PMI-PBA Domain Area Test: Traceability & Monitoring Flashcards
You are managing a construction project for a government organization. As part of your contractual obligations, you need to invite your customer for progress inspections at predefined construction stages. Customers visiting a construction site to ensure the completed work is the same work specified in the contractual requirements is an example of:
Scope validation
Inspection is a scope validation technique that includes activities (such as measuring, examining, and verifying) to determine whether work and deliverables meet requirements and product acceptance criteria. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 163]
A project team member finds that the color scheme of the webpage he is designing appears too gaudy and decides to change it to a mellowed-down color scheme. The customer approved the original color scheme and the color palette. The independent testing team flags this as a defect, and a heated discussion ensues between the team member and the testing team. What is your view?
The testing team is correct. Even though the new color scheme is more pleasing than the old one, the appropriate change management process was not followed, and the work product is not as per design.
The testing team is correct in their findings. Even though the new color scheme might be a better choice than the old one, all changes need to follow the change management process and go through the appropriate change and approval process. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 115]
Jane is managing a complex process improvement project. There was a serious conflict between the key project stakeholders recently. Jane was successful in getting this conflict resolved in a timely manner. However, this caused a significant delay. Which of the following is a recommended action at this stage?
Update the lessons-learned documentation
The scenario describes neither the root cause behind the conflict nor the nature of the conflict. Hence, the choices of transferring the stakeholders to another group and reviewing the stakeholder management plan can easily be eliminated. Avoiding conflict resolution in the future could well lead to disaster; this choice can also be eliminated. It is clear in the scenario that the conflict was resolved by the project manager. The next thing that needs to be done is updating the lessons learned documentation with the appropriate conflict and resolution details. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 351]
A project team’s recent deliverable to a client has been rejected. The team is now sitting together to discuss this situation and they prepare the following diagram. What is the team doing?
Conducting a root cause analysis
This is an example of a fishbone diagram. A fishbone diagram, also called a cause and effect diagram or Ishikawa diagram, is a visualization tool for categorizing the potential causes of a problem in order to identify its root causes. [PMBOK® Guide, 6th edition, Page 293]
You have recently joined a product team that is developing a software system. You have noted that although the team has a requirements traceability matrix setup of the project, this is not being updated frequently. You want the team to understand the importance of keeping this document updated. All the following are reasons you would want the team to keep the traceability matrix updated EXCEPT:
Keeping the project’s CPI and SPI under check.
A traceability matrix doesn’t track a project’s cost and schedule performance, hence cannot help track the CPI and SPI. The rest of the choices are all valid reasons for keeping the traceability matrix up to date. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 258]
You are managing a project using predictive approaches. Which of the following statements is incorrect and will be misleading?
You do not need any sort of traceability or change control in this project.
You need some sort of traceability and change control process on any project. These can be formally or informally defined. The rest of the choices are valid considerations for designing a change control or a traceability process. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 254]
You are leading an enterprise software development project. Due to the complexity of the project, the product team has decided to use an adaptive project life cycle. You want to use a lightweight version of a traceability matrix on this project to track requirements. Which of the following tools should you use?
Interaction matrix
A traceability matrix is a grid that links product requirements from their origin to the deliverables that satisfy them. The matrix can support linkages among many different types of objects, providing a mechanism for tracking product information through the project and product life cycles. On projects using an adaptive life cycle, the product team may choose to develop an interaction matrix which is a lightweight version of a traceability matrix that is used to determine whether requirements are sufficiently detailed or if any entities are missing. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 261]
A project post-mortem is an activity, usually performed at the project’s conclusion, to determine and analyze a project’s outcome which also includes a lessons-learned gathering exercise. Project post-mortems help to mitigate future risks and are often a key component of, and ongoing precursor to, effective risk management. Which of the following is a terrible mistake when collecting lessons learned?
Focusing purely on the negatives and analyzing failures
Documenting both the success stories and the failed attempts are important as these can be very important inputs for future projects. Only focusing on the negatives and analyzing failures will paint half of the picture. The best practice is to ask “What went right” when asking “What went wrong?”. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 104]
The project management team has determined that there are some changes to the scope of the project. According to the PMBOK® Guide, who is responsible for reviewing, evaluating, and approving documented changes to the project?
Change Control Board (CCB)
The Change Control Board is a group of formally constituted stakeholders responsible for reviewing, evaluating, approving, delaying or rejecting changes to the project. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 115]
You are leading the development of a new website for your organization. The project is currently in the eighteenth iteration and the project’s burndown chart shows that it will hit the x-axis by the end of the current sprint. What does that mean?
All product backlog items will be completed during the current sprint.
A burndown chart is a graphical representation used to count the remaining quantity of work over time. The burndown chart hitting the x-axis means all product backlog items will be completed during the current sprint. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 131]
Your lead business analyst has completed all requirements elicitation activities and identified all the product components that need to be built. You now want to schedule the development of these components. Which of the following tools can be used to identify the implementation relationships between the product components?
Feature model
A feature model is a scope model that visually represents all the features of a solution arranged in a tree or hierarchical structure. The feature model shows relationships between features and which features are sub-features of other ones. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 260]
You are currently auditing a struggling project following an adaptive lifecycle. You find out that the project team was trying Agile methods for the first time and doesn’t have a common understanding on some critical concepts. For adaptive projects, which of the following statements is incorrect?
When a change is requested, no impact analysis is conducted.
While it is true that there are no formal change control processes on adaptive projects, it is incorrect to say that when a change is requested, no impact analysis is conducted; scaled impact analysis is typically conducted. All other choices are correct statements. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 275]
You have recently joined a product team developing an ICT service request management system. You find out that the project team has not setup a requirements traceability matrix for the project and is only working against a product backlog. As a result, the product backlog contains a number of product requirements that are related to each other, but these relationships have not been documented anywhere. For example, there is a requirement that, “all employees should be able to submit IT service requests”. There is another requirement that, “ICT service desk manager should be able to view all submitted requests classified by the request type”. What is the relationship between these two requirements?
Implementation dependency
This is an example of an implementation dependency; you will not be able to produce the list-view until the system is able to capture and store the requests. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 259]
You are leading an organizational transformation project. The lead business analyst on this project has recently resigned and now you are responsible for all business analysis activities on the project. The previous analyst has done a good job collecting, analyzing and documenting the requirements. However, you are worried that, given the number of requirements and the agility required by the project environment, maintaining audit trails and managing version control will be difficult. Which of the following should you consider at this stage?
Using a requirements management tool
A requirements management tool allows requirements and other product information to be captured and stored in a central repository. Such a tool typically has the ability to maintain audit trails and perform version control to assist with change management. None of the other choices have the capability or ability to perform this. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 260]
Which of the following is an example of a chart, used on agile projects, that tracks the work that remains to be completed in the iteration backlog?
Burndown chart
An iteration burndown chart tracks the work that remains to be completed in the iteration backlog. The rest of the choices quality management tools. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 226]
