PMI-PBA Domain Area Test: Planning Flashcards
You are managing a project to lengthen a runway at a major airport. However, after you worked on the project for six months and held weekly status meetings, many of your stakeholders are dissatisfied with the deliverables, even with a CPI of 1.0 and an SPI of 1.0. Which of the following phases has probably not been done properly?
Define Scope
With a CPI of 1.0 and an SPI of 1.0, the project is on time and on budget, but the stakeholders are dissatisfied with the deliverables. This indicates that the project scope statement was not accurate which gets developed during the Define Scope process. [PMBOK® Guide 6th Edition, Page 150]
You are responsible for migrating some critical business applications for the local servers over to a cloud platform. Some non-critical support applications, which are currently integrated with these critical applications, will also be required to move. Although the high-level scope of the project is known, due to the complexity of the project, the detailed requirements can only be determined as the project progresses. Which of the following planning tools should you use for this project?
Progressive elaboration
Since detailed requirements can only be determined later in the project, this calls for progressive elaboration of project requirements. The rest of the choices are irrelevant. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, page 185]
Which of the following measures determines the interest rate of a cash flow stream?
IRR
IRR determines the interest rate of a cash flow stream at which the present value of the cash flow stream becomes zero. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 90]
Elicitation results can be confirmed in many ways. At times, elicitation and confirming elicitation results are performed concurrently. Which of the following project lifecycle considers this a common practice?
Adaptive lifecycles
Concurrent elicitation and confirmation are considered a common practice in adaptive life cycles. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 171]
You are currently planning your business analysis activities for a major project. The organizational PMO has asked you to perform job analysis as well as persona analysis for project stakeholders. How are the results obtained from conducting a job analysis different than the results obtained from conducting a persona analysis?
The information provided in the persona is behavioral in nature while the information obtained from a job analysis is descriptive in nature.
Persona analysis and job analysis can both be used to analyze stakeholders. However, the information provided in the persona is behavioral in nature while the information obtained from a job analysis is descriptive in nature. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 45; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 115-116]
One of the performance requirements of a company website development project is that the home page should load in one second. Such performance requirements are usually part of:
Product requirements
Performance requirements such as the loading time of websites are usually considered as part of product requirements and scope. Project requirements include business requirements, project management requirements and delivery requirements, whereas product requirements include technical, security, and performance requirements. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 131]
You have been assigned to lead the business analysis efforts on a major development project. A number of senior stakeholders are excited about the project and are expecting fast results. Somehow you have been able to manage this pressure and focus on your business analysis planning. Identifying the right stakeholders and understanding their needs and wants is critical for the success of this project. You need to explain the importance of stakeholder analysis to some senior stakeholders. How does stakeholder analysis help in business analysis?
Helps in determining how to best conduct the business analysis activities.
Business analysts use the results from the stakeholder analysis to understand how the stakeholders will impact the business analysis process. The business analyst considers a number of stakeholder characteristics before determining how to best conduct the business analysis activities. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 39; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 115]
The WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work the project team must execute to accomplish the project objectives. This is created as part of:
Project Scope Management
Creating the WBS is an important process in a project, and it is done as a part of Project Scope Management. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 129]
You want to establish a mechanism to facilitate coordination between product teams by communicating between projects; a platform that will enable sharing items such as progress, issues, retrospective findings and improvement experiments. You need:
A PMO
A PMO coordinates between product teams by communicating between projects. It facilitates sharing items such as progress, issues, retrospective findings and improvement experiments. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 41]
You are managing the design and development of a HR/Payroll system. Due to the complexity of the project, you are using Scrum to help you manage this project. Your project calls for communication in the form of announcements and messages with an extremely large audience. What communication method would be appropriate under such circumstances?
Pull communication
The situation in the project would call for pull communication. This is suitable for a large audience, and it allows them to access information at their own discretion. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 374]
Jim has been assigned as a junior business analyst in your program. You want to initiate a new project in the program and want Jim to first understand the scope and assess the complexity of the project. Jim wants to know why he cannot jump straight to stakeholder identification and requirements elicitation. Why must a business analyst assess the complexity of a project?
To understand how best to approach business analysis activities.
The business analyst assesses complexity to understand how best to approach business analysis activities and to understand the impact that the change will have on stakeholders. The rest of the choices are all responsibilities of the project manager. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 41; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 115-116]
You have recently discovered that a group of stakeholders are currently lobbying against your project. You are surprised by this finding since earlier this group was quite supportive of the project. You believe that these stakeholders might have some concerns that they have not raised with you yet. How should you now uncover these unspoken concerns?
Spending more time with stakeholders and understanding their likes and dislikes.
Uncovering stakeholder likes and dislikes may bring to the forefront unspoken concerns about the proposed business analysis process. Conducting a retrospective at the conclusion of the business analysis activities will be too late. The other two choices are irrelevant. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 41; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 115-116]
You are developing a business analysis guide for a client organization to help it standardize its business analysis processes and methods. Once the stakeholders on a project have been identified, especially on large projects, the next step is to group these stakeholders. All of the following are the techniques that you can use to analyze stakeholders EXCEPT:
Fishbone diagram
Fishbone diagrams are used to conduct root-cause analysis. The rest of the choices are all valid stakeholder analysis and grouping techniques. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 44; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 115-116]
You are the lead business analyst on a major organization transformation project. Managing key project stakeholders is critical to the success of the project. You want to analyze the stakeholders based on their power, influence, impact, and interest. Which of the following tools can help you analyze this?
Stakeholder maps
Stakeholder maps help with the analysis of stakeholder characteristics such as the power, influence, impact, and interest of stakeholder groups. The other given choices are not applicable as these are not stakeholder analysis techniques. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 126]
You have recently completed your product elicitation activities and now want to show the results to the stakeholders. You develop an interaction matrix for the stakeholders to consume and identify whether the product requirements have been adequately defined. An interaction matrix is a lightweight version of a:
Traceability matrix
An interaction matrix is a lightweight version of a traceability matrix that is used to figure out whether requirements are sufficiently detailed or if any entities are missing. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 196]
