of project scope…
o …is a characteristic of projects that accompanies the concepts of temporary and unique.
o … means developing in steps. It not should be confused with scope creep.
o …signals a weak spot in the scope definition process, caused by incomplete contracts and specifications.
o …when properly managed, integrates elaboration of project and deliverable specifications.
signals a weak spot in the scope definition process, caused by incomplete contracts and specifications.
You are managing an internationally dispersed project team. The members of your team have different cultural backgrounds and primary languages, but all are educated and able to communicate eloquently in English. You should nevertheless bear in mind that…
spoken communications can cause misunderstandings you may not find in written communications. These may be hard to identify.
Your project exceeded costs in the past caused by an underestimation of resource costs in the cost baseline:
PV: $1,200,000, EV: $1,000,000, AC: $1,200,000
You expect the underestimation to influence the future as much as it did in the past.
If the value of the remaining work (BAC – EV) is at $1,000,000, what should be your new EAC (estimate at completion)?
$2,400,000
A project manager reported the following earned value data:
PV: $12,400,000 EV: $14,500,000 AC: $14,500,000
What does this mean (in terms of schedule and budget)?
The project is on budget and ahead of schedule.
Your project had a cost overrun in the past and you tried to obtain funding on top of the original budget at completion (BAC). Management has told you that they cannot make additional funding available. You have to increase cost performance so that the project will be finished with costs not exceeding the original BAC. Which metric describes the future performance to meet this objective?
o TCPI calculated as BAC / CPI
o TCPI calculated as (BAC-EV) / (EAC – AC)
o TCPI calculated as (BAC-EV) / (BAC-AC)
o TCPI cannot be calculated in this situation.
TCPI calculated as (BAC-EV) / (BAC-AC)
When running a project as a project manager, what should you focus on during the executing processes?
Coordinating people and resources
A project customer and a contractor agreed on regular quality audits during execution by a third party audit team, which is working on an assignment for the customer.
What should the contractor have prepared for the audits?
o Work results
o Measurements and test results
o Quality documentation
o Contract-related correspondence
Quality documentation
While planning a project, you are defining activities. Which of the following is not a result of that process? o Activity list o Work breakdown structure o Activity attributes o Milestone list
Work breakdown structure
What should not be your thoughts when you are organizing documents as lessons learned?
o Devise the lessons learned documentation in a wording which is easy to understand for a reader who is not familiar with the project.
o Lessons learned must detail how certain groups or persons caused failures and delays, especially if they are inside the own organization.
o Writing lessons learned should be an exercise enhancing your personal learning experience. Make sure you grasp what you are writing down.
o Keep lessons learned documents at a place where they are easy to access and to retrieve for those who may later need the information.
Lessons learned must detail how certain groups or persons caused failures and delays, especially if they are inside the own organization.
You are identifying key stakeholders for your project. Which of the following is not included in any case? o Project manager and project team o Customer and users o Sponsor o Media representatives
Media representatives
What is the most important benefit of a 360 degree review?
The reviewed person will regard the assessment process as fair and developmental.
You are using a phase gate approach for your project. What do you need to consider?
The order of phases must be strictly consecutive without overlapping in order to allow for gates.
Post mortem earned value analysis of a project showed the following data:
SPI: 0.78 CPI: 1.00
What is this telling you?
The project has been terminated before completion. At that time it was behind schedule and on budget.
A project has undergone a major scope change, which increased cost and work levels. What does this mean for earned value data?
The cost baseline will be updated and the new baseline will be the basis for future earned value analysis.
As a project manager, you must demonstrate transparency regarding…
your decision-making processes.
Who should always issue the project charter?
A project initiator or sponsor
You are performing quality control on your project. How can a process flow chart help you?
o It may help identify outliers.
o It may help understand the COQ in a process.
o It may help spot accountable staff.
o It may help react later.
Cock. It may help understand the COQ in a process.
A difference between a statement of work and a scope statement is:
The statement of work is prepared by the customer while the scope statement is developed by the project management team.
You are the manager of a project for a company that is known to make heavy use of extrinsic motivators in order to boost morale and team performance. What does that mean? The motivators used…
are incentives such as rewards, gifts, or money.
When should a time and material contract with a contractor been chosen instead of a fixed price contract?
When project scope includes the progressive elaboration of the scope of deliverables.
You are the manager of a major project to develop a system of barriers to prevent a seaside city from flooding. Together with your team you created a code of conduct stating that the change control board must be immediately notified of gifts when the value exceeds $90. The same applies to invitations when the value exceeds $150.
Today, a contractor executive sent you an invitation for a night at an opera with a value of $95. It is a one-time event and you tried to obtain tickets by yourself without success. The person told you that he would so much wish to join you, but he will not be available on that day, and he could get hold of only one ticket anyway.
What do you have to do?
The ticket is a gift and over of the limit. You have to notify the CCB who will make the decision.
You are running a project to develop the production process for a future electronic component. Evaluating some first test batches, you found out that the precision is generally very good, but that you have some irregular outliers in a completely unpredictable pattern. What should you do?
Research outliers, they may give you important insights into problems which may trouble later production.
As a leader, how should you deem ethical conduct?
You are the role model for the team. Your personal integrity demonstrates the desired skills, behavior, and attitudes whose adoption may benefit team members.
You have recently been named as the manager of a new project under contract. The sponsor of the project gave you the contract signed by the customer and a statement of work. He asked you to go on with initiation. Which document should you develop next?
Project charter
You are defining evaluation criteria for your project. The procurement item is readily available from a number of acceptable sellers. Which criterion can you focus on in such a situation? o Seller’s management approach o Price offered by the seller o Seller’s financial capacity o Understanding of your need
Price offered by the seller
When is passive risk acceptance an appropriate approach?
