Chapter 14. A little last-minute review: Check your knowledge
Wow, you sure covered a lot of ground in the last 13 chapters! Now it’s time to take a look back and drill in some of the most important concepts that you learned. That’ll keep it all fresh and give your brain a final workout for exam day!
Can you put all of the processes in the right knowledge areas? Give it a shot—and while you’re at it, see if you can put them inside each knowledge area in the order that they’re typically performed on a project.
Answers in Process Magnets Solutions.
How well do you know the 42 processes in the PMBOK® Guide? Let’s find out!
Answers in Processcross Solutions.
Across | Down |
4. In the Perform Quality _____ process, you make sure the entire project and quality processes meet your company’s quality standards. 8. _____ Management is the knowledge area where you figure out who’s talking to who, and how. 10. You track your work closely and manage your costs in the _____ Costs process. 15. You work with sponsors and stakeholders to decide whether or not to make changes during the Perform _____ Change Control process. 16. The Close Project or _____ process is where you make sure the project is finished, and all of the lessons learned are documented. 17. In the Identify _____ process, you find and document all of the people or organizations impacted by your project. 18. You make sure your deliverables conform to their requirements using the _____ Management knowledge area processes. 21. In the _____ Management knowledge area, you contract with sellers to do project work. 22. In the _____ Management knowledge area, you determine how long the work will take. 23. The _____ Procurements process is where you determine which sellers will do the work. 25. The _____ Risks process is where you create a risk register that contains a list of risks that might affect your project. 27. The Monitor and Control Risks is where you look for any new risks and changes to the risk _____. 30. The Plan Risk _____ process is where you decide how your team will react to each risk, should it occur. 31. In the _____ and Control Project Work process, you constantly look for changes or problems that occur. 32. You assign your team to the project in the _____ Project Team process. 35. The Estimate _____ process is where you figure out how much money you’ll spend on each activity in the schedule. 38. The _____ process group is where you shut down the project. 39. The _____ Scope process is where you look for changes to scope, and only make those changes that are necessary. 40. The _____ process group is where the team does the project work. 41. The _____ & Controlling process group is concerned with finding and dealing with changes. 42. The Estimate Activity _____ process is where you figure out what people, equipment, and other things that you’ll need for the project, and when you’ll need them. 44. The Control _____ process is where you look for changes to the planned dates for performing activities and meeting milestones. 45. _____ Performance is where you figure out how your project is doing, and let everyone else know. 46. In the _____ Activities process, you decompose each work package into a complete list of activities for the project. 47. In the Perform _____ Risk Analysis process, you assign numerical values to your risks in order to more accurately assess them. 49. The Plan _____ process is where you create a plan to ensure that your deliverables conform to requirements, and are fit for use. 50. In the Develop _____ process, you build a bar chart, milestone list, calendar, or other document out of all of your estimates. 51. The _____ Project Team process is where you keep your team motivated, and set goals and rewards for them. 52. The _____ process group is where you make sure the project starts out right. 53. _____ Management is the knowledge area where you bring all of the work and project plans together. 54. The Collect _____ process is where you gather the needs of the stakeholders and document them. 55. The _____ process group is where you do the most work. It’s where you build a document to guide you through each of the knowledge areas. | 1. The Develop _____ Plan process is where you create a plan for how you will assign and manage your staff. 2. You create a document that defines how you’ll handle every aspect of the project in the Develop Project _____ Plan process. 3. The _____ Management knowledge area is where you plan for the unknown. 5. The _____ Management knowledge area is all about figuring out your budget. 6. The _____ Management knowledge area helps you figure out the work that needs to be done for your project. 7. In the Determine _____ process, you add up all of your estimated costs and figure out how much money your project will spend in total. 9. You manage all communication for the people who are affected by your project in the Manage Stakeholder _____ process. 11. You create a plan that tells you how you manage unexpected events in the Plan _____ Management process. 12. The Create _____ process is where you create a graphical, hierarchical document that describes all work packages. 13. The _____ Activities process is where you put the list of activities in order and create network diagrams. 14. The _____ Procurements process is where you make sure all of the contracting activities are finished. 19. The Human _____ Management knowledge area is where you put together and manage your team. 20. The _____ Scope process is where you write down exactly what the team will do to produce the product. 24. The _____ Information process gets the right information to the right people. It’s where most of the communication on the project happens. 26. The Estimate Activity _____ process is where you generate an estimate of how long each activity will take. 28. In the Plan _____ Process you decide what work you’ll contract out to a seller. 29. The Plan _____ process is where you’ll figure out how you’ll handle messages, channels of communication, meetings, and reporting. 33. The Perform _____ Risk Analysis is where you categorize each risk. 34. The document that authorizes you to do the work is built in the Develop Project _____ process. 36. The _____ Project Team process is where you track your team members’ performance, provide feedback, and resolve issues. 37. The _____ Procurements process is the Monitoring & Controlling process for procurements, where you look for changes in your contracts. 39. In the Perform Quality _____ process, your team looks for defects in deliverables. 43. The deliverables and work performance information are created in the Direct & Manage Project _____ process. 48. The _____ Scope process is where you make sure all of the work has been done, and you get formal approval from the stakeholders. |
These questions are all about specific things that you’re likely to see on the exam. They’re drawn from many different knowledge areas. Take some time and try to answer all of them—remember, these are a little harder than questions you’ll see on the exam, since they’re not multiple choice!
