PMI-PBA Mock Exam Lite - 2

Question 1

You have been asked to analyze the current sales and marketing capabilities of your organization and design and implement a sales pipeline management process. In order to proceed, you need an initial list of key stakeholders to start your conversations. Which of the following techniques could be used to quickly generate an initial list of stakeholders?

Answer 1

Reviewing organizational charts

Since you are designing a new process, you can observe the process or review the process documentation. Developing RACI matrix is irrelevant here. However, reviewing the organizational charts will help you identify the initial list of stakeholders. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 40; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 111]

Question 2

You have recently kick-started a datacenter upgrade project and are now meeting different stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations from the project. The datacenter currently serves a number of business critical applications and attention to risk management is critical. Which of these is not a data gathering technique used in the Identify Risks process?

Answer 2

Delta technique

Delta technique is not a valid type of data gathering technique. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 409]

Question 3

You are leading the development of a robotic process automation product. You need to present the product’s features at a conference but due to the sheer number of the backlog items you need to classify these in groups. All of the following techniques can be used to classify the product features EXCEPT:

Answer 3

Salience Model

A salience model is used to classify stakeholders and not product features. The rest of the choices can all be used to classify product features. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, pages 79, 81, 234]

Question 4

You need to identify all impacted stakeholders for your project. You have identified some SMEs who can help you with the stakeholder identification. In order to engage with these SMEs, you are currently considering either using questionnaires or using brainstorming in a facilitated environment. In comparison to questionnaires and surveys, which of the following is a benefit of using the brainstorming technique for stakeholder identification?

Answer 4

Participants feed off each other’s inputs to generate additional ideas.

During brainstorming sessions, participants feed off each other’s input to generate additional ideas. This is not possible through questionnaires and surveys. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 39; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 111]

Question 5

James is currently managing a software upgrade project. He has recently identified and analyzed his key project stakeholders. He is now searching his organizational process assets for a template with which he can update the results of this analysis along with the planned strategies required to engage the stakeholders effectively. Which of the following should he search for?

Answer 5

Stakeholder engagement plan

A change request form is used to initiate a change in the project baselines. The risk management plan does not document the stakeholder engagement strategy. Although the stakeholder register contains stakeholder identification, classification and assessment information, it does not record the stakeholder engagement strategy. James should search for a stakeholder engagement plan template where all this information can be updated. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 522]

Question 6

Your product team has recently released a new accounting system into the market which has not been well-received by your customers. You have invited a few SMEs for a workshop to identify the product features that customers find problematic. Which of the following elicitation techniques should you use for the workshop?

Answer 6

Speedboat

Speedboat is an elicitation technique that uses game play to elicit information about product features that customers/stakeholders find problematic. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 166]

Question 7

An Agile team is currently working with the product owner in defining project requirements. Some of the features would not be developed in the near future. It was recommended to write one much larger user story for such features rather than multiple fine-grained user stories. Such stories are called:

Answer 7

Epics

Larger user stories are known as epics. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 95]

Question 8

You are leading the development of a software application for the finance department in your organization. You have supplied the ERD to the database designer who has designed the database for the application. The developers have already used the wireframes to develop the UI screens. Which of the following should you pass over to the developers so that they can limit the user access with regards to data access and update rights at the UI-layer?

Answer 8

CRUD matrix

CRUD, defined as create (C), read (R), update (U), and delete (D), represents the operations that can be applied to data or objects. CRUD matrices describe who or what has permission to perform each of the CRUD operations on elements, such as data or user interface screens. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 197]

Question 9

You have been assigned as the lead business analyst for an enterprise system upgrade project. It has been decided that the project will be managed using a predictive approach. You are currently determining the requirements management approach for the project. Which of the following requirement lifecycle states should you select for the project?

Answer 9

Defined, elaborated, verified, validated, and prioritized

The requirements life cycle on predictive projects represents the various phases or states through which a requirement moves as it is defined, elaborated, verified, validated and prioritized. When using an adaptive delivery approach, the requirement states may be more implicit. User stories may be states as not ready, ready, or done. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 179]

Question 10

You are managing an Agile project with constantly changing requirements impacting the product design and features. You are worried that soon the product development will lose its alignment with the business case that authorized this project. You do not have any authority to update the busines case. This would be a major headache if someone audits the project in the future. You are considering minimizing this risk by acquiring a capability to manage your product requirements, maintaining a change log, and maintaining the history of each requirement lifecycle details. Which of the following tools should you acquire?

