30 FREE PMP Exam Questions 

They say there is nothing like a free lunch

Chap down the Pub eating a free lunch

So, how about 30 FREE PMP Exam Questions instead?

1. Which of the following is not the feature of a project?

1. Constrained by limited resources
2. Planned, executed and controlled
3. Creates unique product or service
4. May be ongoing and repetitive

Correct Choice: 4 May be ongoing and repetitive

Justification: Operations and projects differ primarily in that operations are ongoing and repetitive while projects are temporary and unique. A project can thus be defined in terms of its distinctive characteristics – a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service

2. In an automobile company for which you are the project manager, the allowable standard deviation for a product required from the contractor is within 0.002 inches. However, while examining the product, you find out that the standard deviation is slightly more than 0.002 inches. You believe that the deviation is very small and hence, acceptable. In this case you must:

1. Allow the product because it is a very small deviation from the company standard which you think is acceptable.
2. Document the lower quality level, ask the contractor for an explanation, and try to find a solution
3. Reject the product outright
4. Allow the lower standard this time but inform the contractor to be more quality conscious going forward

Correct Choice: 2 Document the lower quality level

Justification: Any decrease in quality level should be documented and discussed with the contractor. If there is a small decrease from the required quality, rejecting the product outright(Choice 3) is extremely harsh. Similarly, allowing for lower quality (Choice 1 and Choice 4) is not advisable.

3. All these statements about project charter are correct except:

1. Project charter includes or references the business need and product description
2. Project Charter provides authority to the project manager
3. Project charter formally authorizes a project
4. Project charter is issued by the project sponsor

Correct Choice: 4 Project charter

Justification: The project charter should be issued by a manager external to the project, and at a level appropriate to the needs of the project.

4. All the following are tools for estimate costs except:

1. Analogous Estimating
2. Parametric Modeling
3. Computerized tools
4. Alternatives Identification

Correct Choice: 4 Alternatives Identification

Alternatives Identification is a tool for plan human resource management, not estimate costs

5. All the following are tools and techniques for Plan human resource Management except:

1. Matrix
2. Networking
3. Organizational Theory
4. Recognition and rewards

Correct Choice: 4 Recognition and rewards

Justification: This is a tool for develop project team

6. In your project, you are creating a diagram that describes the decision under consideration and implications of choosing one or another of the available alternatives. This will help in:

1. Getting a Qualitative Analysis of the risk
2. Determining which risks can impact the project the most
3. Translating the uncertainties at a detailed level into potential impact on objectives expressed at the level of the total project
4. Determining which decision yields the greatest expected value

Correct Choice: 4 Determining which decision yields the greatest expected value

Justification: Decision Tree Analysis: A Decision Tree is a diagram that describes a decision under consideration and the implications of choosing one or another of the available alternatives. It incorporates probabilities of risks and the costs or rewards of each logical path of events and future decisions. Solving the decision tree indicates which decision yields the greatest expected value to the decision-maker when all the uncertain implications, costs, rewards, and subsequent decisions are quantified.

7. You are considering whether to buy or make a software product.

• If you buy, the cost is $ 80,000 and the cost of procurement and integrating in your company is $ 1000
• If you want to build yourself, the product will require 7 software engineers working 3 months. Salary of each software engineer is $ 4,000 per month. The overhead costs apportioned to the project will be $ 2,000.

Which option will you choose?

1. Buy
2. Build
3. Neither build nor buy
4. Need more information about the suppliers before making a decision

Correct Choice: 1 Buy

Justification: If you buy, the cost is : $ 80,000 + $ 1,000 i.e. $ 81,000
If you build, cost is : $ 4,000 x 7 x 3 + $ 2,000 = $ 86,000

So, it is better to buy

8. In your project, you have designated a group of people to monitor changes to the project baselines, manage the approvals and do the necessary paperwork. These are examples of

1. Configuration Management
2. Change Control System
3. Risk management
4. Project plan execution

Correct Choice: 2 Change Control System

Justification: A change control system is a collection of formal, documented procedures that defines how project performance will be monitored and evaluated, and includes the steps by which official project documents may be changed. It includes paperwork, tracking systems, processes, and approval levels necessary for authorizing changes.

9. When referring to inputs for schedule development, responsibility (i.e. who will perform the work), activity type (i.e. summary or detailed) and WBS classification are part of:

1. Constraints
2. Activity Attributes
3. Resource Pool Description
4. Activity duration Estimates

Correct Choice: 2 Activity Attributes

Justification: Activity Attributes: Attributes of the activities – including responsibility (i.e. who will perform the work), geographic area or building (where the work has to be performed) and activity type (i.e summary or detailed) – are very important for further selection and sorting of the planned activities in a convenient way for the users. WBS classification is also an important attribute that allows useful activity ordering and sorting.

10. For doing Quality Planning, you are going to use Design of Experiments to determine which factors might influence specific variables. What variable(s) can be used in your analysis?