1. What’s it called when you bring your stakeholders together at the beginning of the project in order to figure out how everyone will communicate throughout the project?
______________________________________
2. What do you call the point in a fixed-price contract where the seller assumes the rest of the cost?
______________________________________
3. Which conflict resolution technique is most effective?
______________________________________
4. What’s the range for a Rough Order of Magnitude estimate?
______________________________________
5. Which contract type is best when you don’t know the scope of the work?
______________________________________
6. What are you doing when you add resources to the critical path in order to shorten the schedule?
______________________________________
7. Which management theory states that employees can’t be trusted and need to be constantly monitored?
______________________________________
8. What are the top three causes of conflict on projects?
______________________________________
9. Customer satisfaction is part of which knowledge area?
______________________________________
10. Which type of power is typically unavailable to project managers in a matrixed organization?
______________________________________
11. Which form of communication is always necessary whenever you are performing Procurement processes?
______________________________________
12. What’s it called when you add up the costs of inspection, test planning, testing, rework (to repair defects discovered), and retesting?
______________________________________
13. What are the three characteristics of a project that differentiate it from a process?
______________________________________
14. Where would you find out details about a specific work package, such as an initial estimate or information about what account it should be billed against?
______________________________________
15. What do you do when you and your team can’t identify a useful response to a risk that you’ve identified?
______________________________________
16. What do you decompose work packages into before you can build your schedule?
______________________________________
17. What’s the float for any activity on the critical path?
______________________________________
18. What percentage of a project manager’s time is spent communicating?
______________________________________
19. What should you do with the factors that cause change?
______________________________________
20. Which two types of estimate require historical information?
______________________________________
Answers in Exercise Solution.
You’ll definitely get a bunch of calculation questions on the exam. Luckily, you’ve got a handle on them! Here’s your chance to get a little more practice.
How many lines of communication are there on a project with nine people (including the project manager)?
Your project has a budget at completion of $250,000. You’ve completed half of the work, but your schedule says you should have completed 60% of the work. Calculate PV and EV.
Your project has a BAC of $7,500. Your scheduled % complete is 35%, but your actual % complete is 30%. Calculate the SPI. What does that SPI tell you about your project?
You were managing a project with a team of eight people, plus you (as the project manager), when you added an additional four team members. How many additional lines of communication were added?
You’ve got a project with a budget of $500,000. Your project is 75% complete, and you have spent $400,000 so far. Calculate the EAC and ETC. What does that tell you about the project?
You’ve identified two risks and an opportunity for your project. Risk A has a probability of 35% and a cost of $500. Risk B has a probability of 60% and a cost of $750. Opportunity C has a probability of 10% and a value of $1,000. What’s the total EMV of Risk A, Risk B, and Opportunity C?
Your project has a CPI of 1.2 and an EV of $150,000. Calculate the actual cost of the project so far.
Answers in Sharpen your pencil Solution.
A long-term relationship for your brain
Take a minute and think back over everything you’ve just learned. Does it seem a little... well, overwhelming? Don’t worry, that’s absolutely normal. You’ve got all of this information that’s floating around in your brain, and your brain is still trying to organize it.
Your brain is an amazing machine, and it’s really good at organizing information. Luckily, when you feed it so much new data, there are ways that you can help make it “stick.” That’s what you’ve been doing in this chapter. Your brain wants its new information to be categorized. That’s why it helps to first review how the processes are organized, and then review what the processes do.
