General Notes from Practice Tests
• Project life cycles are independent of product life cycles.
• Rolling wave planning is a part of progressive elaboration.
• Exclusion is helpful in reducing scope creep.
• User Stories– short, textual description of required functionality often developed during a
requirement gathering workshop.
• Time-boxed period are the durations in which the team works steadily for the completion of
a goal. Time-boxing helps to minimize scope creep as it forces the teams to process
essential features first, then other features when time permits.
• Project Charter generally consists – High level risk, objectives, constraints, Stake holder list,
Milestone, Project description, Success & Acceptance criteria, Assumptions
• Total 7 Constraints – Scope, Schedule, cost, Risk, Quality, Resources, Customer satisfaction
• Phase gate is also known as “Milestone”
• What is the major reason for deviation in the baseline – Incomplete Risk assessment
• If the extra work requested by Sponsor is not in the project scope / charter, then PM should
request for new charter in some specific cases before moving ahead.
• Delphi Technique – A technique used to get the general agreement among all the experts
(keep on sharing the feedback collected in cyclic manner till all are in same page)
• Work break down is not time based & doesn’t show dependencies between them
• User Stories – Collection of Functions & features from stakeholders’ perspective.
• Network Diagram doesn’t have durations. If durations mentioned, then it will be called as
critical path.
• Greater the range of activity & standard deviation, greater the risk
• Padding – Adding time & cost to the estimate, while not having the information necessary
to make reliable calculation.
• Critical Chain Method – A critical path which accounts for uncertainties & resource
limitations.
• Marginal Analysis – A point beyond which measures to improve quality stops adding value
& instead occurs costs.
• Indirect cost estimations & Financial reserves are calculated in the “Determine Budget”
process.
• Funding limit reconciliation – Deals with reconciling expenditure of funds with funding limits
on the commitment of funds for the project. Or Expenditure of funds are frequently
reconciled with the disbursement of funds of the project.
• What is the primary risk when including reserve or contingency allowances – Overstating
the cost estimates.
• At the end of the project, Schedule variance is ZERO
• Earned value can be presented in S-curve.
• A burn down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time. The
outstanding work (or backlog) is often on the vertical axis, with time along the horizontal.
Burn down charts are a run chart of outstanding work. It is useful for predicting when all of
the work will be completed.
• Conflicts should be addressed in private not in team meeting - on case bais.
• Best practice refers to “A specific sequence of work, described in terms of soft logic”
• Which is generally not regarded as an element of active listening? – “Interrupting when
appropriate”.
• In most jurisdictions, a legally required order of formal statements establishing a contract is:
Offer, acceptance.
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• The original plan for rewarding people is developed during the “develop team” process.
• Cultural differences should be considered when determining recognition and rewards.
• The project charter has been developed. What is an appropriate next step for you? -
Identify stakeholders & then Develop management plans
• Product acceptance criteria should be laid down in which document - Project scope
statement.
• The cost baseline is developed during which process - Determine budget
• In configuration management “delta” refers to deviations from baseline.
• What is typical for high-context cultures? - A message has little meaning without an
understanding of the surrounding context.
• What is important for quality auditors? - They must be properly trained
• Statistical sampling is being performed in “Inspection”.
• Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension of individualism refers to the “significance of the person
versus that of the group”
• CSOW - A statement of work that has been formally agreed upon by both parties and is
therefore part of a contract.
• Stretch assignment - key stakeholders must have timely and complete information
regarding your qualifications to make decisions regarding your suitability for the assignment
• Assigning contingency to the identified risk is called as – “Active risk acceptance”
• Burn rate means - The rate at which a company is losing money (=1/CPI)
• Which is not a goal in both project management and quality management -Triple
constraint.
• important benefit of a 360-degree review - The reviewed person will regard the assessment
process as fair and developmental.
• Difference between a statement of work and a scope statement – “The statement of work
is prepared by the customer while the scope statement is developed by the project
management team”.
• Extrinsic motivators - are incentives such as rewards, gifts, or money.
• Passive risk acceptance - it is best to deal with a risk as it occurs.
• What is the five whys method used for - Root cause analysis.
• When control charts are used, outliers are - singular measurements outside the bandwidth
between an upper and lower control limit.
• Calculating free float and total float is generally not reasonable for finished activities.
• The situational leadership model as defined by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard consists of
the stages - Telling, selling, participating, delegating
• A Pareto chart helps focusing on -the minority of causes, which create the majority of
problems and defects.
• purpose of control limits - Identifying whether the process is in control or not
• Risk report - summarize the overall project risk exposure with appropriate metrics, as well as
individual high-level risks along with a quick presentation of responses with their pros and
cons.
• Project retrospectives - Meetings for the project team to look back into the recent past in
order to identify lessons learned so far, and possible improvements.
• What is a product backlog? - A description of what is to be delivered in a product
• “High” in Risk register refers to - A stakeholder believes it is of high relevance
• Stakeholder cube - 3D model of stakeholder influence and interest
• A project procurement lifecycle for a project can include several contracts.
• Control charts are established in manage Quality process group.
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• The range between the upper and lower control limits; created based on the company's
quality philosophy, usually 3 or 6 sigmas.
