FREE PMP® Practice Questions

Free PMP® Practice Questions:

After years of training students prepare for the PMP exam, we have come up with many practice questions to help them ace the exam. Here are some PMP practice questions based on the PMBOK 6^th Edition that will test your knowledge and help you prepare. The answers are available at the end of the question set. Enjoy!

1. You are a project manager working on a project to engineer a new high-speed rail between Toronto and Montreal. The project already has a scope baseline and your team is in the execution phase. However, during the build, your team notices several key requirements have been missed and will need to be built so that the high-speed rail can function as intended. The work will also impact the budget and the schedule. What should you do next?

a. Listen to your team and add the additional requirements to the project scope statement   

b. Ignore the missed requirements and continue building the high-speed rail as per the current scope baseline

c. Follow the change control process and have the appropriate team member document a change request and explain the rationale and impact for the additional requirements

d. Organize a war room meeting with the project team and strategize ways to convince the Sponsor that the additional requirements are necessary

2. The Sponsor has assigned you as the Project Manager for an upgrade of your company’s manufacturing facilities. There are ten facilities that will require upgrading and each will take anywhere from 2 to 4 years to complete. You realize this will be a large undertaking and request that in addition to you, a Project Manager be assigned to lead each of the ten manufacturing upgrade projects. You also ask that a Program Manager be assigned and that be some Program Governance to ensure that all manufacturing upgrade projects are kept on track. Your Sponsor asks you, what is ‘Project Governance’. What is the best answer?

a) The project leadership structure that provides the project and the team with structure, processes, decision making, direction and tools

b) A leadership board consisting of the project Sponsor, Vice Presidents and project manager that make decision on how to execute the project

c) The working team that conducts all project processes

d) None of the above

3. Your team is working on a critical product development and there is a tight timeline till product launch. A few months into development your team encounters a critical risk that may have a high impact on the completion of the project. All of the following would be valid responses to address this risk except:

a) Develop risk response strategies

b) Develop a fall back option

c) Document a risk management plan

d) Allocate contingency reserves

4. You are the Project Manager for a large compliance project at a financial institution. However, you realize that you are unable to kick-off the project until the Government and the financial regulatory body releases the updated legislative requirements, which could take several months. However, you do know the compliance deadline and it is only a few months after the final legislation is released. If your team does not meet the deadline there might be penalties against your organization. Obtaining the final legislative requirements from the Government / regulatory body would be which of the following:

a) External organizational process assets

b) External dependency

c) Project high level risk

d) Project constraint

5. You are managing a manufacturing factory construction project and your team decided that it will have to source the machines that will make up your production line from qualified vendors. You have documented all the requirements and the next step is to have the potential vendors review them so that they can understand the scope of work and present your team with accurate schedule and cost estimates. What could you do to assist your potential vendors in coming back to you with accurate cost and schedule estimates?

a) Evaluate all seller proposals yourself to determine the basis of estimates

b) Conduct benchmarking to determine if vendor estimates are accurate

c) Conduct bidder conferences to ensure that all potential vendors understand the requirements

d) Have one on one meetings with selected vendors to explain the requirements in detail

6. You are managing a nation-wide telecommunication network implementation project. Your cross-functional team is busy executing several aspects of the project as per your project plan. You are impressed by the wealth of experience people are gaining and want to ensure that you maintain this knowledge so that your project momentum continues strong. What would be a key deliverable of attempting to manage project knowledge?

a) A project data repository

b) A lessons learned register

c) Updating the company’s information management system

d) Project integration management

7. You are assigned as a Project Manager for a manufacturing factory upgrade and the Sponsor is seeking your input to document the Project Charter as they have never done this task before and are not familiar with typical project management business documents. The Sponsor is looking to understand what the tangible benefits are, including understanding the net present value of the project, so that they can provide a high level justification of the project in the Charter. What document could you refer the Sponsor to?

a) The benefits management plan

b) The business case

c) Strategic studies on the project’s deliverables

d) Executive steering committee meeting minutes

8. As the PM on a new railway construction project, you and your Sponsor have just finished discussing who in your organization should be consulted for decision on any project risks and issues. What would be the primary purpose of such a group of people?

a) Help initiate the project

b) Project governance

c) Execute change requests

d) Obtain government approval

9. As the PM you want to ensure that your project is on track to attain all the benefits. You decide to discuss with your project team. During the discussion, a team member asks why the organization decided to undertake the project. What document could you refer them to?