1. Dollars
2. Kilograms
3. Weight
4. Pounds

Correct Choice: 3 Weight

Justification: (All the remaining are measures, not variables)

11. In your last project status meeting, you had 15 team members. The meeting was very disorderly – there were too many sidebar conversations and arguments. As a result, you acheived nothing substantial from the meeting. In order to better regulate the meeting next time, you should:

1. Decrease the number of people in one meeting
2. Publish a meeting agenda
3. Ensure that you control the channels of communication
4. Give incentives to team members for conforming to desired norms of the meeting

Correct Choice: 2 Publish a meeting agenda

Justification: Meeting Management Techniques – preparing an agenda, dealing with conflict etc.

Publishing a meeting agenda is the best way to ensure that meetings are conducted in an orderly fashion

Please note that even though controlling the different channels of communication is something a project manager may want to do, it is not be a feasible alternative. This is because for N people, there are Nx(N-1) channels of communication, so the project manager cannot control the communication happening between all members in the team.

12. In a Weak Matrix organization, the role of a project manager is that of a:

1. coordinator and expeditor
2. project manager with considerable authority
3. support person
4. functional manager

Correct Choice: 1 coordinator and expeditor

Justification: Weak matrix organizations maintain many of the characteristics of a functional organization, and the project manager role is more that of a coordinator or expediter than that of a manager.

13. In your new company, you realize that some of the financial statements of the company do not follow US GAAP Accounting Standards and are hence inaccurate. In this case, what should you do first?

1. Inform the US government agencies of the inaccurate accounting practices in the company
2. Talk to your finance managers about why you think that they may be violating the standard accounting standards
3. Since you are new to the company, you assume that finance standards are different in the company – hence do not do anything about the issue
4. Talk with finance manager in your previous company to get expert opinion about accounting standards in the new company

Correct Choice: 2 Talk to your finance managers

Justification:

• Option 2 is the best answer, because it aims at trying to understand and resolve the problem
• Option 1 is the last option – to be preferred after all other alternatives are exhausted, and you are convinced that your new company is involved in malpractice
• Option 3 just avoids the issue
• Talking with the finance manager in your previous company is not recommended because you may be compromising proprietary information

14. In your project, a team member suggested the addition of a functionality to improve customer satisfaction. Your approach would be to:

1. Allow for the functionality because satisfying the customer is your objective.
2. Do not allow for the new requirement, because it will be a change in scope, and the customer did not explicitly mention the requirement.
3. Make changes to the project plan to accommodate the new requirement
4. Ask the customer for additional funding for implementing the requirement

Correct Choice: 2 Do not allow for the new requirement

Justification: Define Scope  includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It is primarily concerned with defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.

Please note that the best alternative if a customer requests additional information is to discuss within your group and with the customer before making a final decision. Since these options are not available, the next best option is to ensure that you are preventing gold plating i.e. not building a requirement which was not explicitly stated in the project scope.

A project must be very careful to prevent any “gold plating” i.e addition of any new requirements which have not been asked for by the customers.

15. In your construction project, the CPI is 1.30 and SPI is 0.85. What could be the potential reason ?

1. A critical resource went on sick leave for a long period of time, and this had not been anticipated earlier.
2. The cost of raw materials required for construction increased 10%
3. You had not taken into account inflation rate.
4. There were 4 days of waiting time in the curing of cement, and no work could be done during that time.

Correct Choice: 1 A critical resource

Justification: Option 2 and Option 3 increase the costs – but since the project cost is not a problem (i.e CPI is > 1), we can ignore these answers. Choice 4 was a known factor, and provision should have been made in the project schedule for it. Choice 1 is the only alternative that could have increased the schedule time and made SPI < 1.

16. Team Development is a very critical component of Develop Project Team. All the following are inputs  except:

1. Resource Calendars
2. Project Staff Assignments
3. Work Performance Reports
4. Human Resource Management Plan

Correct Choice: 3 Work Performance Reports

Justification: it is an input to Manage Project Team

17. You have just completed Qualitative Risk Analysis of the project. What should you be doing next?

1. Sensitivity Analysis
2. Risk Probability and Impact
3. Data Precision Ranking
4. Brainstorming

Correct Choice: 1 Sensitivity Analysis

Please note that Risk Probability and Impact, and Data Precision Ranking have already been done as part of Qualitative Analysis and Brainstorming has been done as part of Identify Risks.

Sensitivity Analysis is the only task in Quantitative Risk Management, that needs to be done after Qualitative Risk Analysis.

18. If a project needs to be terminated early, then you will have to do :

1. Procurement Planning
2. Contract Administration
3. Procurement Audits
4. Source Selection

Correct Choice: 3 Procurement Audits

Justification: needed to capture procurement lessons learned

19. You are the Project Manager for a company doing research on alternative fuels for automobiles. In your project, which of the following is a valid assumption:

1. Cost of the project is $ 5 Million
2. The project scope is to develop alternative fuels only for automobile vehicles weighing less than 10 tons.
3. Gasoline fuels will become very expensive and less readily available after 10 years
4. 4 The project has to be completed within 2 years

Correct Choice: 3 Gasoline fuels

Justification: Constraint is an applicable restriction that will affect the performance of the project….