Answer 10

Requirements management tool

A requirements management tool allows requirements and other product information to be captured and stored in a repository. This tool will help you not only to manage your requirements by their individual requirement lifecycle stages, it will help you maintain a change log and an audit trail. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 213]

Question 11

A product team has recently developed a new information system that would replace the existing legacy system in the organization. You are responsible for the successful rollout of this new system. You have identified that there is a significant difference between the new and the old system, and this needs to be carefully analyzed to train the users on the new system. You conduct a detailed gap analysis for each user role and identify training requirements. You have also completed the readiness assessment. What should you do next?

Answer 11

Develop a transition plan.

Once the training and other transition requirements have been identified, the next logical step is to define the transition plan. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 297]

Question 12

In projects following adaptive lifecycles, what are the two critical components of iterative scheduling with a product backlog?

Answer 12

User stories and time-boxed periods of work

In adaptive life cycles, the requirements are documented in user stories that are then prioritized and refined. The product features are developed using time-boxed periods of work. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 177]

Question 13

A product team is developing a software solution using an adaptive project life cycle. When should the product team request the stakeholders for formal release signoffs on such projects?

Answer 13

Prior to each product release

Depending on organizational norms, obtaining a release decision may include obtaining signoff. For an iterative or adaptive project life cycle, informal signoff generally occurs at the end of each sprint or iteration, with formal signoff, when required, occurring prior to each release of the solution to the production environment. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 296]

Question 14

How does time-boxing help minimize scope creep in agile projects?

Answer 14

It forces the team to process essential features first, then other features.

Time-boxed periods are durations during which the team works steadily toward completion of a goal. Time-boxing helps to minimize scope creep as it forces the teams to process essential features first, then other features when time permits. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 182]

Question 15

A product team has recently developed a new product. Several performance issues were reported by the stakeholders during the UAT sessions. You have collected the necessary data regarding the reported issues and want to analyze the results. Which of the following techniques would you use to analyze the performance divergence from the acceptance criteria?

Answer 15

Variance analysis

Variance is a quantifiable deviation, departure, or divergence from a known baseline or expected value. Variance analysis is a technique for determining the cause and degree of difference between the baseline and actual performance. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 293]

Question 16

You are interested in developing a new business intelligence product. A small team of SMEs have brainstormed and gathered a list of potential product features. You are now analyzing these product features using a purpose alignment model to ensure strategic alignment. What should be your strategy for the features that are neither differentiating nor mission critical to the organization?

Answer 16

Do not build these features.

Features that are neither differentiating nor mission critical to the organization and generally not built. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 82]

Question 17

How is the scope of Prepare for Elicitation process different to the scope of the Determine Elicitation Approach process?

Answer 17

Elicitation preparation is the planning performed prior to the start of each elicitation activity, while determining elicitation approach is the planning performed prior to commencing the elicitation stage.

Elicitation preparation is the planning performed prior to the start of each elicitation activity, while determining elicitation approach is the planning performed prior to commencing the elicitation stage. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 160]

Question 18

An ecosystem map is a scope model that shows all the relevant systems, the relationship between systems, and optionally, any data objects passed between them. Ecosystem maps are most useful when they are created:

Answer 18

At the beginning of a project

Ecosystem maps are most useful when they are created at the beginning of projects to understand all the systems that may be affected by or that will impact the in-scope systems. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 190]

Question 19

You have recently taken over leadership of an Agile team that is halfway through a complicated project. You have recently examined project requirements and now want to get an idea of the team velocity. Which document should provide some insight on the team’s velocity?

Answer 19

Burndown chart

You need to have a look at the burndown chart. The burndown chart will tell the number of story points remaining and the current team’s velocity. Teams might update velocity on a Kanban board, but this is not a common practice. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 131, 148]

Question 20

You have recently taken over the leadership of a software development project. Due to the complexity of the project and the highly regulated project environment, you are considering using a requirements management tool on this project. All the following are typical features of a requirements management tool except:

Answer 20

Cost performance management

Requirements management tools allow requirements and other product information to be captured and stored in a repository. These tools help maintain audit trails and perform version control to assist with change management. These tools also facilitate review and approval processes thorough workflow functionality. Requirements management tools catered to adaptive projects may include additional functionality to create and manage product and iteration backlogs, and produce burndown charts. Cost performance management is not a typical component of a requirements management tool. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 260]

Question 21

A product team is currently debating on whether to implement a traceability matrix or an interaction matrix on a project. You have been asked to provide some guidance to the team in this context. What is your view about these two tools?

Answer 21

Interaction matrix is a temporary artifact that represents a snapshot in time, whereas a traceability matrix is typically maintained throughout a project.

