PRM524 – MidTerm Exam 2017

1. As a project manager, when should you especially consider cultural differences?

Question 1 options:

When you break down scope to create a work breakdown structure (WBS).

When you assign human resources to do the work in a schedule activity.

When you develop acceptance criteria for work results to be achieved by the team members.

When you decide upon recognition and awards during team development.

2. As the project manager in a currently initiated software project , you want to assess high-level risks. What should you do?

Develop the project charter and a risk management plan to start identifying risks based on those and other documents.

Develop contingency plans and fallback plans in case the original plan proves wrong.

Discuss the risks documented in your Risk Register with the project key stakeholders.

Identify and analyze risk events using qualitative and quantitative techniques

3. Your organization is considering to run a project which will entail an investment of $1,000,000. The product from the project is forecasted to create revenues of $250,000 in the first year after the end of the project and of $420,000 in each of the two following years. What is true for the net present value of the project over the three years cycle at a discount rate of 10%?

The net present value is positive, which makes the project attractive.

The net present value is negative, which makes the project attractive.

The net present value is negative, which makes the project unattractive.

The net present value is positive, which makes the project unattractive.

4. Which of the following documents is not used as input for the validate scope process?

The requirements traceability matrix, linking requirements to their origin and tracing them throughout the project lifecycle.

The RACI matrix describing accountabilities in case of product rejection.

The validated deliverables completed and checked for correctness by the perform quality control process.

The project management plan, containing the scope baseline consisting of the project scope statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary.

5. You are in the process of contacting sellers to obtain bids and proposals. You found out that it might become a time-consuming procedure to ensure that the sellers get a clear and common understanding of the procurement process and of the needs of your project. Which technique may help you save time?

Four-eyes meetings

Advertising

Bidder conferences

Qualified sellers list

6. What is the meaning of the acronym CSOW?

A statement of work that has been formally agreed upon by both parties and is therefore part of a contract.

A statement of work that is currently valid; this contrasts with the scope baseline, a formerly valid SOW.

A statement of work that is part of a contingency plan; it is commonly linked with contingency reserves.

A statement of work on project level that cumulates statements of work on the cost account level.

7. The communications management plan is a document that includes descriptions of:

responsibility assignments.

project level performance reports.

stakeholder communication requirements.

activity level status reports.

8. A project manager’s PDM network schedule gets audited by a scheduling expert.The expert tells the project manager to focus more on nodes with “path convergence,” also known as “sinks.” What is he referring to?

Nodes in a WBS, where several branches are brought back together.

Nodes in a decision tree, showing various branches with the same chance.

Nodes in a network logic diagram, which have multiple predecessors.

Nodes in a conditional network diagram, at which it becomes deterministic.

9. Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension of individualism refers to:

the identification with the gender role of an individual.

the tolerance for ambiguity or uncertainty in the workplace.

the significance of the person versus that of the group.

the degree of dependence relationships between individuals.

10. What is typical for critical chain project management?

Management of leads and lags

Management of buffers

Management of total floats and free floats

Management of resource over-allocations

11. What is not true for change requests?

Question 11 options:

Change requests are always a sign of bad planning and therefore, should be avoided.

Change requests surpassing the formal change control processes can lead to scope creep.

Professionally managed, change requests can help in improving a project and resolving emerging problems.

Change requests should always be handled in a controlled and integrative fashion.

12. While applying procurement management processes in your project, you identified the need to gain a more objective understanding of sellers’ capabilities in order to rank proposals and develop a negotiating sequence. Which technique may help avoid bias and subjective decisions best?

Question 12 options:

Weighting system

Letter of intent

Bidder conference

Oral contract

13. You are running a major project with four sub-projects. Each of the sub-project managers has developed a risk management plan, identified many risks, analyzed them, and planned for risk response. It is now two months later. What should you not do?

Question 13 options:

Make sure that the sub-project managers keep track of the identified risks and those on the watch list.

Ensure that they handle all risks to save you from project level risk control.

Make sure that the sub-project managers monitor their project work for new and changing risks.

Make sure that the sub-project managers monitor trigger conditions for contingency plans.

14. Which statement best describes the purpose of the communications management plan?

Question 14 options:

The communications management plan focuses on the use of communications technologies by the project management team.

The communications management plan describes rules of behavior and respect for communications in cross-cultural teams.

The project management plan is a subsidiary document of the overall communications management plan.

The communications management plan describes the information delivery needs including format and level of detail.

15. Product acceptance criteria should be laid down in which document?

Question 15 options:

Work breakdown structure

Resource assignments

Project scope management plan

Project scope statement

16. During execution of a project, you observe that the performance of some of your team members is dropping while others are doing a consistently good job. What should you try first to bring the team as a whole back to performance?

Question 16 options:

Organize a team meeting and discuss openly the bad performance of the weak team members. Try to find a joint solution during the meeting.