When it is best to deal with a risk as it occurs.
You are running a project to engineer and implement a set of business processes and a software solution for customer relationship management. The project involves a big number of performing organizations―a major corporation and many suppliers of different sizes.
During the project you observed a restraining effect of differences between the companies’ corporate cultures. This leads to different expectations on how such a project should be handled and to frequent misunderstandings between stakeholders. Another effect is a growing degree of distrust and skepticism.
What should you try first to integrate the diverse stakeholder groups?
Focus on project work. As a project manager you should not get distracted by big egos.
In an organization, project managers report directly to the head of a project management office (PMO). In this case, which statement is probably not true?
o The head of the project management office can strengthen the matrix as a manager of project managers.
o The project management office will actually be responsible for direct management of the projects.
o Projects will be run by the functional organization and project managers expedite change control.
o It will be easier for the PMO to ensure that the organizational process assets provided are used.
Projects will be run by the functional organization and project managers expedite change control.
You gathered a lot of knowledge on project management in your business life. What is an appropriate use for that?
Share your knowledge with the professional community in form of books, articles, lectures, seminars etc.
Respect is…
duty to show a high regard for oneself, others, and the resources entrusted.
During a post-mortem meeting, discussion arises about who has to take responsibility for some major failures. It has become obvious that the attendees of the meeting will not come to a jointly accepted conclusion.
What is not an appropriate strategy for such a situation?
o Separate the people from the problem
o Focus on interests, not positions
o Insist on objective criteria and standards
o Suspend the discussion and schedule another meeting
Suspend the discussion and schedule another meeting
Understanding cultural key similarities and differences is especially important for…
globally dispersed, cross-cultural and virtual teams.
Your project team is on its way to finish work on the project, while you have the impression that a staff member is already negotiating the next assignment in another project. You are afraid that the person may come under pressure to start working on the other job before she has finished her work for your project. Her task is very complex, and it would be hard for someone else to take up the partial results and finish them.
What action is most likely to resolve the situation?
o Have a private meeting with the person and discuss your observations. Make the person aware of the contract and of the legal consequences of unfinished work.
o Have a meeting with the entire team and discuss the person’s expected early leave. Use team dynamics to buy in the commitment from the person to finish work orderly.
o Use your network of project managers to find another assignment for the person which allows for smooth transition and does not conflict with your needs.
o Ignore your observations and let the team member do her job. It is quite uncommon that staff drops work for a project before it is completely finished.
Use your network of project managers to find another assignment for the person which allows for smooth transition and does not conflict with your needs.
When control charts are used, outliers are…
singular measurements outside the bandwidth between an upper and lower control limit.
Which is typically not specified in a document referred to as activity attributes?
o The person executing the work in a schedule activity
o Schedule activity identifiers, codes and descriptions
o Schedule activity predecessors and successors
o The cost baseline assigned to the schedule activity
The cost baseline assigned to the schedule activity
In a country with high level of violence in public, a local police officer requires a private money transfer to ensure the safety of your team. How do you react?
o You regard this as bribery or at least as palm greasing and do not pay.
o You do not pay, but follow the chain of command and solicit a decision.
o You regard it as a facilitation payment and pay the person.
o You regard the situation as a gray area and pay through an agent.
You do not pay, but follow the chain of command and solicit a decision.
Which is not a type of project review meeting? o Team review meetings o Project status meetings o Executive management review meetings o Customer review meetings
Project status meetings
You are performing integrated change control. Which of the following will not be part of what you do?
o Reviewing and approving change requests
o Maintaining the integrity of baselines
o Performing milestone trend analysis (MTA)
o Documenting the allover impact of requested changes
Performing milestone trend analysis (MTA)
You are project manager for a strategic project with a multi-million dollars value assigned by a company that is listed at a US stock exchange.
Recent Earned Value Analysis after app. 25% completion told you that your project has a CPI of 0.76. What should you do right now?
You should immediately inform your management, which should then assess whether this CPI constitutes a material financial issue.
A management point in a work breakdown structure (WBS) used to consolidate and process work package data and forward the results to the project manager is called…
Control account
When you perform quality assurance in your project, which technique could you typically use? o Code review o Quality audit o Inspection o Scope verification
Quality audit
Which technique has been applied to develop the following diagram? (See Word Document) o Decision tree o P/I matrix o Strategic scoring o Risk breakdown structure
Decision tree
Your organization has the choice between several internal projects it could run. In order to select projects, the organization assessed their strategic importance, investment requirements, and expected cash inflow from the projects’ products, services and results. What should the organization assess in addition?
o The probability of changes to strategic goals.
o The frequency of changes to strategic goals.
o The assessments done should be sufficient.
o The probability of the expected cash inflows.
The probability of the expected cash inflows.
A project manager tracks the work of team members using a network logic diagram. Which effect will the presence of an actual finish date have on the calculation of float for the finished activity?
Calculating free float and total float is generally not reasonable for finished activities.
The situational leadership model as defined by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard consists of the 4 stages____.
Telling, selling, participating, delegating
A Pareto chart helps focusing on…
the minority of causes, which create the majority of problems and defects.
When should the project schedule be developed?
When most planning processes from time, scope, and procurement management have been finished. These will then be iterated when necessary.
What is wrong in this diagram? (See Word Document)
EV cannot be assessed beyond the data date.
What is the purpose of control limits?
Identifying whether the process is in control or not.
What is not the main purpose of a final project report?
o Preparing acceptance of the final product, service or result.
o Making stakeholders aware that the project has been closed out.
o Acknowledging what has been done and achieved by all contributors.
o If a project has been cancelled before completion: Explaining the causes.
Preparing acceptance of the final product, service or result.