a) The project scope and deliverable status

b) Confirm that project requirement have been met and obtain final acceptance of the deliverable

c) The organization’s historical documents

d) Project Business Case

10. You are assigned to a process improvement project for your company. Your Quality Manager comes to you with a new risk that could impact the project. You check your risk response plans but notice you don’t have a plan for the risk the Quality Manager is describing. What should you do next?

a) Conduct a qualitative risk analysis with the project team

b) Develop a risk response plan with the project Sponsor

c) As the Quality Manager to develop the appropriate response strategy with her team

d) Submit a change request to update the risk register

11. You are leading a construction project and have engaged several suppliers to provide you with raw materials that are required for your build. You get a call from one of your suppliers who lets you know that a shipment will be late by 10 days. The shipment is critical for your project team to carry on the construction. What should you do next?

a) Call your lawyer and ask for advice on how to deal with the issue

b) Look for other raw material suppliers and ask if they can provide the material

c) Check your risk response plans to determine how to address the realized threat

d) Continue negotiations with the supplier and convince them to get you the raw materials on time

12. You are leading a software project that has many costs associated. Your Sponsor is concerned about how your project is spending its budget and asks you for information every week. You wonder the best way to provide the Sponsor with this information. What do you do?

a) Provide a weekly status report on project costs

b) Provide a weekly variance report on project costs

c) Host a one-on-one in person meeting per week with the Sponsor

d) Provide a weekly financial progress report

13. As the project manager of a large consumer product development project, you have over 200 activities in execution this week, with over 30 employees assigned to them. With all the chaos you are worried that some of the project deliverables will be compromised and you don't want to lose sight of this work. What could you do next week to ensure the quality of the project is still satisfactory?

a) Conduct a quality audit

b) Have your Sponsor review all the project deliverable

c) Have a quality manager conduct thorough testing

d) Conduct quality control

14. You are leading an upgrade project for your company's customer facing website. You need to collect some cost estimates so that you can request your Sponsor to finance the project appropriately. However, you need all the cost estimates by tomorrow and do not have time to obtain quotes from sellers or conduct a detailed analysis by the team members performing the work. You recall your Senior Management mentioning that previous website upgrades were conducted and the information systems contain some cost data. What estimation technique could you use?

a) Parametric estimation

b) Analagous estimation

c) Bottom-up estimation

d) Vendor documents

15. You are assigned to lead an Agile product development project. Your team is quite large and there is much ambiguity on the work that is to be done. You want to ensure that as the team defines the product requirements, that everyone has access to the latest information in the most efficient manner. What could be an appropriate communications strategy?

a) Set clear team norms

b) Streamline team member access to information, have frequest checkpoints and co-locate the team

c) Raise the concern to your Sponsor and as for a dedicated Communications Manager on the project

d) Conduct regular one-on-ones with each team member, weekly to ensure they have the information they need to succeed

16. You are assigned as a project manager for a manufacturing factory upgrade. You have procured a new machine, and engineers from the vendor are on-site to install the machine over the next few months and ensure that production starts-up as expected. After installation, the trial runs of production are not generating the percentage yield of production that your team expects. Both project teams never anticipated this risk. The impact of production waste is high. What should you do immediately?

a) Conduct all the risk management processes

b) Develop a risk response strategy to address the low yields

c) Conduct quality control of the installation process

d) Ask the vendor to send additional resource to your site to fix the issues

17. As the lead for the manufacturing factory upgrade. You have procured a new machine, and engineers from the vendor are on-site to install the machine over the next few months and ensure that production starts-up as expected. After installation, the trial runs of production are not generating the percentage yield of production that your team expects. The vendor asks you and your Production Manager to participate in war-room sessions to understand what is causing the problems. What tools might you suggest in this meeting to get to the bottom of the issue?

a) Use of a check-list

b) Root cause analysis

c) Factory acceptance testing

d) Statistical sampling

18. You are leading a construction project for a series of apartment buildings. The project must be completed on time, as investors have already paid for their units as per the fee schedule and being late could result in legal action. However, construction work is months behind because the construction is understaffed. You have investigated completing segments of the construction in parallel, but this is just not possible. What should you do?

a) Crash the project

b) Request overtime by construction workers

c) Fast track the project

d) Ask the Sponsor for more project funding

19. Your team is working on a complicated software upgrade project. Your organization has very strict requirements for project documentation, reviews and approvals. However, several people on the project team, do not know what they are supposed to do and as a result, many project documents have proceeded to the next stage without adhering to the organizational processes. What should you do?