Introduce a system of formal and informal performance appraisals, research causes for bad performance, and solicit mutual feedback.

Introduce a competitive incentive system with a bonus for the 20% of your team that is performing better than the other 80%.

Do not interfere, but give the team some time to organize and sort the problem out by low-level conflict management.

17. How should change management be planned for?

Question 17 options:

Changes are generally not predictable; therefore, planning for change management cannot be reasonable.

Planning for change management should be done while the various change control processes are being applied.

Changes are a sign of bad planning. One should avoid changes during a project, thus eliminating the need to manage them.

Change management can be planned in a set of management plans or a specific change management plan.

18. During code inspection in a major software development project, a project management team identified frequent occurrences of critical programming errors. These errors are scattered across the code and occur without a discernible pattern. Which tool is most likely to help the team identify areas of error concentration in order to develop a prioritized response strategy?

Question 18 options:

Check sheet

Process decision program chart

Decision tree

Influence diagram

19. You scheduled a kick-off meeting in order to announce the start of your project, present the plan, and develop consensus on it. Another topic will be the explanation of each team member’s role. In addition, you planned some time for discussions. You published the agenda of the kick-off meeting some weeks ago to all invited attendees. Now, short term before the event, you receive various cancellations by team members who say that they cannot join the meeting. But they will be with you when project work will start.

Question 19 options:

You should insist on the presence of the team members to the appointed date.

It is probably a good idea to reschedule the meeting to a day when all team members can attend.

If you force team members’ presence, they would be distracted regardless, by their current problems.

The kick-off meeting is secondary, you are happy if the team members will do their jobs.

20. Your management announced that they want to put you on a stretch assignment.

In this situation, you should consider that:

Question 20 options:

stretch assignments bear an increased risk of failure, and this is rarely outweighed by the learning and development experience expected to come with the assignment.

you should avoid the increased hassle coming with the assignment. It will not be enough for you to simply satisfy requirements and achieve objectives. You will have to learn a lot.

key stakeholders must have timely and complete information regarding your qualifications to make decisions regarding your suitability for the assignment.

a stretch assignment is going beyond your qualifications right from the start. Whatever your education, knowledge, and skills are, you cannot fail personally. Congratulations.

21. During a meeting, a discussion came up: To which degree does your project have to be compliant to the processes enumerated in the PMBOK Guide? What should be the guiding principle to answer this question?

Question 21 options:

The project team must select appropriate processes required to meet the project requirements.

The processes are meant as rough guidelines to which a team should only adhere if there is enough consensus.

The more processes the project team follows, the better the project’s performance will be.

Without alterations, the project manager must follow all 42 processes for project management.

Question 22

A customer is requiring a minor scope change and expects you to do this without delays and additional costs. You believe that you have adequate authorization to make the decision by yourself, but you are not quite sure. What should be your next steps?

Question 22 options:

Before making a decision, you should have a look at the customer’s parking lot.

If you find there to be many expensive, new automobiles, it is likely that you can use the requested change to increase the profit from the contract. Otherwise, you should reject the request.

Customer satisfaction is your top priority. The customer gives you an opportunity to increase their satisfaction, which you should use to the maximum benefit. Most project managers have contingencies to cover risks; these can be used to pay the additional costs.

Handle the request according to the integrated change control processes described in your management plans. Then make a decision together with the appropriate change control body, whether the increased customer satisfaction will be worth the extra costs, work, risks, etc.

A requested change is always an opportunity to get more money paid by the customer and to secretly solve schedule and quality problems. You should make some reasonable estimates on time, costs, risks, etc. and then add a nice margin on top of that to calculate the new price.

23. What is best used to calculate the profit from an internal project?

Question 23 options:

Discounted net revenues from the product over n years minus project costs for internal charges.

The economic value added (EVA) to the organization taking into account taxes and capital costs.

The reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) of the current product compared with its predecessor product.

Discounted net savings from the product over n years minus project costs for internal charges.

24. During the execution of a project to build a complex defense system, your team has run into a deep crisis. The project’s goal and objectives have been challenging right from the start, but now you have discovered that your team members have become increasingly unaware of them. Being busy solving detail problems, they often fail to understand the overall requirements. Then they develop solutions that resolve issues in their area of limited responsibility while causing new problems at the interfaces with other system components. Meanwhile, the team members show signs of growing frustration, and time is running away.

How can you help your team in this situation?

Question 24 options:

If everybody simply does their jobs, then there should be no problem. Make sure that team members are fully aware of their accountability.

Accompany your team members along a sequence of maturity levels from dependence through independence to interdependence.

Problems of this dimension have their origin in fundamental personal incompatibilities between team members. You should replace them all.

Ignore the low-level issues and focus on achieving the overall requirements. Details can be sorted out during test and handover.

25. The __________ is a document that describes how the project management team

will implement the performing organization’s quality policy.

Question 25 options:

quality commitment

quality management plan

quality audit