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. Interaction matrix is a temporary artifact that represents a snapshot in time, whereas a traceability matrix is typically maintained throughout a project. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 261]

Question 22

Due to a major generator failure, several pieces of manufacturing equipment have been damaged. You formed a small investigation team that has just completed a detailed root cause analysis of the situation. Which of the following tools cannot be used to communicate the results of the completed root cause analysis?

Answer 22

Kano diagram

A Kano diagram is used to analyze a product’s features. The rest of the choices can all be used to communicate the results of a root cause analysis. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, pages 67, 69, 70, 79]

Question 23

A requirements baseline serves as the backbone of all predictive projects. Which of the following correctly defines the requirements baseline on a typical waterfall project?

Answer 23

Approved requirements

Approving requirements is performed to obtain agreement that the requirements accurately depict what the product team is being asked to build. Requirements that are approved establishes the requirements baseline. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 264]

Question 24

Which of the following tests would you conduct to test a solution in a separate environment that is identical or nearly identical to the production environment, so that adverse interactions with other products in the production environment can be observed and addressed before the solution is released to production?

Answer 24

Preproduction Testing

Preproduction Testing involves testing a solution in a separate environment that is identical or nearly identical to the production environment, so that adverse interactions with other products in the production environment can be observed and addressed before the solution is released to production. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 405]

Question 25

You are managing a complex organizational operating model transformation project and all employees are your stakeholders. You need to analyze these stakeholders using different angles and models to come up with an effective stakeholder management strategy for this project. Which of the following techniques will help you group the stakeholders based on their behaviors?

Answer 25

Persona analysis

A persona is a fictional character created to represent an individual or group of stakeholders, termed a user class. For an individual class, a persona can include any number of descriptive features the team decides are worth capturing; for example, goals, behaviors, motivations, demographics, and high-level requirements, etc. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 117]

Question 26

You are automating a complex network of manual workflows that has many external touchpoints. You need to model all external trigger points that trigger some functionality in the system. Which of the following models should you develop?

Answer 26

Event list

An event list is a scope model that describes any external events that trigger solution behavior. Event lists help define the in-scope events that the solution must react to or handle. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 192]

Question 27

You are leading a product development project using Scrum. Several user stories have been collected from the stakeholders a product backlog has been established. You want this product backlog to be prioritized. What should you do?

Answer 27

Ask the product owner to prioritize the backlog.

Although anyone can write a user story, the product owner decides whether and where to place the story in the backlog. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 216]

Question 28

You and your Agile team are currently decomposing the stories into smaller stories and tasks to be completed in the next three weeks. Which Agile planning meeting is this?

Answer 28

Iteration planning

Iteration planning is conducted at the start of each iteration. During iteration planning we talk about the tasks that will be needed to transform a feature request into working and tested software during the iteration, which is typically two to six weeks in duration. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 233]

Question 29

You are leading a project in a very difficult environment. A number of key stakeholders are resisting the outcome of the project. You escalated this issue to the sponsor but he is disengaged and unresponsive to requests to help clear the political roadblocks. How would you deal with this situation?

Answer 29

Re-confirm the business value of the project and setup a meeting with the project sponsor.

You cannot resolve this issue unless you get to the root cause of this. You need to set up a meeting with the sponsor and try to understand the reason behind her disengagement. The project might have lost its business value so you need to re-evaluate that before you walk in to that meeting. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, page 528]

Question 30

You are helping a product development team analyze a product’s features and prioritizing these for development using a Kano model. What category would you select for product features that are expected to provide great satisfaction to the customers, but if not available, will not cause any dissatisfaction?

Answer 30

Delighters

Delighters are the new features that provide great satisfaction to the customers if provided, but if not provided, will not cause any dissatisfaction since the customers do not expect them to be present in a solution. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 80]

Question 31

You are analyzing your product requirements and defining product use cases. You want to develop a one use case diagram that would show the user and use case interactions. In a use case diagram, people or other systems that interact with the solution are known as:

Answer 31

Actors

In a use case diagram, the people or other systems that interact with the solution are known as actors. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 387]

Question 32

A product team has recently developed a new information system that would replace the existing legacy system in the organization. You are responsible for the successful rollout of this new system. You have identified that there is a significant difference between the new and old system and this needs to be carefully analyzed to train the users on the new system. What should you do next?

Answer 32

Conduct a detailed gap analysis for each user role and identify training requirements.

Creating a comprehensive but generic product training to ensure all users are trained on all system components will not only be an expensive and time-consuming activity, but most of the content will be irrelevant for most of the users. You need to be specific over here; ideally you should conduct a detailed gap analysis for each user role and identify user group specific training requirements. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 398]

Question 33

You are required to assess the organizational strategy, goals, and objectives and to facilitate discussion with stakeholders. When discussing high-level and important aspects of an organization including organizational capabilities, areas for business improvement and further development, and challenges posed by the organization’s environment, which of the following business analysis techniques will you use?

