PMI-PBA Mock Exam Lite - 12

Question 1

To communicate with stakeholders on the resolved issues and the issues that are hard to resolve, you use an issue log in your project. Since you assign an owner for every issue and resolve it by working on it, your stakeholders actively support all your efforts in managing the project. This method of actively resolving issues and reducing risks to the project is known as:

Answer 1

Stakeholder management

Actively working with project stakeholders and resolving their issues relate to project stakeholder management. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Pages 504-506]

Question 2

You have recently hired a junior business analyst to support you with business analysis activities on a major organizational project. The analyst wants to schedule the stakeholder engagements in advance and has asked you to provide him with some details regarding the sequence of the elicitation activities. What do you do?

Answer 2

Share the elicitation approach with the analyst.

The elicitation plan documents how and when to elicit, which techniques to use, and the sequence of the elicitation activities. You should share this document with the analyst. The project charter doesn’t have this information and so it is not helpful. The WBS will be developed only once the product requirements have been elicited and analyzed. Sharing the stakeholder list will be useless. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 53; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 127]

Question 3

Which of the following is an agile prototyping technique showing sequence or navigation through a series of images or illustrations:

Answer 3

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is an agile prototyping technique that shows sequence or navigation through a series of images or illustrations. The rest of the choices are graphical techniques designed to achieve other objectives. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 147]

Question 4

Configuration management tool selection should be based on the needs of the project stakeholders including organizational and environmental considerations and/or constraints. Which of the following is not a key configuration management consideration while selecting an appropriate configuration management tool for a project?

Answer 4

Procedures for accepting and rejecting change requests.

Procedures for accepting and rejecting change requests are related to change management rather than configuration management. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Pages 118, 119]

Question 5

You are developing the business analysis plan for your project and what to document the requirements verification and validation processes for all elicited requirements. The product team is struggling to understand the differences between the two processes. What is the difference between requirements verification and requirements validation?

Answer 5

Verification is the evaluation of whether the product complies with standards, while validation is the assurance that the product meets the needs of the customer.

Verification is the evaluation of whether the product complies with regulation, requirement, specification, or imposed conditions. Validation is the assurance that the product meets the needs of the customer. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 58; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 127]

Question 6

You have been asked to coach a junior business analyst in your organization by providing some guidance on business analysis activities. The junior business analyst is currently struggling and finding themself pressed for time and rushing through the business analysis activities to meet their project’s schedule requirements. In order to help this junior business analyst, what would you like to see first?

Answer 6

Business analysis plan

Business analysts who begin elicitation sessions without a well thought out road map of how they will address the work will often find themselves pressed for time and rushing through activities. In this scenario, one should first investigate whether a business analysis plan exists, and if it does, how good is it. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 37; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 127-129]

Question 7

Your organization is currently automating its core business processes. This is the CEO’s dream project and was initiated in a hurry. As a result, insufficient time was spent on requirements gathering and project planning. You have recently taken over this project and have immediately realized that the missing requirements are now leading to scope creep on the project. The developers are prototyping system components and as a result of the user feedback, they are adding their own product features that aren’t documented anywhere. What should you do first?

Answer 7

Stop the developers adding scope on their own.

First of all, you need to ask the developers to stop gold plating the solution. Then you need to re-visit the planning processes and properly document the project scope. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, page 168]

Question 8

Your team is about to commence a new mobile application development project. The product backlog contains several unprioritized features. The team now needs a method to analyze these features from the potential customers’ viewpoints and prioritize these for development. What should you do next?

Answer 8

Conduct a Kano analysis

From the given options, only Kano analysis explores a product’s features from the viewpoint of the customer. Kano analysis can be used to help a product team understand the level of importance of features being considered for the future state. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 79]

Question 9

You are the lead business analyst on a workflow automation project. You are currently reviewing your organizational chart to identify the list of potential stakeholders that will be impacted with the new system your team is developing. This is an example of:

Answer 9

Document analysis

Note that you are currently analyzing a document to identify stakeholders that will be impacted by the new system; you are not analyzing the impact of the new system on these stakeholders. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 106]

Question 10

Lucy is managing a high-tech software development project. She has luckily acquired the organization’s best performing employees. However, the project team is not communicating effectively, causing delays. The project communications plan is in place, but it seems as if the employees are not following it. The communications plan lays out the communications requirements but does not explicitly assign responsibilities. What should Lucy do first? (Assume that all the following actions need to be taken at some stage.)