Yes! Cognitive psychologists call it chunking, and it’s a really effective way of getting information into your long-term memory. When you have a collection of things that are strongly associated with one another, it gives your brain a sort of “guideline” for storing it. And the weaker associations with the other “chunks” give it a bigger framework for managing this large amount of information, so that it’s all mutually reinforcing.
Here’s how to do this next section
This next section consists of a series of questions grouped together by knowledge area. To make this as effective as possible,
Make this the only PMP study activity you do today
Give yourself plenty of time to do it
Make sure you drink lots of water while you’re answering the questions
As you’re answering the questions, think about each answer and only mark down one response, even if you’re not 100% sure
After you do each section, read through each question again
Don’t look at the answers until you’ve gone through all of the knowledge areas
Make sure you get plenty of sleep the night after you do these questions
Great job! It looks like you’re almost ready
If you’ve read all the chapters, done all the exercises, and taken all of the practice questions, then you have a solid grasp on the material for the PMP® exam. You’re almost ready to get certified! By the way, don’t worry if you didn’t get some of the questions on the past few pages. This was really hard stuff—some of it was even harder than the PMP exam. Remember, a great way to prepare is to write your own Question Clinic–style questions for anything that’s giving you trouble.
Here are some final tips to help you on the day of the exam.
Make sure to get a good night’s sleep before you take the PMP exam. And make sure you eat something! It can take up to four hours to complete the exam. That’s longer than you expect, and you don’t get a snack break.
The first thing you see when you sit down to take the computerized version is a 15-minute tutorial on how to use the software. You won’t need much time to go through it, because the software is very intuitive.
Use this time to relax.
Seriously. Relax. Everyone taking the exam gets jittery. A good thing to do is look at the 15-minute countdown timer for the tutorial and breathe. Take a whole minute and use it to breathe. If your heart is still pounding, take another minute. You’ll be glad you did.
Don’t click away from that tutorial yet! You’ll get some sheets of scratch paper to use. Write down every formula before you click the button to start the exam. That way they’ll be there for the questions that need them—and you won’t be nervous about forgetting them.
The exam software lets you mark a question for review. If you’re at all unsure of a question, mark it. Sometimes a later question will help trigger your memory, so when you come back to it, the answer will suddenly “come” to you. This really works!
Don’t get too stuck on a question as you’re going through—better to take your best guess, mark it for review, and move on. You can go back to it as many times as you need.
Can you put all of the processes in the right knowledge areas? Give it a shot—and while you’re at it, see if you can put them inside each knowledge area in the order that they’re typically performed on a project.
1. B.
Since this question is asking about the company’s operating environment, it’s really asking you to figure out which of the answers is not an enterprise environmental factor. Marketplace conditions, government standards, and political climate are enterprise environmental factors, but forecasts aren’t—that’s a Cost Management output.
2. D.
Whenever your project’s scope changes, that means you need to put your project through change control. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to have your team change the way they’ll work, or reject the change outright. The first step in evaluating any change is understanding the impact that it will have on the project.
3. B.
The main role of the sponsor is to provide funding for the project. That’s why the sponsor is an important stakeholder. However, the sponsor does not necessarily have a specific role on the project beyond paying for it.
Note
That doesn’t mean that the sponsor can’t also be involved in those other things. A sponsor who’s paying for a project also wants it to succeed, and will often fill other roles on the project as well.
4. C.
When you put together your project management plan, one of the first things that you do is select a project methodology (or lifecycle), and determine exactly how each of the processes will be implemented. Your communications management plan will definitely have specifics about how you communicate with your stakeholders, because that’s a really important part of managing a project. But your project management plan doesn’t typically include your company’s policies. For example, guidelines about how your company hires and retains staff are usually set by an HR department, and they generally don’t vary from project to project.
5. A.
This stakeholder wants to exclude something from the scope, and project exclusions—which identify what is out of scope for the project—should always be documented in the Project Scope Statement. (You might also consider it a constraint—technically, it’s both—but constraints are also documented in the Project Scope Statement.)
Note
This will also be a project requirement, so it will end up in a requirements document as well. But that wasn’t one of the choices in the question!