a) Conduct a quality audit on project documents and approach the project team for any gaps discovered

b) Create a project RACI and present this to the team

c) Conduct a meeting and explain the urgency of the situation to everyone involved

d) Email selected project team members who are required to review and approve project documents

20. You are leading a project that spans many geographies and as a result your project team is spread over multiple countries. You cannot co-locate the team, so you will have to adopt a virtual team approach. What component of the project management plan should you pay special attention to?

a) The human resource management plan

b) The stakeholder management plan

c) The communications management plan

d) The risk management plan

21. You are leading a software upgrade project and your team is currently eliciting requirements that will inform the final project scope. However, this process is challenged because there are thousands of stakeholders that must be consulted in the requirements gathering process. Your core team meets to agree on the requirements, but how could you collect feedback from the broader group of stakeholders?

a) Conduct multiple brainstorming sessions in groups for twenty

b) Send stakeholders surveys

c) Use the Delphi technique

d) Seek expert judgement that best represents the stakeholder’s needs

22. Your project is in trouble because of multiple unanticipated threats that were realized. Your team has conducted the entire risk management process and needs to execute the response strategies to bring the project back on track. How do you fund this unforeseen project work?

a) Use the project budget

b) Use the contingency reserve

c) Submit a change request that asks for additional funding

d) Use the management reserve

23. You are leading a manufacturing project and have installed a new production line that is supposed to package 10 pieces of bubble gum in one package. Once you start running production you notice that many packages are out of shape, missing the right number of pieces, discolored and a whole array of other issues. All of these faulty packages are wasted. You need to work closely with the Quality Manager to figure out the frequency of the problems and the causes of the key problems. What quality tool will come in handy?

a) A checklist

b) A Pareto chart

c) A histogram

d) An Ishikawa diagram

24. Your team is in the process of gathering requirements for a new enterprise information system for the organization. Because the information system will be used by the entire organization, you have over a thousand stakeholders that you must collect some feedback from. The organization is divided into several silos and there are competing needs between them. In any case, you need to make sure that a consensus is reached for the final set of requirements that will then make up your project scope. What technique could you use to collect requirements? 

a) Group creativity techniques

b) The Delphi Technique

c) Virtual meetings

d) Questionnaires and surveys from experts

25. Your team is conducting the risk management process for a new project. Your Sponsor is particularly interested in getting a quantitative understanding to the schedule and cost of the project given the each risk event. What tool would be the best to use?

a) An Ishikawa diagram

b) The Monte Carlo simulation

c) A cost-benefit analysis

d) Critical chain method 

26. Your team has built a new aircraft for a private company’s CEO. The final product has been through quality control and has passed safety testing and functionality requirements. What should you do next?

a) Verify the deliverable

b) Validate the deliverable

c) Monitor and Control the deliverable

d) Obtain final sign-off

27. You've been tasked to lead a technology product development project. The customer's requirements for quality are well defined and strict. Your management want you to ensure that quality checks are conducted daily as opposed to only at a specific point in time. In addition, the complete requirements are not known yet, the customer has an idea of what requirements they would like in the final product, but would like to see what your team comes up with and wants the opportunity to provide feedback and have your team make changes as necesary. What framework might you recommend for this project?

a) Hybrid approach

b) SCRUM event

c) Adaptive and incremental like Agile

d) Waterfall approach

28. A product backlog refers to:

a) an ordered list of everythng that is known to be needed in the product

b) a complete set of functional requirements

c) an iterated list of all features, functions, requirements, enhancements and fixes that constitute teh changes to be made to the product in future 'Sprints'

d) both A and C

29. You are leading a project with a team that is spread out globally and is fairly large. You often meet with your team virtually to keep them updated on project work and determine next steps to meet the project's goals. However, because of conflicting time zones the entire team is never able to attend the meeting and you spend a majority of your time re-explaining what was discussed in these meetings. what might be an effective communications method for your situation?