Answer 10

Set and manage expectations

Assuming that none of the given actions have been undertaken in the past, the first thing to do is to set expectations. Once the expectations are set, the behavior need to be managed. Persuasion, motivation and conflict resolution should follow this. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 319, 320]

Question 11

Your firm is a part of an industry that is typically associated with a high cost of operations. As a result, the profit margin is very low for all the firms in the industry. Recently one competitor has managed to reduce its operational cost by 15%. You want to study the processes of this competitor so that you can improve your own processes. This is known as:

Answer 11

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a comparison technique used to compare one set of practices, processes, and measurements of results against another. Benchmarking studies of external organizations that have solved similar problems is an accepted technique and there is nothing wrong about it. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 78]

Question 12

You are leading a process automation project. Although the key project requirements are fixed, the detailed solution requirements are continuously being changed by the stakeholders. What do you need to do to ensure that each introduced change is aligned with the business and project objectives?

Answer 12

Establish a change management process

A change management process will help you ensure that changes align with the business and/or project objectives. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 254]

Question 13

The products categorized as “low market share” and “high market growth rate” products on a growth-share matrix implies that these products:

Answer 13

Have a good potential as they are in a market that is continuing to grow.

A Product portfolio matrix, also known as a growth-share matrix, is a market analysis quadrant diagram used by organizations to qualitatively analyze their products and product lines. One axis reflects market growth while the other reflects the market share of the organization. The matrix provides a quick visual way to evaluate which products are meeting or exceeding performance expectations in the marketplace. The products that provide the most significant benefits to the organization would be found in the upper left quadrant, because these are the products where the organization has a high market share in a market with a high growth rate. Those in the upper right quadrant are regarded as having good potential because, although they have a low market share, they are in a market that is continuing to grow. Those in the lower left quadrant, with a high market share in a low growth market, are considered a dependable income stream. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 284]

Question 14

Your datacenter upgrade project is currently in delivery stage. You have a strict time table to follow that integrates all involved vendors’ and stakeholders’ activities together. A critical success factor to this project is effective and timely communications. Which of the following tools and techniques are not applicable while Managing Communications for this project?

Answer 14

Communication requirements analysis

The question is asking for a tool and technique that is not part of the Manage Communications process. Communication requirements analysis is a tool and technique of the Plan Communications Management process and not the Manage Communications process. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 379]

Question 15

A product team should define the definition of done (DoD) for:

Answer 15

Each user story and iteration

The is no point in defining “definition of done” for the stories that have been already completed. A product team should define the “definition of done” (DoD) for each user story and iteration. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 219]

Question 16

You have been asked to perform Solution Evaluation for a recently released system. Since you haven’t performed such a task before, you are looking for some guidance. Which of the following PMI Guide to Business Analysis Solution Evaluation processes will help you in determining whether the implemented solution has delivered its intended business value?

Answer 16

Evaluate Solution Performance.

Evaluate Solution Performance is the process of evaluating a solution to determine whether the implemented solution or solution component is delivering the business value as intended. This PMI Guide to Business Analysis process will help you with your current task. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 280]

Question 17

Use cases are generally written in a standard format. Each use case documents the normal as well as the alternate flow of the process. Where would you document the errors or disruptions in the normal flow that require an actor or system to perform a different action to respond to the exception?

Answer 17

Exceptions

The errors or disruptions in the normal flow that require an actor or system to perform a different action to respond to the exception are documented in the exceptions section of the use case. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 214]

Question 18

You started a software development company a couple of years ago and have successfully launched a product into the market. Now you are looking for a venture capital firm to invest in the product so that it could be sold to a much wider customer segment. If the venture capital firm is risk averse, most probably, they will be looking for an investment that:

Answer 18

Has the shortest payback period.

If the venture company is risk averse, they would be looking to reduce their investment risk by investing in a company that offers the shortest payback period making it the least risky company to invest in. IRR, NPV and ROI do not indicate the level of risk involved. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 90]

Question 19

You are leading the business analysis activities for an organization’s operating model transformation project. You are currently conducting a gap analysis between the current state and the future state of the operating model. As an outcome of this exercise, you need to show the new reporting structure of the organization. Which of the following models should you develop?

