Questions

Below you will find a baseline assessment test to see what areas to focus on while studying. Don't worry if your score is lower than you might like. You are just starting this journey! It's less about your score and more about areas to focus on, or even to observe what best practices are different from your day-to-day. These questions are a good cross-section of what you can expect on your exam. You can find the answers to these questions at the Back Matter section of the book under Assessments. Good luck!

1. While controlling quality on your projects you will monitor repetitive activities and plot sample variance measurements to determine if the product is in control (which is defined by being plus or minus three standard deviations of the mean). Which tool and technique does this describe?
   • Scatter diagram
   • Statistical sampling
   • Pareto chart
   • Control charts

2. You've prepared the following analysis for two different projects for review by the selection committee. Project A's payback period is 8 months and its NPV is -27,000. Project B's payback period is 10 months and its NPV is 150,000. Which project should the selection committee pick?
   • Project A, because its NPV is lower than Project B's
   • Project B, because its NPV is highest and there is more than six months difference between payback periods
   • Project B, because its NPV is a positive value
   • Project A, because its payback period is shorter than Project B's payback period
3. Who should always issue the project charter?
   • A person internal to the project's organization
   • A project initiator or sponsor
   • A low-level manager of the performing organization
   • A high-level manager of the performing organization
4. Standards and regulations concerning the work of the project should be taken into consideration during the planning process. All of the following are true regarding standards and regulations except:
   • Standards and regulations are one of the elements included in the enterprise environmental factors and are part of planning for quality
   • Regulations are approved by a recognized body and employ rules and guidelines that should be followed
   • Regulations are typically imposed by governments
   • Standards are not mandatory
5. Which of the following is the best description of a project charter?
   • It describes both the project scope and the product scope at detail level.
   • It authorizes the project and the use of organizational resources to meet project requirements.
   • It breaks down the project scope over several steps to describe the project on work package level.
   • It describes all activities which are necessary to create the project deliverables.

6. At the beginning of project execution, you notice there are different opinions between team members relating to project work and deliverables, and to the level of overall complexity. What should you do first?
   • Give your team members some time to develop a common understanding of the project scope and product scope. Upcoming interface problems may be resolved later.
   • Use the risk management processes to identify and assess risks caused by misunderstandings and develop a plan with measures in order to respond to them.
   • Organize meetings to identify and resolve misunderstandings between team members in order to avoid interface problems, disintegration, and costly rework early in the project.
   • Use interviews in private with each individual team member to inform them of your expectations and your requirements in an atmosphere of confidence.
7. During execution of your project, you have observed that a team member is being isolated by other team members. Which is a wrong approach in such a situation?
   • The interpersonal relationships between team members are their private issue. You should not interfere.
   • You should apply team-building measures to improve the team's effectiveness.
   • You should try to get feedback from the isolated team member to understand the situation.
   • You should try to get feedback from the other team members to understand the situation.
8. Change-control systems serve all of the following purposes except?
   • Track the status of change requests
   • Define the level of authority needed to approve changes
   • Control scope-creep completely
   • Document the procedures that describe how to submit and manage change requests
9. A project has undergone a major scope change, which increased cost and work levels. What does this mean for earned value data?
   • The cost baseline will be updated, and the new baseline will be the basis for future earned-value analysis.
   • As baselines should generally not be adjusted, the project is due to exceed its budget from now on.
   • There are several reasons to change a baseline, but not scope changes. The project will exceed its budget.
   • Earned-value analysis becomes useless after a scope change, the technique should not be used any more.

10. During your project planning, you have determined that you will need to compress your schedule to meet a customer's schedule constraints. You have moved some activities to be performed in parallel instead of sequentially to compress the critical path. What technique have you used?
    • Crashing
    • Fast -Tracking
    • Schedule Compression
    • Resource Leveling