PMI PMI Certification PMI-SP Questions & Answers

• Question 31:

  You work as a project manager for Honeywell Inc. You have been distributing performance information, including status reports, progress measurement, and forecasts to various stakeholders. A trainee of this company wants to know what are the inputs for generating performance reports. Which of the following are the necessary inputs? Each correct answer represents a part of the solution. Choose two.

  A. Variance analysis

  B. WPM

  C. WPI

  D. Change request

  Correct Answer: BC

  According to the scenario, you can use the following inputs in order to generate performance reports: WPI: Work performance information is the data gathered on the status of the project schedule activities that are performed to accomplish the project work. This data is collected as part of the Direct and Manage Project Execution processes. WPI includes the following: Deliverables status Schedule Progress Costs incurred WPM: Work performance measurements are created from the work performance information. WPMs are an output of Control schedule, Control cost, and Control scope processes, which are monitoring and controlling processes. WPMs consist of planned versus actual performance indicators with respect to scope, schedule, and cost. They are documented and communicated to the stakeholders and are used to make project activity metrics, such as the following: Planned vs. Actual Technical performance and Scope performance Planned vs. Actual Schedule performance Planned vs. Actual Cost performance Answer option A is incorrect. Variance analysis is an after-look at what caused a difference between the baseline and the actual performance. It is one of the tools and techniques used for report performance. Answer option D is incorrect. Change requests are requests to expand or reduce the project scope, modify policies, processes, plans, or procedures, modify costs or budgets or revise schedules. These requests for a change can be direct or indirect, externally or internally initiated, and legally or contractually imposed or optional. A Project Manager needs to ensure that only formally documented requested changes are processed and only approved change requests are implemented.

• Question 32:

  Fred is the project manager of a hotel restoration project. The hotel has 456 rooms. All rooms need to be primed and painted. Before each room can be painted, the primer must cure for twenty-four hours. Fred has arranged these tasks with a finish to start relationship between the priming and the painting. What else should Fred do to account for the twenty-four hours of cure time?

  A. Fred should add twenty-four hours of lead time to each of the 456 rooms painting activity to account for the primer's curing time.

  B. Fred should add twenty-four hours of lag time to each of the 456 rooms painting activity to account for the primer's curing time.

  C. Fred should add an intermediary task with a duration of twenty-four hours.

  D. Fred should schedule all 456 hotels rooms to be primed first and then schedule all 456 rooms to be painted to ensure time for the curing.

  Correct Answer: B

  Fred should add lag time to each painting activity. Since lag time is waiting time, Fred will have to wait twenty-four hours after the priming is finished before he can start painting. What is a lag? A lag directs a delay in the successor activity. Lags require the dependent activity to have added either to the start date or to the finish date of the activity. For example, in a project of making radio-controlled airplanes, after applying glue and pasting stickers, it requires twenty-four hours to dry the glue. Any activity can be started after that only. This period, of twenty-four hours, is a lag. Answer option C is incorrect. There is no reason to add an intermediary task as waiting. Adding lag time is the most appropriate as there are fewer activities to manage. Answer option D is incorrect. Priming all of the room first and then painting all of the rooms would cause Fred to readjust the entire sequencing of activities. In addition, we do not know the reason why Fred has scheduled all the rooms to be primed and then painted. There may be successor activities in the project that need to enter each room, such as carpeting, as soon as a room has been painted. If that were the case the additional activities would have to wait for all of the priming to be completed and then the sequential rooms to be painted before they could start. Answer option A is incorrect. Lead time actually moves activities closer together rather than farther apart. Lead time would cause the painting and priming activities to overlap, something that Fred does not want to happen. What is a lead? A lead allows an acceleration of the successor activity. It works just the opposite of lag. For example, in a software application project, before designing is fully completed for first phase, a program development group can start this phase programming. This overlapping of timing is a lead.

• Question 33:

  Jenny works as a Project Manager for Blue Well Inc. She is measuring the schedule efficiency of her project. The key values are provided in the table below:

  MeasurementsValues BCWP (or EV) 425 BCWS (or PV) 400 ACWP (or AC) 510 What is the schedule performance index (SPI) of the project at the current point of time?