Answer 19

Organizational Chart

An organizational chart, or org chart, is a scope model that shows the reporting structure within an organization or within a part of an organization. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 197]

Question 20

A product team has recently built the first release of a product. Although the team has performed numerous internal tests and is happy with the release, the team wants some SMEs to perform an unscripted, free-form testing of the release before it could be presented to the users of the product. Which of the following testing sessions need to be planned?

Answer 20

Exploratory testing

Unit and integration testing are done by the product team. The team want some SMEs to validate the system before the release is presented to the users who will then perform acceptance testing. You need to conduct exploratory testing with the selected SMEs. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 397]

Question 21

You collected and documented requirements for a product. The developers have just released the product for the project team to test and validate the product. You found out that the developers have missed a few critical requirements and the product is not ready to be shipped. What should you do next?

Answer 21

Conduct variance analysis

The first thing you need to do is to conduct a detailed variance analysis to understand the root cause of the issue. Once the root cause is identified, appropriate corrective and preventive measures can be planned. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 150]

Question 22

You are leading an automobile engine design project. A number of product requirements were elicited and analyzed. Which of the following business analysis projects will you perform in order to confirm which requirements should be incorporated within an iteration, release or project?

Answer 22

Select and Approve Requirements

Select and Approve Requirements is the process of facilitating discussions with stakeholders to negotiate and confirm which requirements should be incorporated within an iteration, release, or project. Note that this process is performed after the Verify Requirements and Validate Requirements processes. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 263]

Question 23

The user interface designer has developed some screen wireframes that need to be validated by the stakeholders. You are scheduling a workshop with the stakeholders to present these wireframes. Which of the following models should you develop to accompany these wireframes to show the navigation between the screens?

Answer 23

User interface flow

A user interface flow is an interface model that displays specific user interfaces and commonly used screens within a functional design and plots out how to navigate between them. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 207]

Question 24

Workshops are considered a primary technique for quickly defining product information across multiple domains and reconciling stakeholder differences. Which of the following techniques can be used during a workshop to help achieve the objectives of the meeting?

Answer 24

Brainstorming and collaborative games

Observation and document analysis are not collaborative techniques. Techniques such as brainstorming and collaborative games can be used in facilitated workshops to help achieve the objectives of the meeting. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 167]

Question 25

You have recently taken over a project which is currently in its early planning stage. You are not happy with the documented product requirements as you think they are too broad. Which of the following technique is used to breakdown higher level user stories into lower level user stories for manageability and ease of development?

Answer 25

Story slicing

Story slicing is a technique used to split requirements or user stories from a higher level to a lower level. Story mapping is a technique used to sequence user stories. The other two choices are not user story management techniques. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 261]

Question 26

You are helping a project manager and a business analyst on a project better understand their roles and responsibilities on the project. The project manager is not sure how the outcomes of the business analysis effort will be integrated with their project planning. Which of the following is the point of integration between business analysis and project management?

Answer 26

The business analysis work plan

Once the business analysis deliverables, task and activities, and required resources for completing the work are known, the information is assembled into the business analysis work plan. This is the point of integration between business analysis and project management. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 65; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 146]

Question 27

The amount of effort required to deliver a user story is known as:

Answer 27

Story size

The amount of effort required to deliver a user story is known as story size. Teams consider story size so that they do not try to commit to more stories than there is team capacity. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 133]

Question 28

You are developing an online complaint management system. Recently the product owner has requested you to drop a feature from the current iteration plan that was earlier requested by the compliance department. What should you do?

Answer 28

compliance.

The product owner is ultimately responsible and accountable for the product being developed. If the product owner has requested to drop a feature from the current iteration plan, that decision needs to be honored. To manage the stakeholder expectation at compliance, notifying compliance of the change is a good idea. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 45, 216]

Question 29

Your software development project is currently struggling due to a number of recently reported defects. The project team spent significant amount of time planning for this project and special effort was made to collect, validate and document the customer requirements. You and your team now want to analyze these events in detail and conduct a cause-and-effect analysis. All of the following statements are true about a cause-and-effect diagram except:

Answer 29

A maximum of six causes are listed on the cause-and-effect diagram.

