I've put in place an Project Management cheat-sheet for those aiming to become Project Managers.
Question
answer
During which process group does the project manager orient team members to the project and expectations?
Executing
Your project seems to be going off track, so you take action to resolve the problem. In which project management process group are you working?
Monitoring and Controlling
Which of the following skills is not crucial for a project manager to possess?
Accounting
You are hiring a new project manager to take over a project with several teams that often disagree on what they are supposed to do. Which competency would you feel is most important in a candidate for this situation?
Strong leadership skills
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?
Determine if the rule is one that can be broken and come up with an alternative plan of action if your approach doesn't work
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?
Enterprise project management software
The boss has asked you to research project management tools that will help with building and planning tasks on a timeline. Which type of tool would you most likely consider?
A scheduling program
Rosanne's boss asks her to manage a project. Which question requires understanding of objectives, requirements, deliverables, and success criteria to answer?
How will you know when you are done?
Which organizational factor would you use when having to make a difficult decision?
The organization's mission
James is managing a project in which he has some authority to make decisions. In which type of organizational structure is James most likely managing this project?
A matrix organization
Ravi took on a system implementation project that he estimated would take six months to complete, but the work keeps continuing. What is the likely cause?
The project is not clearly defined
Tiko and Camille's boss has a project in which the solution is a bit unclear. Tiko wants to use a waterfall approach and Camille wants to use the Agile approach. Which approach is best and why?
Agile is best because it delivers partial solutions at regular intervals.
What are the components that differentiate a project from operational work?
A unique goal, a temporary endeavor, and usually a budget
Your client has asked for a project that will fix productivity concerns with the customer service department. After asking "why" several times, you are able to determine the cause and create a _____
Problem statement
Krisha is gathering information on her stakeholders, such as department names, factors that motivate them, who they listen to, and their contributions on the project. What is this document called?
A stakeholder analysis
Project objectives help you flesh out a project by _____
Defining project scope
Ramesh is creating objectives for his project. Which SMART step will help him identify actual progress?
Measurable
Which technique would you most likely use to gather valid requirements and get buy-in from various departments?
Focus groups
Your team has identified possible strategies for a project. The team is now evaluating them using a decision matrix. What is the purpose of weighting the objectives?
Focus groups
Your team has identified possible strategies for a project. The team is now evaluating them using a decision matrix. What is the purpose of weighting the objectives?
Identifying the importance of each objective
After the plan is approved and project work begins, Tara's boss is not happy about a project delay for an upgrade. The vendor thought Tara's team would do the upgrade, and Tara thought the vendor would do it. What was missed in this situation?
An assumption was not identified
As part of the project definition, Bisa identifies risks for the project. What is the purpose of doing this during project initiation?
So management can decide whether the risks are serious enough to warrant denying the project
Banton is defining his project deliverables. Which statement describes what a project deliverable is?
Deliverables are the results that the project delivers and help define the project scope
So management can decide whether the risks are serious enough to warrant denying the project
Rudolph, the project manager, is trying to obtain customer approval of project deliverables. It is taking longer than he anticipated because the customer wants to discuss the results. What is the most likely reason for these delays?
The success criteria aren't clear and quantifiable
Your boss has asked you to be the project manager of an approved software implementation project. Which project document identifies your authority and responsibilities?
A project charter
Sakait has done some extra work to appease a client. Now the client is asking her to do one more task, which is significant and not part of project scope. What should Sakait do?
Sakait should tell the client the task is not within scope and add the task using the change control process
Why is it important to document the project scope?
To remind stakeholders what they agreed to and to prevent scope creep
You are the project manager for a healthcare system implementation project. The sponsor has asked you to create a project definition. What will the sponsor use this document for?
To decide whether to approve the project
Several stakeholders for a project disagree on the priorities of many project objectives. Who would you ask first for help resolving this issue?
The project sponsor
You are managing a project that is implementing a new financial system. You need to include some of the finance department's resources on the team. Which stakeholder should you approach?
A functional or line manager
The sponsor of Project T5 assigned you as the project manager, and the project has already been approved. What is the first thing you need to do as the project manager?
Review what has been done and complete any tasks not addressed
The development team has encountered a problem with a software feature. They need to handle this problem quickly, but they can't make a face-to-face brainstorming session because they aren't local. Which alternative solution is best?
Videoconferencing
One risk to your schedule is that a hard drive with customized software fails and you lose the work that was done. Resources on the project team regularly back up their work so they can resume work quickly after a hard drive failure. What type of risk management strategy do backups represent?
Risk mitigation
You have created a risk management plan for your project. Which type of response would you use if the scope was changed to remove a risky section of the project?
Avoidance
Izzy has finished identifying risks for her big project, but is unsure how to account for unknown risks from a time and cost perspective. What is the general practice most companies use for projects?
Set aside a percentage of the budget and project duration based on past projects. If you don't have past experience, use 15%
Madhukant's project includes testing software functions. Which part of the quality management plan would address the processes that will be used to ensure the software is meeting the standards?
Quality assurance plan
Your boss is asking you to take on a reengineering project. The company hasn't run reengineering projects before, but has hired several project managers with reengineering experience. Which technique is best to use in this situation to estimate time and cost?
Delphi technique
Turkan is developing a resource management plan for his project. Which part of this plan articulates who makes decisions, who performs work, and who needs to receive status on the project?
Responsibility matrix
Your coworker has to develop a cost estimate but is unsure which is the best one based on a bell curve of costs for past projects. What is a general practice for choosing the best estimate?