6. B.
When you’re talking to project stakeholders and documenting their needs, you’re collecting requirements. “Observations” is a technique used in the Collect Requirements process. And that makes sense—you often need to observe people doing their jobs in order to figure out how they’ll use your project’s deliverables.
7. D.
When a project manager analyzes deliverables and subdivides them into smaller components, he or she is using Decomposition, which is the only tool or technique in the Create WBS process.
8. D.
When a project team lead—who, in this case, is acting as the project manager—is gathering formal acceptance of deliverables, she is performing the Verify Scope process. That process only has one tool or technique—Inspection—and a walkthrough is a very common way to inspect a deliverable.
9. A.
When one activity (such as ordering hardware) must take place a certain amount of time before another activity (installing the operating systems), that’s called a lead.
10. C.
The resource calendar has information on which resources—which includes equipment and material, as well as people—are available at specific times. You’ll typically use it to estimate resource utilization, which you’ll need to do when you’re building the schedule for this project.
Note
Did you think that the resource calendar only applied to human resources? Any scarce piece of equipment is also a resource, and you can use a resource calendar to make sure it’s available when your team needs it.
11. C.
A Finish-to-Start (FS) relationship is the most common sort of predecessor that you’ll see in a project schedule. That’s what you call it when one activity (imaging the machine) starts as soon as another one is finished (the operating system is installed).
12. C.
This question is asking you to apply the PERT analysis three-point estimate. The optimistic estimate is 5 weeks, the most likely is 9 weeks, and the pessimistic is 13, so the three-point estimate is (5 + 4 × 9 + 13) ÷ 6 = 9 weeks.
13. B.
Funding limit reconciliation means checking the project’s expenditures—how much you’ve already spent—against any limits that your company has on the commitments of funds. Companies typically don’t allow project managers to throw unlimited amounts of money at the project, so this makes sure that the project can be done within the company’s guidelines... so you can catch cost overruns before you’ve spent more than you’re allowed to spend! This is how you know you haven’t blown your budget—by comparing it against the hard limits set by your company.
14. B.
When you’re asked to figure out the lower limit of your CPI to keep your project within its budget, you’re begging asked to calculate the to-complete performance index (TCPI). If you’ve got a BAC, an AC, and a % complete, then you know enough to compute the EAC, so you should use the formula TCPI = (EAC – EV) ÷ (EAC – AC):
15. D.
The first step in figuring this out is to figure out the Actual % Complete, which you can do by figuring that you’ve installed 3,570 of the total 7,500 lightswitches, or 3,570 ÷ 7,500 = 47.6%. Then you can use the formulas, which show you that CPI is .7597, telling you that you’re within your budget:
Actual % Complete = 47.6%
AC = $153,500 (but since this doesn’t tell you anything about your schedule, answer A is incorrect)
EV = BAC × Actual % Complete = $245,000 × 47.6% = $116,620
CV = EV – AC = $116,620 – $153,500 = -$36,880 – since the CV is negative, you’re below your budget (so answer C is incorrect – the CV in this case is negative)
CPI = EV ÷ AC = $116,620 ÷ $153,500 = .7597
EAC = BAC ÷ CPI = $245,000 ÷ .7597 = $322,495
ETC = EAC – AC = $322,495 – $153,500 = $168,995 (which doesn’t actually tell you whether or not you’re within your budget, so answer B is incorrect)
16. A.
A really common way of doing parametric estimation involves entering numbers into a spreadsheet that performs calculations based on historical data gathered from previous projects.
17. D.
Gaining formal acceptance of project deliverables is part of Scope Verification, which is NOT a quality activity, so it’s not part of the cost of quality. All of the other answers involve costs incurred in either finding defects or dealing with them once they’ve been found, and that’s all part of cost of quality.
18. B.
When you’re performing quality assurance, that means that you’re looking at the way that the people are doing their jobs. Often, it means that you’re taking a step back to look at the big picture: if many defects have the same root cause, if all of the processes are documented, and if they’re being followed properly. However, if you’re looking at individual deliverables, then you’re doing inspection, which is part of quality control, not quality assurance.
Note
A lot of the time, when you’re performing quality assurance, you’re looking at ongoing processes and not just projects.
19. A.
Statistical sampling helps you make decisions about a large number of items without having to look at every single one of them.
20. B.
The process improvement plan is a plan that you build as part of the Plan Quality process that helps you improve the way your company does its work. This is what you use to help your team think “outside” of your project, and look at the company’s overall process or methodology for doing projects.