• The rule of seven is a general rule, or heuristic
• While control limits represent the performing organization's standards for quality,
specification limits represent the customer 's expectation or the contractual requirements
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• Configuration Management Plan With all the product and project documentation that is
part of managing a project and all the changes to the documentation that will occur
throughout the life of the project, it is essential to have a plan for making sure everyone
knows what version of the scope, schedule, and other components of the project
management plan is the latest version. This is the purpose of the configuration
management plan. It defines the naming conventions, the version control system, and the
document storage and retrieval system, and details how you will manage the changes to
the documentation, including which organizational tools you will use in this effort.
o The configuration management system is part of the project management
information system (PMIS).
• WBS dictionary can be used as part of a work authorization system, which inform team
members when their work package is going to start
• Creating a sense of community is a benefit of what type of Strategy – Co-location
• Team performance Assessment – This document the formal & informal assessments of the
project team’s effectiveness.
• Rewards & recognition is part of “Develop team” process.
• Aspects of resource management – Role, Responsibility, competency, Authority
• Whose responsibility is to ensure ground rules – All team members
• A RACI chart is an example of – Responsibility Assignment Matrix
• Conflict Management is a part of “Manage Team” process
• Training is a part of “Develop team” process
• Workarounds are provisions to tackle issues as on when occurred.
• AOA activity diagrams are only represented using which representation - finish-to-start
• Schedules are most common cause of conflicts
• Examples of benefit measurement method - Internal Rate of Return, Scoring model,
Discounted cash flow, Murder board
• Murder board is a process where a committee asks questions from project representatives
as part of the project selection process.
• Oligopoly - The action of one seller has an impact on other sellers, as there are very few
sellers
• Learning curve estimation uses the principal that the cost per unit will decrease as more
units of work are manufactured.
• War room is used for collocation to facilitate communication within the team.
• When the team is afraid of the Project Manager, the power yielded is of type Coercive.
• Ethnocentrism refers to belief that one’s culture is superior to other cultures.
• A project management team has identified, analysed, and prioritized a great number of
individual project risks and also some overall risks, Strategies that can be used for individual
risks can also be used to respond to overall risk.
• Severe weather conditions are threatening adherence to the project schedule and overall
project success. What kind of risk is this - Event-related risk
• meaning of Jerry B. Harvey's concept called the "Journey to Abilene"? - Group decisions
can have the paradox outcome, that a decision is jointly made or approved that is not
desired by any of the group members
• Code of accounts / Control Account ID - It is the collection of unique identifiers generally
assigned to WBS items
• Updating the WBS during Define Activities, is often called Refinements.
• Vrooms Expectancy theory is based on the idea that people believe there are relationships
between the effort they put in at work, the performance reviews / ratings they are credited
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for the effort, and the rewards they receive from their effort and performance review
ratings.
• The point of total assumption is the point at which the seller has consumed all the fees and
will now bear the costs.
• While dealing with natural disasters like storm, flood, heavy rain, earthquake the project
manager should prepare the schedule & cost provisions accordingly, this will be called as –
“Acceptance” risk management technique.
• Project Team has created sub plans for each activity in project plan. These plans are
called: management plan
• SWOT involves identification of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This
technique then identifies the threats due to organization weakness as well as opportunities
due to the organizations strengths.
• The change log is used to log all change requests - approved and rejected changes.
• Not only is Scope verification performed while the project is executing - it is also performed
when a project is terminated. It is used to determine the level of completion
• Delphi Technique is a form of information gathering technique where inputs from experts is
solicited anonymously without gathering them together.
• 7QC tools - Cause and effect diagrams, Flowcharts, Check sheets , Pareto diagrams ,
Histograms , Control Charts, Scatter Diagrams.
• ADM (Arrow Diagramming Method) uses dummy activities to correctly show all logical
relationships.
• You have just completed Schedule network diagram. Which of the following time
management activities have you completed? - Sequence Activities
• Work performance data is the 'as of now' status of deliverables while Work performance
measurement is a comparison between planned Vs Actuals
• In the case of the rework effort the EMV is negative
• Contract closure is performed before administrative closure. Administrative closure is done
only once per phase or once for the project - while Procurement closure can be done as
many times as needed depending on the number of contracts.
• The release criteria include - the timing of the release of team members & the method in
which you will release them.
• Procurement contracts are closed in “Monitor & control” Phase
• You should update the lessons learned document throughout the project
• What is a Project Scope? - The work performed to deliver a product & It is the features and
functions that characterize a product.
• Stakeholder engagement -
o Low-power/low-interest: monitor only
o Low-power/high-interest: keep informed
o High-power/low interest: keep satisfied
o High-power/high interest: manage closely
• The requirement traceability matrix consists of - contained the description, owner, source,
priority, and status of product requirements
• In product analysis, requirements are captured at a high level and decomposed to the
level of detail needed to design the final product
• Risk owners are specified in the “risk register” which is updated as part of the Plan Risk
Responses process.
• Procurement documentation provides a written record used in reaching the legal
agreement and can include bid documents, procurement statement of work, independent
cost estimates, and the source selection criteria
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• Earned value (EV) is the sum of the planned value of completed work (in case % work
completed & BAC not given).
• The rule of seven tells you that, although none of these points are outside of the control limits,
they are not random, and the process is out of control. The project manager should
investigate this type of situation and find a cause.
• Changes in a project can be requested in – Planning (as a rolling wave planning), Executing,
monitoring & control.
• Change Control System is a part of PMIS. So, it’s an EEF.
• Risk triggers - These are events that trigger the contingency response
• One typical display of sensitivity analysis is the tornado diagram, which presents the
calculated correlation coefficient for each element of the quantitative risk analysis model
that can influence the project outcome
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