Choose a point halfway between the average and worst-case values
Mei has obtained a graph showing duration data for past projects that follows a normal distribution. Which duration estimate provides the best chance for a project being selected and completed successfully?
The average of the worst-case value and the 50% probability value on the normal distribution
Candace is a new project manager and has asked for your help with the project budget. Which type of cost typically represents the largest portion of a project budget?
Labor
What is not a required part of creating a project schedule?
Set a deadline for the project
You are building your project schedule. You have the tasks in the right sequence. What is the next step you should take?
Add the time that you estimate for each task
Chloe is developing her risk management plan and wants to make sure that she can get early warning that a risk might occur. What is the key item she should document in her risk information forms?
The events that might trigger the risk
Which factor is a test you can use to determine whether you have broken down the work to the right level?
The work package is between 8 and 80 hours to complete
George is building his work breakdown structure (WBS) to organize and distribute the project work to various departments. Which type of tasks would he use to represent a department's responsibility?
Summary tasks
Kendra has a project team of varying skills and experience. Since the WBS task names are short and may not be enough for the team members to know what to do, what should Kendra do?
Kendra should have her team leaders create work package documents
When would you create a work package document that describes the work to be done in explicit detail?
The assigned resource is inexperienced
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 process change would you propose to allow the review board to focus on significant changes?
Set thresholds so you or team leads can decide what to do with small change requests.
Missing question and their answers:
The IT department says that there are several products that do what the project needs. What is the most important thing that will help you choose the right product?
understanding your project needs
Linde has a tight budget for her project. She needs to potentially seek outside sources. Which plan should she consult to understand the products or services that are available?
the procurement plan
Your client has just asked you to make changes to some features in the project. What would you do first?
Ask the client to document and submit a change request form.
When would you create a work package document that describes the work to be done in explicit detail?
the assigned resource is inexperienced
Which of the following skills is not crucial for a project manager to possess? (duplicated with different answers)
identifying deliverables
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 _____.
change management process
Which type of dependency is most common in project schedules?
finish-to-start
Milestones can be used in many ways. What is not something that milestones do?
summarize schedule and cost performance
A stakeholder project review meeting is estimated for a one-day duration. There are eight stakeholders. How many work hours do the stakeholders spend in this meeting?
64
What is not a required part of creating a project schedule? (duplicated with different answers)
what time people start working each day
You have quite the diversified team in experience, skills, and hours they work. Which best practice should you follow to help ensure your schedule is as realistic as possible?
Add notes to your schedule to document resource changes and the reasons for the changes.
Now that your project is underway, all resource assignments are running late. What is the likely cause?
not taking into account the hours that resources spend on non-project work each day
Which activity is not part of the Adapt stage?
Review what has been completed and what is still on the backlog to choose the features for the next iteration.
The Agile team is building and implementing features. The team lead runs a daily meeting to review the status on completed and incomplete work. Which Agile stage is the team in?
explore
The customer has identified several new features since the original backlog was built. What do you do to address them?
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.
The Agile project management lifecycle _____.
includes activities similar to a Waterfall approach but performed in a different order and with different emphasis
What are the names for the stages in an Agile iteration?
speculate, explore, adapt
How can using an Agile approach help a company improve delivery?
by using an iterative approach to deliver value sooner
Which choice is not a characteristic of Agile project management?
no documentation
You need to resolve a serious disagreement over requirements between the project customer and another key stakeholder. What is the key communication technique to choose for this situation?
Hold a face-to-face meeting or videoconference.
Callahan just completed the planning phase. Now he needs to have a kickoff meeting with the team. What is not something covered in the kickoff meeting?
a detailed review of the project plan
Your project meetings run longer than planned and you're determined to start and finish them on time in the future. What technique would you implement to accomplish this?
Create an agenda with topics and time estimates so you can move topics that exceed their time to the parking lot to be handled later.
You have a project committee meeting with all stakeholders. What is the key step you need to take to make the meeting effective for the stakeholders?
Identify the purpose of the meeting and results you need from the stakeholders.
Your team asks a lot of questions about their assignments. Although they turn to you to make decisions, they sometimes test the boundaries of what they can do. What stage of team building are they in?
forming
You are project managing a team of 10 people. Lately, one of your team members is not performing up to par. What is the least likely approach you should use to handle this situation?
Quickly find another team member to take over.
There's a conflict on Mack's virtual project team. Which approach is best to address the conflict?
a video or phone conference
A change request submitted by the project sponsor has an effect on several other projects within the organization. If the change request appears to be a positive addition to the project, who should you ask to approve the change request?
the organization's executive board
Camille receives a change request that will probably affect the project's business case. How should she manage this change?
She should have the customer approve the change request.
Pam owns several risks in a project. What is Pam's first action as a risk owner?
Proactively implement risk responses before the risks become issues.
What do you use to specify what will be tested in project acceptance tests.
Deliverables and success criteria
What is a reason that you might not be able to tailor your project in some ways?
The project is in a highly regulated industry that has specific project management requirements.
What is not something you would tailor in a project?
the project objectives
Who applies the principles for effective project management?
anyone who works on projects
Which factor could directly affect the strategy and portfolio changes that the leadership team makes?
the value realized from project-related work
What is the initial driver for what the value delivery system does within an organization?
the organizational vision of senior leadership
Estimating a project using the Delphi technique is an example of which type of tool?
method
While each performance domain places on a specific topic, what is the overarching focus of all performance domains?
delivering outcomes, benefits, and value