21. A.
Co-location means having most or all of your team members working in the same location. This is an important tool for running a team, but the question is asking about acquiring a team. Virtual teams, pre-assignment, and negotiation are all tools and techniques of Acquire Project Team.
22. C.
Many teams go through five stages of development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The storming stage occurs early on in team development, before the team members are really comfortable with each other or the work. During this stage, they often have trouble collaborating, and are not necessarily open to each others’ ideas.
23. C.
One of the most important interpersonal skills that a project manager has is influencing, and leading by example is a very effective way to do this. But when a project manager sets a bad example, it is almost certain to be reflected in the behavior or attitude of the team.
Note
Even if the team is in the storming phase of team development, they should still be expected to act in a professional manner – and this includes showing up to meetings on time.
24. D.
Referent power means that you have the power or ability to attract others and build loyalty. One effective way that people often wield referent power is to take advantage of the loyalty that the team already has to someone high up in the company—in this case, the CTO.
25. C.
Since Sue is in the high-power, low-interest quadrant, she needs to be kept satisfied. This means that she has to feel that her needs are actually being met, but since she’s not following the project on a day-to-day basis, the only way you can do that is by delivering a final product that meets those needs. Bob is low-power, high-interest, so he needs to be kept informed. This means that he needs to feel like he’s constantly in the loop on important decisions, even if he won’t actively be taking part in them.
26. D.
This is a basic “lines of communication” problem—you need to figure out how many people are communicating. In this case it’s 6 team members, 4 stakeholders, 2 subcontractors... and don’t forget the project manager! That’s 6 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 13 people. The formula is n(n -1) ÷ 2 = 13(12) ÷ 2 = 78.
27. B.
The definition of a stakeholder includes “anyone who is directly impacted by your project.” That means this person is a stakeholder! Since you never spoke to this person, you failed to identify him as a stakeholder, and as a result you did not meet his needs.
Note
Tools and techniques like a stakeholder management strategy or stakeholder register are great, but they don’t work well if you haven’t identified all of the project’s stakeholders.
28. B.
When you’re making relevant information available to your project’s stakeholders, you’re performing the Distribute Information process. The power/interest grid is a useful tool, but it’s not part of Distribute Information.
29. C.
The question asked for “quantitative techniques,” which means that it’s asking about tools and techniques in the Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis process. Even though the probability/impact matrix assigns numbers to risks, it’s not a one of those tools and techniques—in fact, it’s not a quantitative technique at all! It’s a qualitative technique, because it’s used for prioritization and categorization.
30. C.
This is an example of risk mitigation, because you are taking steps to deal with the problem just in case it happens.
Note
Did the word “accept” throw you? Make sure that you always read the whole question, and don’t just take a single word out of context!
31. C.
The management reserve is the part of the budget reserved for unplanned risks. If a risk was on the risk register, it was planned for, and the contingency reserve is used to pay for it. In this case, since the management reserve was used, that means the risk wasn’t planned for at all.
32. A.
When the other team built that tool, that presented an opportunity. Asking the team to share the tool with you is your way of taking advantage of it. That’s called exploiting the opportunity.
33. B.
The fixed price contract is the riskiest type of contract that a seller can take on. When the project’s costs exceed the price of the contract, the seller has to pay for the overrun.
Note
This is usually bad for the buyer, too! Contracting works best when it’s a win-win situation for both the buyer and the seller.
34 A.
Claims administration is what you do when there are contested changes to the contract, and the seller and buyer can’t reach an agreement on the change. Any time you see a dispute or appeal between the buyer and seller and there’s no clear resolution, that’s where claims administration comes into play.
35. D.
When a buyer and seller have a teaming agreement, the seller acts as a partner with the buyer. It’s not just a typical “here’s the terms, you go off and do the work” relationship that a lot of sellers and buyers have. Instead, the buyer asks for the seller’s input, and makes the seller an active part of the management of the project.
Note
When a seller works on a project with teaming agreement, the team members from both the buyer’s and seller’s teams usually have a lot of mutual respect for each other. That’s why this is a really effective way to do procurement.
36. C.
A document that defines the portion of work the contractor will do is the procurement statement of work (SOW). It’s a clear, concise, unambiguous and complete document that describes the work that must be done, and can include specifications of deliverables. But it doesn’t include contract terms—those terms are part of the contract itself.