While listing six causes is possible, there is no rule that states a maximum of six causes can be listed. You could list four or eight, for example. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 293]

Question 30

Your organization wants to replace its legacy ERP system with a new system with some robotic process automations. Since the current-state system model already existed, you focused your energy in defining the future-state model. The project sponsor has asked you to conduct a gap analysis and brief him about the new resource requirements. What should you do next?

Answer 30

Conduct a job analysis based on the future-state process.

You need to conduct a job analysis based on the future-state process. The output of job analysis may include details such as a high-level description of the work; a depiction of the work environment; a detailed list of the activities a person is expected to perform; a list of the preferred interpersonal skills; or a list of required training, degrees, and certifications. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 117]

Question 31

You are currently facilitating an elicitation workshop. During the first half of the workshop you have used the speedboat elicitation to elicit information about product features that customers/stakeholders find problematic. In the second half, you want to focus on the positive influences. Which of the following is a variation of the speedboat technique that focuses on positive influences rather than identifying negative ones?

Answer 31

Sailboat

Sailboat is a variation of the speedboat technique that focuses on positive influences rather than identifying negative ones. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 166]

Question 32

Which of the following visual tools can you use to monitor the team’s work in progress?

Answer 32

Kanban

A Kanban board is used in adaptive approaches to track work that is in progress by the project team. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 233]

Question 33

You have just returned from the weekly change control board meeting at which you presented the requested changes to the employee move project. You had five change requests approved and one request rejected. These are outputs of what process?

Answer 33

Perform Integrated Change Control

Approved and rejected change requests are outputs of the Perform Integrated Change Control process. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 113]

Question 34

You are leading the business analysis activities for a software development project for a client organization. You are currently developing a story map for the entire project. Which of the following is a foundational part of a story map that represents the minimum set of capabilities that absolutely are required to be in the first release for the solution to serve its purpose?

Answer 34

Backbone

The backbone is a foundational part of a story map representing the minimum set of capabilities that absolutely are required to be in the first release for the solution to serve its purpose. That set of capabilities or user stories is sometimes called the minimum viable product. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 388]

Question 35

As new backlog items are identified and appended to a product backlog, the product backlog needs to be repeatedly refined. The DEEP principle describes the characteristics that a product backlog needs to demonstrate to be considered well-refined. What does the acronym DEEP stand for?

Answer 35

Detailed, estimated, emergent, and prioritized

DEEP stands for: Detailed, estimated, emergent, and prioritized. DEEP describes the characteristics that a product backlog needs to demonstrate to be considered well-refined. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 213]

Question 36

You are conducting a workshop and where you have collected a number of business improvement ideas from the stakeholders. Which of the following tools can help you group these ideas into categories and sub-categories so that you get a manageable set of data organized by categories?

Answer 36

Affinity Diagram

Affinity diagrams display categories and subcategories of ideas that cluster or have an affinity to one another. These are used to process a large amount of information or ideas into a manageable set of data organized by categories. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 77]

Question 37

Last release of your flagship product was made a couple of years ago. There is some customer pressure on your organization to make a new release with some requested features. You want to release your product roadmap to your customers so that they can see what will be available and when. Prior to publishing your product road map, you might consider performing all of the following activities EXCEPT:

Answer 37

Linking product releases to the organizational strategic objectives.

Instead of linking the product releases to the organizational strategic objectives you should remove these if already present in the product roadmap. External customers may not need to know or be interested in how products align to the organizational strategy. The rest of the option are all valid activities. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 94]

Question 38

A product development team is currently reviewing all the user stories in the product backlog. The team wants to categorize each story based on its development time requirement. All the stories need to be classified as small, medium or large stories. This technique is known as:

Answer 38

Affinity estimating

Affinity estimating is a form of relative estimation in which team members organize product backlog items into groups where each product backlog item is about the same size. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 132]

Question 39

You are running a product development project using an adaptive lifecycle. Which of the following methods will you use on this project to capture the stakeholder’s initial requirements?

Answer 39

User stories

In adaptive approaches, user stories are commonly the method to represent requirements. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 215]

Question 40

You have been recently been hired to lead the development efforts of a major process automation initiative in your organization. Last year a team was formed to undertake this initiative, but that team failed miserably to deliver. Most of the stakeholders were already negative and this made the situation even worse. Your project sponsor has asked you to do thorough homework prior to engaging the stakeholder directly for elicitation events. What should you do next?