Answer 33

SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is a technique for analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization. This technique focuses on the organization as a whole rather than specific business areas. The other options are root cause analysis techniques that are useful when analyzing some specific area of the business. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 72]

Question 34

You have recently taken over a complex ERP project. The project team initially thought that the user group lacks skills to articulate system requirements early during the project; hence they opted to apply Agile methods to manage this project. Now, with every prototype, the user group is requesting additional functionality and the project’s scope is growing. How should you handle this problem?

Answer 34

Additional scope needs to be added to the product backlog where it gets prioritized

Agile approaches spend less time on upfront project planning. Requirements are gathered on the go and these are added to the product backlog where these get prioritized. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, page 131]

Question 35

A product team has recently released a new system in the business. The introduction of the system is expected to positively impact some KPIs currently measured and monitored by the business. You are currently conducting a post-implementation solution evaluation of the system. In this context, which of the following statements is INCORRECT?

Answer 35

You must ignore these KPIs and focus on the functional and nonfunctional aspects of the solution.

Many product support business goals and objectives can be associated with one or more key performance indicators (KPIs), which are target performance levels that are usually defined by an organization’s executives. For organizations that already define and measure KPIs, it may sometime be possible to use one or more of these KPIs to evaluate the solution. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 282]

Question 36

You have collected product requirements from several stakeholders. Most of these stakeholders were process workers who provided their system-level requirements. You now want to ensure that these system-level requirements are aligned with the overarching business requirements and are now preparing for a major elicitation workshop and have invited senior stakeholders to attend and validate the requirements collected so far. Most of the invited stakeholders have notified that they will be sending one of their subordinates as their delegates to the workshop. What is the risk associated with the workshop?

Answer 36

Less experienced participants may not have the background they need to provide the information being sought.

If the subordinates are delegated to attend on behalf of their seniors, they come with the authority to validate the requirements. The risk is that these participants do not have the exposure of working at the level that you require, and they might not be experienced enough to provide the information being sought. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 161]

Question 37

In order to maintain its market dominance, your organization is currently considering developing a complimentary product to your primary product. However, there is some risk involved in this investment. Which of the following simple valuation techniques should you use if you just need to know how much time it would take you to recover your investment in the complimentary product?

Answer 37

PBP

Payback period (PBP) is the time needed to recover an investment. Return on Investment (ROI) is the percentage return on an initial investment. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) gives the projected annual yield of an investment (rate of return) considering the time value of money. On the other hand, the NPV (net present value) of an investment is the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows over a period of time considering the time value of money. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 90]

Question 38

Jane is currently reviewing a list of project proposals. All the proposed projects achieve some of the organizational strategic objectives and their expected costs are known. However, Jane cannot execute all the projects due to the funding limitation. How shall Jane determine which projects she needs to execute this year?

Answer 38

Select the projects that maximize the business value

Project should never be prioritized based on their budgets. Selecting the projects that maximize organizational revenue or selecting the projects that maximize the business value seem good options. However, adding to business value takes precedence over adding the organizational revenue, since there can be projects that add more to the revenue but add less to the business value. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 7]

Question 39

You are writing an auto-report generation use case. In case the inventory levels fall below a certain point, the system is required to automatically generate a report containing the current stock levels to the warehouse supervisor. If the warehouse supervisor does not read the report in the next twenty-four hours, a copy of the report is sent to the procurement manager. The escalation details of this process need to be documented as the:

Answer 39

Alternate course

The alternate course of a use case defines the alternate set of steps an actor or system can take to achieve the goal other than what is described in the main flow. In this scenario, the report is being sent to the procurement manager in case the warehouse supervisor does not read it in time. This is the alternate course of the use case. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 214]

Question 40

Which of the following is a unit of measure for expressing the overall size of a user story?

Answer 40

Story Points

Story points are a unit of measure for expressing the overall size of a user story, feature, or other piece of work. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, pages 213, 413]

Question 41

You are developing a story map of your product and sequencing the user stories based upon their business value and the order in which their users typically perform them. The set of user stories that describe the end-to-end functionality that the stakeholders require for the solution to be accepted or considered functional is called:

Answer 41

The minimum marketable features

The walking skeleton section of a story map contains the full set of end-to-end functionality that the stakeholders require for the solution to be accepted or considered functional. This set is usually described by a set of user stories and is sometimes called the minimum marketable features (MMF). [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 204]

Question 42

You are responsible for designing a new lessons learned management system for an organization. As a part of the project, you need to consult with a number of senior stakeholders and assess their needs and requirements. You then have to facilitate consensus on the system features, workflows, processes and procedures. Once the system is developed, it has to be rolled out across the organization and all employees have to be trained in effective use of the system. You have chosen to use a hybrid project life cycle. Which of the following life cycles should be adopted for the user training phase of the project?

