PMPDemo_10_05_09

1. You have recently been assigned as the project manager for your company's major strategic initiative which is a six state expansion program including acquisition of facilities, new employees, systems and equipment. The company functions as a projectized organization and the core members of your project team are your direct subordinates. You are, however, contracting with other divisions within your company for certain deliverables and subprojects. The chairman of the executive steering committee telephones on your fifth day of work with the committee on the statement of work and project charter. The chairman is surprised that you have not also started work on the business case and are, in fact, recommending that no business case be done. The chairman wonders why so early in the project you are deviating from the best practices as defined by the Project Management Institute. You carefully explained that:

A) ANSWER A The business case, like all other techniques, does not have to be completed on every project.
B) ANSWER B It is your recommendation that the effort which might be devoted to the business case should be spent on the charter as the organization already has cost benefit data.
C) ANSWER C Project Management Institute best practices allow for the inclusion or exclusion of processes depending on the needs of the project and the performing organization.
D) ANSWER D The organization has already approved the project so the business case is not needed.

2. You are managing a project in an organization with a weak matrix structure. Your team is drawn from a number of different functional units. In a meeting, one of your team members indicates that he is assigned to two other projects which will take all his time. When should this issue have been specifically addressed? (552)

A) Develop project team
B) Human resource planning
C) During negotiations with the functional manager
D) Estimate activity resources

3. You are a project manager in a large manufacturing company. The project you are working on is a new product offering. You have just completed the risk management plan and it was approved. One of your key stakeholders, Tina, who is new to project management, has identified two risks using the categories you defined in the plan. The first risk, a pending government regulation, could adversely affect the project requiring major rework of most deliverables. The second risk is that the marketing department will add a new product feature which they are now analyzing but did not add to their requirements so it is not within the approved scope of the project. Tina has completed the qualitative analysis on the first risk and decided to skip the quantitative analysis called for in the risk plan, deciding it was not warranted because the company could do nothing to stop the government from adopting the new regulation. So she moved on to the initial response planning. She also decided to skip qualitative risk analysis of the new product feature as the requirement had not been submitted. The project management plan has not been approved. After reviewing her work you advise her:

A) ANSWER A To proceed with the risk response planning.
B) ANSWER B Changes to the approved risk management plan need to go through change control even though the project management plan has not been approved.
C) ANSWER C The risk of the new regulation should be analyzed following the risk management plan. The new product feature should also be analyzed even if it requires a change request.
D) ANSWER D To begin planning the responses to the first risk.

4. You are a project manager for a mid-size company and your project charter was approved 4 weeks ago. This company is organized as a weak matrix organization with a project office that focuses on training and procedures. The organization has a history of poor cooperation from functional department managers fulfilling the resource lending commitments made to project managers. This lack of cooperation has been particularly severe with the Operations division. Your sponsor stops in one day and asks how things are progressing and when you will be able to provide details on the resources you need for the project. She says that with the charter you should be able to start specifying the human resource needs in detail and when you need each person. You explain what must be completed before the staffing data will be available. The key points you make to the sponsor are:

A) ANSWER A We must have the WBS before we can make the activity resource estimates which will tell us what skills and how much of each resources’s time we need and when.
B) ANSWER B Cost estimating can start as soon as the scope is issued and it will give us the data on the people and how much of their time we need.
C) ANSWER C We must have activity sequencing and the schedule complete before we can estimate costs.
D) ANSWER D We can start work on the resource requirements now when we get the charter, without waiting for anything else.

5. You are project manager for a customer service improvement project that will affect all departments of your medium-sized employer. Your organization has been operating in its current city for two decades and buys services and merchandise from many of its customers. The company's purchasing department is understaffed and limits their activities to providing lists of potential sellers and conducting bidders’ conferences. Your project sponsor is the vice president of sales who has already alerted you to the fact that many of your large customers expect to provide their goods and services to the project. In fact, several of the company’s customers compete with each other and the VP does not want to antagonize any of them. The VP encourages you to take a very flexible and adaptive approach to all the purchasing or contracting required by the customer service improvement project. You explain that:

A) ANSWER A You agree to be flexible and adapt to changing requirements particularly from the suppliers and vendors who are customers of yours.
B) ANSWER B The best way to avoid antagonizing any of our customers is to ensure that the procurement process is absolutely fair and objective and that requires a consistent and unchanging decision-making process to treat all vendors fairly.
C) ANSWER C All vendors are stakeholders of the project and should be encouraged to participate in setting requirements and in developing bid evaluation and selection criteria.
D) ANSWER D Sales people and anyone in management with personal relationships with potential vendors and suppliers should not be allowed to participate in the procurement process.

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