Answer 40

Gather all relevant documents and conduct a thorough analysis of these documents.

You must take the sponsor’s recommendation on board. Gathering all relevant documents and conducting a thorough analysis for these documents is your best bet. Once you update yourself with all the relevant information, context, and background, you will be in a better position to engage these negative stakeholders. Developing the product without consulting the stakeholders is not advisable for any project. Escalating the matter seems unnecessary. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 167]

Question 41

You are analyzing your project requirements and classifying them as “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, and “Won’t have” requirements. Which Agile activity are you performing?

Answer 41

MoSCoW analysis

During MoSCoW analysis, requirements are sorted into four categories: must have, should have, could have, and won’t have. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 234]

Question 42

A complicated software project was authorized by a project sponsor. However, the users who were intended to use the product found it extremely difficult to articulate their requirements. What technique can be employed to elicit requirements for such a project?

Answer 42

Job shadowing

Job shadowing is a technique that can be employed in this case. It is done externally by an observer who views the user doing his or her job. This technique is also called observation. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 145]

Question 43

The database architect on your team has asked you to provide her with the data model for the system so that she could commence the database design. You as the business analyst of this project need to develop which of the following artifacts and share with the database architect?

Answer 43

Entity relationship diagram

ERDs are typically input for database designers and architects to use in database design. The rest of the choices are not direct inputs to database design. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 191]

Question 44

Which of the following approaches deliberately spends less time trying to define and lock project scope early during the project and spends more time establishing the process for requirements gathering, scope definition and refinement?

Answer 44

Agile methods

Agile methods deliberately spend less time trying to define and lock project scope early during the project and spend more time establishing the process for requirements gathering, scope definition and refinement. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 133]

Question 45

Sometimes a requirement is not able to be satisfied in a solution without including the other requirements to which it is related. All the following are examples of such requirement relationships EXCEPT:

Answer 45

Discretionary dependency

Discretionary dependencies are usually based upon best practices and are not mandatory. All the rest are valid examples of requirement relationships that exhibit some sort of parent-child relationship. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 259]

Question 46

If a team has planned 50 story points to be completed in the upcoming project sprint, this implies that the:

Answer 46

Expected velocity is 50 story points.

If a team has planned 50 story points to be completed in the upcoming project sprint, this implies that the expected velocity is 50 story points. The aspirational velocity should be higher than this and the actual velocity might be different at the end of the iteration. On Agile projects, there is no such thing as benchmark velocity. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 416]

Question 47

Your organization has recently acquired a new fleet management system replacing a 20-year-old legacy system. You are now tasked to evaluate the new system and identify the transition requirements including capability acquisitions, process changes and user trainings. Which of the following tools will help you perform this analysis?

Answer 47

Gap analysis

Gap analysis compares the current state to the future state and is performed to identify the required capabilities against the existing capabilities and identifying the differences and missing capabilities that the organization needs to acquire to address the business need. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 79]

Question 48

You are introducing Agile product development practices to a product team. The team has identified most of the user stories for the product backlog. Which of the following techniques will now help the team demonstrate that all user stories are good and ready for development?

Answer 48

INVEST

INVEST model gives the characteristics that user stories need to demonstrate to be considered “good” and “ready” for development. INVEST is an acronym for independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 399]

Question 49

Measuring the quality of items in a sample on a pass/fail basis is:

Answer 49

Attribute sampling

Attribute sampling measures the quality of items in a sample on a pass/fail basis; variable sampling measures the quality on a continuous scale. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 274]

Question 50

Jessica is managing an office refurbishment project. All the project stakeholders are identified and classified. The stakeholder engagement plan is also approved. Jessica is managing a project for the first time, and she is relying on the PMBOK® Guide as a reference to deliver an excellent project. Which of the following processes would provide guidance to Jessica regarding how to execute the approved stakeholder engagement plan?

Answer 50

Manage Stakeholder Engagement

The question is asking about the Stakeholder Management process from the executing process group. The Manage Stakeholder Engagement process executes the stakeholder engagement strategy developed during the Plan Stakeholder Engagement process. The Monitor Stakeholder Engagement process deals with making the necessary adjustments to the stakeholder engagement strategy. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 523]