Answer 42

Predictive

Once the system is successfully designed and built, user training may be an extensive task but this can be planned well in advance. Predictive life cycle should be the most structured approach for this phase of the project. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 15]

Question 43

You are auditing a struggling product that was procured by the CEO of your auditee’s company about a year ago. The core functionality of the product, an online reporting tool, was that each factory worker will key-in their daily progress and the system will consolidate this information at the team level, then the supervisors will review these and add their own progress and notes. This information will then be consolidated at the respective managers’, senior managers’ and vice presidents’ levels, where reports will be updated at each level and pushed upwards. After a detailed analysis, you found out that the product is not able to provide its intended business value because the factory workers are unable to key-in their daily progress due to the nature of their jobs and availability of the supporting technologies. As a result, some of these guys are reporting on a weekly, and at times, on a bi-weekly basis. You do not think that this situation can be improved, and this limitation should have been seriously considered prior to the product implementation. You believe that a thorough feasibility study was not conducted prior to the procurement of the solution. What should you do next?

Answer 43

Look for evidence supporting your conclusion prior to finalizing the report.

This seems like a feasibility issue. It is likely that this was missed otherwise the operational feasibility of the system would have been thoroughly considered. Your job as an auditor is to investigate and report. However, prior to finalizing your report, you must compile all relevant evidence supporting your report. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 86]

Question 44

You are leading a robotic process automation project for a manufacturing facility. During the first product testing session, the project team finds out that a component in the product is not responding to commands as documented in the specifications causing integration testing to fail. This has caused a major embarrassment for the project team in front of the customer. What should you do to resolve this defect?

Answer 44

Conduct a root cause analysis; issue a change request if any baseline needs to be changed; and fix the issue.

If the product doesn’t meet the specifications, it needs to be rejected and fixed. However, if this requires any of the project baselines to change, a change request needs to be issued before making the updates to the baselines. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, page 83]

Question 45

You are leading the business analysis activities on a software development project. You are conducting persona analysis to analyze stakeholders and their requirements to determine how a user class would interact with the system and how would that user class use the product. What should be your first step during this analysis?

Answer 45

Identify the fictional characters to be used to represent a group of stakeholders.

Persona analysis is a technique that is conducted to analyze a class of users for understanding their needs and behaviors. During stakeholder analysis, this technique is used to analyze how a user class interacts with a system or how a user class would use a product. As the first step, you need to identify the personas you need to analyze; fictional characters that will represent the stakeholder groups. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 117]

Question 46

During the first iteration, the Agile team realizes that the project is not as easy as they earlier estimated. There is an immediate need for review of the project management approach. What should you do?

Answer 46

Call a retrospective.

Reprioritizing or re-estimating the backlog will not produce any desirable results if review of the project management approach is required. In this case, you need to call a retrospective. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 149]

Question 47

You are defining a requirements change control process for your project. Which of the following should be your key consideration during this activity?

Answer 47

The process should make it simple to implement necessary changes.

You can choose whatever format for the definition of the process. However, you need to ensure that the process is practical and makes it easy to implement necessary changes. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 254]

Question 48

You are leading the business analysis efforts on a complex organizational transformation project. Recently you have hired a junior business analyst to assist you with the business analysis activities. You have asked the new resource to draft the business analysis plan for the project. The new resource has previously worked on many predictive projects but has no experience in conducting business analysis activities on Agile projects. What do you need to tell them?

Answer 48

There is no one approach to business analysis planning that will work for every project.

There is no one approach to business analysis planning that will work for every project. The business analyst should understand the context and project characteristics to ensure the planning activities are sufficiently sized for the situation. [Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide, page 37; The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 127-129]

Question 49

Which of the following is a basic criterion for verifying requirements?

Answer 49

3Cs

A measure of quality, in the absence of standards or in addition to them, at a basic level, includes verifying the information for the 3Cs: correct, complete, and consistent. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 222]

Question 50

You and your Agile team are currently analyzing your project’s backlog. You want to identify the stories that have historically delighted the users but now have become their basic requirements. Which Agile techniques are you applying?

Answer 50

Kano analysis

The Kano model gives us an approach to separate features into three categories: must-have features, linear features, and delighters. According to the Kano model, features that delight customers eventually become their basic requirements. [The PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 79]