PMP Certification Exam questions with Answers & Explanation

Project Management Foundations

1. Your organization runs numerous projects and wants to choose the most appropriate resources for each project team. Which of the following is the best tool for identifying project resources?

A. scheduling software
B. a spreadsheet program
C. enterprise project management software
D. a collaboration tool
Ans: C
Enterprise project management software offers tools to find resources with the right skills and availability.



2. A project that you manage is behind schedule. You have identified an approach that would get the project back on track, but it would require you to break one of your organization's policies. What is the best course of action?

A. Determine if the rule is one that can be broken and come up with a plan of action if your approach doesn't work.
B. Inform the management team that there is no way to shorten the schedule given your constraints.
C. Move forward with your plan because you can ask for forgiveness later.
D. Ask the management team for permission to break the rule.
Ans: A
Some rules can't be broken without severe consequences. If you determine that the rule can be broken, you can deliver earlier with minor consequences. You must have a plan for what you will do if you break the rule and don't deliver earlier.


3. During the ---------- project management process group, you, as project manager, orient your team members to the project and the parts they play in it.

A. monitoring and controlling
B. initiating
C. planning
D. executing

Ans: D
At the beginning of the executing process group, you kick off the project, get resources on board, and explain the rules for the project.


4. Which of the following skills is not crucial for a project manager to possess?

A. accounting
B. business expertise
C. leadership
D. interpersonal skills

Ans: A
Project managers do need to understand aspects of finance, but accounting skills can be provided by others.


5. What are the components that differentiate a project from operational work?

A. a unique goal, temporary endeavor, and a budget
B .a unique goal, temporary endeavor, dedicated resources
C. a unique goal, deadline, specific objectives
D. specific requirements, set start and finish dates, budget
Ans: A
The definition of a project is "a temporary endeavor that has a unique goal and usually a budget."


6. Why is it important to document the project scope?

A. because it's a standard project management deliverable
B. to have a paper trail of the project boundaries
C. to remind stakeholders what they agreed to and to prevent scope creep
D. because it's needed for project contracts

Ans: C
With the project scope in writing, you will be able to identify whether requests are within scope or need to be handled by change management.


7. Why do you identify risks when you initially define a project?
A. so you have an idea of the accuracy with which you can estimate work, cost, and schedule
B. so management can determine the amount of contingency funds to set aside
C. so management can decide whether the risks are serious enough to warrant skipping the project
D. so you can prepare a risk management plan before getting approval to begin planning
Ans: C
If the project has numerous, serious risks, management might decide to choose a different project that offers benefits without so much uncertainty.


8. In a project you manage, it is taking much longer than expected for the customer to approve project deliverables. What is the most likely reason for these delays?

A. The success criteria aren't clear and quantifiable.
B. The deliverables are truly not acceptable.
C. Your testing process is flawed.
D. The customer isn't sure what they want.
Ans: A
Success criteria that are unclear or not quantifiable can make it difficult to determine whether deliverables are acceptable.


9. Project objectives help you flesh out a project by _____ and _____.

A. defining project scope; identifying the best approach to use to achieve the goal and objectives
B. breaking the goal down into its components; identifying the work that needs to be done to deliver those components
C. describing the challenges the organization faces; identifying what must be done to address those challenges
D. defining the project deliverables; identifying the work needed to complete deliverables

Ans: A
Project objectives help identify the items you include in scope. They help identify the approach that best satisfies the objectives.


10. Several stakeholders for a project disagree on the priorities of several project objectives. You ask the _____ to help you resolve this issue.

A. a functional manager
B. project customer
C. the most outspoken stakeholder in the disagreement
D. project sponsor

Ans: D
The project sponsor wants the project to succeed and has enough authority to help you resolve issues, particularly with other stakeholders.


11. Why is it important to define a project?
A. so the project team knows what work to do
B. so the customer can decide which project manager to assign to the project
C. so the customer or sponsor can decide whether to approve the project
D. so the customer can create the project charter

Ans: C
By defining the project, the customer can make an informed decision whether the project makes sense for the organization.


12. Why is a face-to-face meeting the best approach for obtaining approval to proceed?

A. It's easier to get everyone's signature.
B. You can observe people's facial expressions and body language.
C. You can ensure that stakeholders understand the project plan before they formally commit to it.
D. Stakeholders can review the plan before signing.
Ans: C
Obtaining approval is about buy-in. The approval meeting gives you a chance to present the plan, answer stakeholder questions, and resolve any final issues.

13. The IT department says that there are several products on the market that do what the project needs. What is the most important thing you need to ensure that you select the product that best meets the project requirements?

A. descriptions of your procurement processes
B. clear and prioritized requirements
C. a clearly defined make-or-buy decision process
D. information from potential vendors describing their products' capabilities
Ans: B
Clear and prioritized requirements make it easier to choose the product that meets the requirements and doesn't provide more than is needed.

14. The change review board can't get through all the change requests that are submitted. They want to focus on requests with significant impact. What is the easiest way to allow the review board to focus on significant changes?

A. Allow for occasional halts to submitting change requests until the review board has caught up.
B. Allow for emergency meetings of the change review board when change requests are outstanding.
C. Ask the change review board to meet more frequently.
D. Set thresholds so you or team leads can decide what to do with small change requests.
Ans: D
Setting thresholds for time and cost will reduce the number of change requests that the review board has to handle.

15. The development team has a problem with one of the software features and needs to quickly brainstorm a solution with the vendor team, which is not local. What method of communication would you choose for the brainstorming session?

A. face-to-face meeting
B. conference call
C. videoconferencing
D. online chat session
Ans: C
Videoconferencing is the ideal method because people can see and hear other people's reactions and the session can be scheduled quickly.


