Project Management Question Bank
for Exam preparation

Q2. The sponsor and the project manager are discussing what type of contract the project manager plans to use on the project. The buyer points out that the performing organization spent a lot of money hiring a design team to come up with the design. The project manager is concerned that the risk for the buyer be as small as possible. An advantage of a fixed price contract for the buyer is:

1. Cost risk is lower
2. Cost risk is higher
3. There is little risk
4. Risk is shared by all parties.

Q3. You are authorized to approve expenditures above $15,000. For the last several weeks, you have been negotiating the terms and pricing of a contract with a vendor, and you want to keep costs as low as possible. This has been an exceedingly difficult negotiation process. A colleague suggests you tell the vendor you can only approve expenses below $10,000 as a way to keep the price low. What do you do?

1. Ask for binding arbitration
2. Tell the vendor you are only authorized to approve expenses under $10,000
3. Do not follow the colleague‘s advice
4. Put a deadline on the negotiation completion

Q4. In quality terms, one of the meanings of “out of control” is:

1. Someone on the team is upset
2. A data point on a control chart falls inside the upper or lower control limit.
3. Several data points on the same side of the mean within the upper and lower control limits.
4. A data point is within 1 sigma.

Q5. A project manager has been instructed to use the project charter to help identify risks on the project. This does not make sense to him. If you were asked to explain the reason the project charter is used in this way, what is the BEST explanation?

1. The project charter describes the business needs of the project
2. Reviewing what is said and not said in the project charter will help determine risks.
3. The project charter is issued by the sponsor
4. Reviewing the project charter will help determine a description of the product of the project.

Q6. In projects following adaptive lifecycles, what are the two critical components of iterative scheduling with a product backlog?

1. User epics and time-bound accepted deliverables
2. User stories and time-boxed periods of work
3. Work packages and critical path
4. Scope management plan and a detailed WBS

Q7. You are reviewing the response to an RFP issued by your company for a project that will last a year and exceed US$5 million. Three vendors have been shortlisted. The first, Nosteltec, Inc., is a relatively new company in this industry. It has assembled a team of industry experts with vast industry experience and qualifications. The second company, Xen Contractor, has been in business for 20 years. You and your company have a long and positive history working with this vendor. The third company is SonoNet LLC. It has been in business for 10 years and has a reputation for extensive expertise and superior delivery. They are also well-known for being one of the more expensive providers in the market. You have many relationships with the Xen Contractor staff, which you established during prior procurement contracts with this company. As a result, a project manager from Xen Contractor, with whom you are friendly both personally and professionally, calls you for clarification on a point

1. Clarify via email
2. Clarify via phone call
3. Advise the vendor that the RFP is self-explanatory
4. Send the clarification to all three vendors

Q8. To develop a project stakeholder engagement plan, seek knowledge from groups or individuals with specialized training or subject matter insight into the relationships within the organization. In PMBOK jargon, what is this technique called?

1. Professional verdict
2. Consultation
3. Expert judgment
4. Sage opinion

Q9. An obstacle to team building in a matrix organization is that the:

1. Team organization is technically focused
2. Team members are borrowed resources and can be hard to motivate.
3. Teams are too centralized
4. Teams are too large and therefore very hard to handle.

Q10. You are a project manager for a large electrical system implementation. One of your key people has started to miss deadlines and work quality is beginning to suffer as well. This person has participated in project planning, and in fine-tuning the earned value estimating, and developing the reward systems for the project. You are confident that this person is well aware of the work deadlines and required quality specifications. What action should you take?

1. Report problem to the personnel or human resource department for corrective action.
2. Reassign some work to other team members until performance starts to improve.
3. Discuss the issues with the employee at the next team meeting and try to determine the factors impacting performance.
4. Escalate the situation to the employee’s functional manager and ask for assistance.