  A. 1.082

  B. 0.88

  C. 1.0625

  D. 0.96

  Correct Answer: C

  According to the question, you are required to calculate the schedule performance index (SPI) of the project. Schedule performance index (SPI) is the measure of schedule efficiency on a project. It is used in trend analysis to predict future performance. SPI is the ratio of earned value to planned value. The SPI is calculated based on the following formula: SPI = Earned Value (EV) / Planned Value (PV) If the SPI value is greater than 1, it indicates better than expected performance, whereas if the value is less than 1, it shows poor performance. The SPI value of 1 indicates that the project is right on target. Here, SPI is calculated as follows: SPI = EV / PV = 425/400 = 1.0625 As the SPI (1.0625) is greater than 1, it shows that the schedule performance is better than expected. What is BCWP (or EV)? Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) or Earned Value (EV) is the value of completed work. It is the budgeted amount for the work actually completed on the schedule activity during a given time period. What is BCWS (or PV)? Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) or Planned Value (PV) is the authorized budget assigned to the scheduled work to be accomplished for a schedule activity or Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) component. What is ACWP (or AC)? Actual cost of work performed (ACWP) or Actual Cost (AC) is the total costs actually incurred and recorded in accomplishing work performed during a given time period for a schedule activity. It is the cost of the work to date, including direct and indirect costs. AC is money that has actually been expended to date.

• Question 34:

  You work as a stakeholder for ABC Inc. You are on an important feature of a project that appears too difficult to execute. Issues like acceptable type of bugs and number of bugs for user acceptance seem to have affected the project. What is the rate of risk factor in such a situation?

  A. Risk factors are rated high.

  B. Risk factors are rated low.

  C. Risk factors are rated medium-high.

  D. Risk factors are rated medium.

  Correct Answer: A

  This happens when most of the stakeholders are concerned about risks. Risk factors are determined for the scope of the project, requirements, design and strategy, technology, processes (for development, payment, change management,

  risk management, and closing the project), and conditions of the project. Risk factors are high when most of the stakeholders have concerns. Even if one important feature of a project appears too difficult to execute, the risk is high. Issues like

  acceptable type of bugs and number of bugs for user acceptance, terms for closing the project, payments not being clear or misunderstood, make the project highly risky.

  Answer option B is incorrect. Risks are low when issues like the format of the forms are not finalized but the functionality is thoroughly understood and solutions are approved. Answer option D is incorrect. Risks are rated medium when a very

  small number of stakeholders have a few concerns. For example, the development team may not have very advanced knowledge of the technology but could provide some work around. Another could be that the customer's people cannot

  finalize a few unimportant workflows.

  Answer option C is incorrect. It is an invalid answer.

• Question 35:

  You are the project manager for your organization. You are coaching Allen, a junior project manager, on how the details of the project's critical path are calculated. Examine the figure given below:

  

  What is the critical path of this project?

  A. ABEHJ

  B. ACFGJ

  C. ADGJ

  D. ACFIJ

  Correct Answer: B

  The critical path is discovered by summing the duration of each activity node in each chain of activities in the project network diagram. In this figure, the critical path is ACFGJ, which is 26 days, the longest chain of activities in the project. Answer option A is incorrect. This path's duration is 22 days. Answer option D is incorrect. This path's duration is 23 days. Answer option C is incorrect. This path's duration is 15 days.

• Question 36:

  Harry is the project manager of a large network installation project. This project requires Harry to add network cable to each office and cubicle of a 14-story office building. Harry will receive a bonus for good time and cost performance in this project. What law of economics would prevent Harry from exponentially adding labor to the project work in an effort to complete the work in a very small amount of time?

  A. Parkinson's Law

  B. Law of Diminishing Returns

  C. Law of Economics

  D. Moore's Law

  Correct Answer: B

  The law of diminishing returns state that the user cannot exponentially add labor to a project to reduce the amount of time required to complete the project work. In other words, Harry cannot keep doubling the workforce on this project to reduce the project duration down to just a few minutes. The law of diminishing returns state that "the user will get less and less output when he add additional doses of an input while holding other inputs fixed. In other words, the marginal product of each unit of input will decline as the amount of that input increases holding all other inputs constant." Diminishing returns mean that the extra labor causes output to fall, which means that the MPL is negative. In other words, the change in output per unit increase in labor is negative and total output is falling. Answer option C is incorrect. This is not a valid project management term. Answer option A is incorrect. Parkinson's Law states that work will expand to the amount of time allotted to it. Answer option D is incorrect. Moore's Law is based on Intel's Gordon Moore who stated that processor speeds generally double in power every 18 months.

• Question 37:

  You are the project manager for the NQQ Project for your organization. You and the project team are creating the activity list for the NQQ Project. You have instructed the project team members that they should include an activity identifier

  and a scope of work description for each activity in the activity list.