16. One risk to your schedule is that a hard drive with customized software fails and you lose the work that was done. The development team regularly backs up their work so they can resume work quickly after a hard drive failure. What type of risk management strategy do backups represent?

A. risk acceptance
B. risk transfer
C. risk avoidance
D. risk mitigation
Ans. D
Backups mean that you can restore the files you need, so you lessen the impact of a hard drive failure. Risk mitigation means that you limit the impact or probability of the risk.


17. To get early warning that a risk might occur, what is the key item to document in your risk information forms?

A. data from similar projects about when the risks occurred
B. a forecast of when the risk is most likely to occur
C. the events that might trigger the risk
D. who owns the risk so you know who to email with status requests
Ans: C
If an event might trigger a risk, documenting these events will give you early warning. The event doesn't mean the risk will definitely occur.


18. To create a project schedule, you need to perform several tasks. Which choice is not one of these tasks?

A. Assign resources to activities.
B. Set a deadline for the project.
C. Estimate the effort activities will take.
D. Put activities into sequence.
Ans: B
Management might set a deadline for your project, but that isn't needed to build the schedule. You build the schedule first and then adjust it, if necessary, to meet the deadline.

19. Which estimate on a normal distribution provides the best chance for a project being selected and completed successfully?

A. the best-case value
B. the worst-case value
C. the average of the worst-case value and the 50% probability value on the normal distribution
D. the 50% probability value on the normal distribution
Ans: C
This choice is not so high that the project won't get selected, yet it provides an 86% chance of delivering at or below your estimates.

20. When would you create a work package that describes the work to be done in explicit detail?

A. the work is complex
B. several people will perform the work
C. the assigned resource is inexperienced
D. the work is crucial to project success

Ans: C
A detailed work package can provide an inexperienced person with guidance on what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, how to tell that the work is complete and completed correctly.


21. A work breakdown structure diagram shows work broken down into manageable pieces, which provides several benefits for managing projects. Which choice is not a benefit?

A. assigning work to resources
B. identifying deliverables
C. estimating time and cost
D. measuring progress

Ans:B
Deliverables drive the creation of the work breakdown structure, not the other way around.



22. When you start a project plan, what information do you identify first because it drives most of the plan?

A. the resources assigned to the project
B. the work that must be done
C. the budget
D. the processes you'll use to run the project

Ans:B
The work that must be done determines the skills and resources you need, the effort the work will take, the cost, and so on.


23. The project customer and other stakeholders have approved your project plan. After you save the project baseline, those documents will be under the control of the _____.
A. quality management process
B. communication management process
C. change management process
D. scope management process
Ans. C
The baseline documents represent anything that you want to control with change management. Any changes to the baseline are change requests.


24. The critical chain approach can help prevent delays and even deliver a project earlier than with other approaches. Which choice is not part of the critical chain approach?
A. Schedule from the project finish date.
B. Add buffers to task sequences on the critical path.
C. Add buffers to task sequences.
D. Focus on the most limited resources first.
Ans. B
Actually, you add buffers to every task sequence in the schedule as well as at the end of the project, so tasks share buffers.


25. Now that your project is underway, all resource assignments are running late. What is the most likely cause?

A. not taking into account resource productivity when assigning resources
B. poor estimating
C. not taking into account the hours that resources spend on non-project work each day
D. assigning resources to too many simultaneous tasks
Ans. C
Non-project time affects everyone in the organization, which is why this is the most likely cause of every resource being behind schedule.



26. Milestones can be used in many ways. What is not something that milestones do?

A. summarize schedule and cost performance
B. indicate completion
C. reschedule
D. show progress

Ans. A
Milestones don't have duration or assigned resources, so they can't summarize cost. However, looking at only milestones does provide a high-level summary of the schedule.


27. When you assign resources to a task, what do you need to know to determine how long the task might take?

A. how many people are allocated to work on the task
B. days that people are available to work on the task
C. the number of people assigned to the task
D. all of these answers
Ans: D
Duration is determined by how many hours of work can be performed in a day, which depends on the number of people assigned, the percentage of their regular work schedule allocated to the task. Duration is also affected by days that resources are or are not available to work.


28. Which activity is not part of the Adapt stage?

A. Review what was completed to ensure that it does what it is supposed to.
B. Compare what was planned for the iteration to what was completed.
C. Review what has been completed and what is still on the backlog to choose the features for the next iteration.
D. Hold a lessons-learned session.

Ans: C
Although the Adapt stage includes a review of what was completed, you do not choose the features for the next iteration.


29. The customer has identified several new features since the original backlog was built. What do you do to address them?

A. At the beginning of the next iteration, re-estimate, reevaluate, and re-prioritize the backlog features to decide which ones to include in the iteration.
B. Talk to the customer about adding the features to a future project.
C. Estimate and prioritize the features, and start work on high-priority features immediately.
D. Add the features to the end of the backlog.

Ans. A
The customer can add features at any time, at which point you estimate and prioritize them in the backlog. Because things can change, at the beginning of each iteration, you re-estimate, reevaluate and reprioritize backlog features before you decide which ones to add to that iteration.


30. The Agile project management life cycle _____.

A. includes activities similar to a Waterfall approach but performed in a different order and with different emphasis
B. includes the same activities as a Waterfall approach performed in a different order
C. is totally different than a Waterfall approach
D. is shorter than the Waterfall project management life cycle

Ans. A
Agile project management includes activities similar to Waterfall. In Agile, planning, execution, control, and closing are performed in iterations. In addition, Agile project management activities emphasize things differently, such as interacting and documenting when needed.


31. Which choice is not a characteristic of Agile project management?

A. more emphasis on people and interaction
B. no documentation
C. customer is more engaged
D. appropriate when business needs change
Ans: B
Agile projects produce less documentation than a traditional Waterfall approach. They do not totally eliminate documentation.