Assumptions are factors that, for planning purposes are considered to be true, real or certain.

Please note that Option 3 is the only assumption, all the other answers are constraints for the project.

20. Your project will most likely be completed in 10 weeks. Worst case scenario, the project will require 19 weeks, and if everything goes well the project will be completed in 7 weeks. What is the PERT estimate for the task?

1. 10 weeks
2. 11 weeks
3. 9 weeks
4. Cannot be determined with the information provided

Correct Choice: 2 11 weeks

Justification: PERT estimate = (Optimistic + 4*Most Likely + Pessimistic)/6

So, PERT for this task is : (7 + 4*10 +19)/6 = 11 weeks

21. Control Quality involves monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards. To evaluate Control Quality outputs, the project team should have a working knowledge of:

1. Prevention and Inspection
2. Sampling and Probability
3. Special Causes and Random Causes
4. Tolerances and Control Limits

Correct Choice: 2 Sampling and Probability

Justification: The project management team must have a working knowledge of statistical quality control, especially sampling and probability, to help it evaluate quality control outputs.

22. In a sender-receiver model, all the following are true except:

1. Sender is responsible for making information clear, unambiguous and complete
2. Sender confirms that information is understood
3. Receiver is responsible for making sure that the information is completely received and understood
4. All the statement above are true

Correct Choice: 4 All

Justification: The sender is responsible for making the information clear, unambiguous, and complete, so that the receiver can receive it correctly, and for confirming that it is properly understood. The receiver is responsible for making sure that the information is received in its entirety and understood correctly.

23. Preparing the Financial plan for your project will require:

1. Project Management skills
2. Industry specific skills
3. Financial Subject Matter Expertise
4. Both Project Management and Industry specific skills

Correct Choice: 4 Both

Justification: Preparing a financial plan requires both Project Management and Industry specific skills

24. All the following are responsibilities of a certified PMP EXCEPT:

1. Ensure that there is no conflict of interest that can compromise the legitimate interests of a client or customer
2. Ensure that the technical specifications are appropriately defined
3. Disseminate PMP Code of Professional Conduct to other PMI certificants.
4. Cooperate with PMI concerning ethics violation and the collection of related information

Correct Choice: 2 Ensure that the technical specifications are appropriately defined

Justification: The project manager may not be a technical expert to determine the accuracy of technical specifications.

All the others are mentioned in the PMP Code of Professional Conduct as responsibilities of Project Manager

25. Work Breakdown Structure is:

1. Developed in the Scope Planning Phase
2. A deliverable oriented grouping of project components.
3. Similar to the chart of accounts
4. Depicts work elements assigned to different organizational units

Correct Choice: 2 deliverable oriented

Justification: WBS is deliverable-oriented grouping of project components that organizes and defines the total scope of the project; work not in the WBS is out of scope of the project.

26. In a project you are presented with following four options. Which project should you select?

1. Project A with Opportunity Cost of $ 100,000
2. Project B with Benefit-Cost Ratio of 0.75
3. Project C with IRR of -2%
4. Project D with NPV of $ 100,000

Correct Choice: 4 Project D

Justification: Project B and Project C are not preferable because the company suffers losses. Project A does not look good because the Opportunity cost is not a project selection criteria. Project D is the only suitable option – because this project has a positive NPV, it will be selected.

27. What is the factor which will help a project manager gain the maximum support of the assigned project personnel?

1. Expertise of the project manager
2. Work Challenge
3. Ability of the project manager to penalize team members
4. Ability of project manager to provide promotions to team members depending on their abilities

Correct Choice: 1 Expertise of the project manager

Justification:  Expertise of the project manager is the most important factor in getting support from the project personnel; least important factor is ability to penalize

28. The Risk Management Plan may include:

1. Budgeting, Timing, Thresholds, Methodology
2. Risks, Triggers, Inputs to other processes
3. Avoided, Transferred, Mitigated and Accepted Risks
4. Risk Response Audits, Earned Value Analysis, Technical Performance Measurement

Correct Choice: 1 Budgeting, Timing, Thresholds, Methodology

29. Procurement Negotiations is carried out as part of :

1. Solicitation Planning
2. Solicitation
3. Conduct procurements
4. Contract Administration

Correct Choice: 3 Conduct procurements

30. You are the Project Manager for a construction project. Your job requires that you sanction work to others and ensure that the work is done at the right time. The tool you use is:

1. Work Authorization System
2. Project Scheduling Techniques
3. Project Plan
4. Network Diagram

Correct Choice: 1 Work Authorization System

Justification: A work authorization system is a formal procedure for sanctioning project work to ensure that work is done at the right time and in the proper sequence.

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