  Why is this information needed?

  A. To track the work to the project requirements

  B. To maintain profit and loss statements for the project

  C. To help the project team understand what work is required to be completed

  D. To communicate the work to be completed to the project stakeholders

  Correct Answer: C

  The primary reason for including the activity identifier and the scope of work description for each activity is to ensure the project team understands what work is required to be completed. Answer option B is incorrect. Profit and loss statements

  are not required for all projects and they are linked to actual performance against a project baseline. Answer option D is incorrect. Communicating to the stakeholders is always a good idea, but stakeholders would not usually need to know the

  activity details. Their focus is on project benefits and deliverables.

  Answer option A is incorrect. A requirements traceability matrix is the tool to link requirements to project deliverables.

• Question 38:

  You work as a Project Manager for Media Perfect Inc. Several projects are running under your supervision. Rick, team leader of a project, provides you performance indexes of his project. The schedule variance (SV) of his project is 25. What does this figure depict?

  A. Project is behind the schedule.

  B. Costs are higher than planned.

  C. Project is right on target.

  D. Project is ahead of the schedule.

  Correct Answer: D

  According to the question, the schedule variance (SV) of the project is 25, which is a positive value. The positive SV depicts that the project is ahead of the planned schedule. What is SV? Schedule variance (SV) is a measure of schedule performance on a project. The variance notifies that the schedule is ahead or behind what was planned for this period in time. The schedule variance is calculated based on the following formula: SV = Earned Value (EV) - Planned Value (PV) If the resulting schedule is negative, it indicates that the project is behind schedule. A value greater than 0 shows that the project is ahead of the planned schedule. A value of 0 indicates that the project is right on target. Answer option A is incorrect. The negative SV means that project is behind the schedule. Answer option C is incorrect. The zero SV means that project is right on target. Answer option B is incorrect. This result can be drawn by looking at the cost variance (CV) of the project. What is CV? Cost variance (CV) is a measure of cost performance on a project. The variance notifies if costs are higher than budgeted or lower than budgeted. The cost variance is calculated based on the following formula: CV = Earned Value (EV) - Actual Cost (AC) A positive value means that spending is less than budgeted, whereas a negative value indicates that costs are higher than originally planned for the project.

• Question 39:

  Andy is the project manager of the NHGQ project for his organization. He has elected to use a three- point estimate for his project. His project team, however, is complaining about participating in this estimate type because of the time it takes

  to predict the duration of activities. Andy, as the project manager, tells the project team that they must create the time estimate, as it will help this project and future similar projects.

  What is a three-point estimate?

  A. Each activity must be estimated for its optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely duration.

  B. Each activity must be estimated for its optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely duration and then an average for the estimate is created.

  C. A three-point estimate, also known as PERT, uses the formula optimistic, plus four times the most likely, plus the pessimistic. This value is then divided by six.

  D. A three-point estimate, also known as GERT, uses the formula optimistic, plus four times the most likely, plus the pessimistic. This value is then divided by six.

  Correct Answer: B

  A three-point estimate requires that each activity be estimated for its optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic duration. Once the three estimates have been created, an average of the duration estimates is found and this is the recorded duration for the project work. Answer option A is incorrect. This is not a complete of a three-point estimate. Answer option C is incorrect. This is a definition of PERT, a similar time estimating technique. Answer option D is incorrect. This is definition of PERT, but this answer uses the term GERT so it is not a valid choice.

• Question 40:

  You are the project manager of the HGH Project. Thomas, your project sponsor, asked you to submit status reports every week, but now he wants you to submit the status reports every other week. What project management plan would you need to update to reflect this change from Thomas?

  A. Scope management plan

  B. Performance management plan

  C. Communications management plan

  D. Project management plan

  Correct Answer: C

  The communications management plan needs to be updated whenever there is a change in the frequency, type, or audience of communication. The communication management plan is a document that contains information that is required by

  the stakeholders. It also documents when and how the information should be distributed. It describes the information delivery needs, its format and level of detail. The communication management plan is contained in or is a subsidiary of the

  project management plan. Answer option D is incorrect. The project management plan is a collection of subsidiary plans, including the communications management plan.

  Answer option A is incorrect. The scope of the project is not being changed in this example, so there is no need to update the plan.

  Answer option B is incorrect. There is no plan by the name of performance management plan, so this choice is incorrect.