a) push communications

b) pull communications

c) a news message broadcast

d) sender-receiver feedback loops

30. You are performing the plan risk responses process for a systems implementation project. You encounter a known risk that will impact the project's critical path. All of the following are valid responses, except:

a) implementing the risk response plan

b) using the contingency reserve to address the risk

c) identifying related risks

d) reviewing the risk management plan

31. Which of the following statements regarding the scope baseline is most correct?

a) the scope baseline describes the total work to be completed as part of the project. It includes the scope statement, WBS and WBS dictionary

b) the scope baseline is a component of the project management plan, along with the WBS and WBS dictionary

c) the decomposition of the scope is used to create work packages, that then comprises the scope baseline

d) none of the above

32. Your project is in trouble because of multiple threats that were realized. Your team is not sure how to respond and is requesting that you host a 'war room' for the team to brainstorm ways to solve the problems. What key component of project management is missing that has led to this situation?

a) the lack of a contingency reserve

b) inadequate risk management planning

c) inadequate change control

d) the lack of a management reserve

33. The following statement regarding the critical path is correct:

a) the critical path represents the longest path in the project's schedule. Activities on the critical path must be completed on time, or the project risks extension beyond the approved scheduled completion

b) the critical path contains only critical activities that are required to complete teh project's deliverables

c) the critical path represents the longest path in the project's schedule. Activities on the critical path must be completed within their float, or the project risks extension beyond the approved scheduled completion

d) the critical path contains all activities that are mandatory to complete within the agile sprint 

34. Your aviation project is delayed by 8 months. Your Sponsor is furious and requests a monthly work performance report and that you get the project team caught up and meet the deadlines as per original target. What could you do to meet the Sponsor’s expectations?

a) Consider a combination of fast tracking and crashing the schedule

b) Review the project risk management plan and implement any action plans

c) Review checklists to ensure that all critical tasks are completed

d) Conduct a root cause analysis to figure out what is causing the schedule to be delayed

35. Your project is being audited to ensure that all requirements are being met. However, the auditor is new to the organization and does not know much about the scope of the project. You could refer the auditor to any of the following documents, except?

a) Project charter

b) Project issue log

c) Scope baseline

d) Contingency plans

ANSWERS

 1. C – when a change is needed to the scope baseline the change control process must be followed. During this process the new requirements are documented, and the impact is assessed before formal review by the Change Control Board (CCB) where is a decision is taken on whether or not to change the baseline

2. A – the purpose of Project Governance is to have an authority that will ensure that all projects under it are supported by the structure it defines, its processes, decision making, direction and tools. The Project 

3. C -  The correct answer is C because it is the incorrect choice compared to the other option on the list. When a risk is discovered on the project the project team will not document a risk management plan as this is done early in the risk management cycle and defines the approach on how risks will be identified, analyzed, management and controlled on the project. The question is asking specifically on determine a response for the identified risk. All other options are aligned with a response approach.

4. B - The correct answer is B because the question is asking you to identify the relationship between starting the project and obtaining Government / regulatory requirements. Therefore you need to identify the type of dependency and because the Government / regulatory body is outside the organization, it would be an external dependency. While not receiving the requirements in time could be a risk and also a constraint for the project, these are not relationships and therefore B is the best answer given the scenario.

5. C - The correct answer is C. The scenario indicates that your team is attempting to conduct procurements and has not yet selected a vendor. The vendor will be selected once the potential sellers come back with estimates of time and cost that will help you make the final decision. Therefore, the best way in which you could assist is hosting a bidder conference to ensure the all potential vendors have an accurate understanding of your requirements so that they can provide you with accurate cost and schedule estimates. Option A is incorrect because it assumes you already have the seller proposals with the time and schedule estimates. Option B also assumes that you have already obtained the estimates. Option D is incorrect because it assumes that you have already picked the final seller.

6. B - The correct answer is B. The key output of the ‘Management Project Knowledge’ process is a lessons learned register.

7. B - The correct answer is B. The business  case is created before project selection and justifies whether the project effort should be undertaken. It may include both tangible and intangible benefits. The Net Present Value of the project can be one calculation that is usually included in the business case to represent what the project is worth today. This may help the Sponsor provide justification for the project in the Charter.

8. B - Project governance provides the structure to escalate risks and issues and gain direction and support for the Project Manager and their team.

 9. D - The question is asking you to refer the team member some source that explains why the project was undertaken in the first place. The document that contains the justification is the business case.

10. A – since the question presents that a risk response plan does not exist, you will need to conduct the entire risk management process. The process begins with risk identification, which has already been done by the Quality Manager. So, the next step would be for you to analyze the risk with your project team.

11. C – good project management would have considered the threat of a delay in the shipment of raw materials and there will be a risk response plan that you can check to determine what measures to take to address the issue. Unless otherwise state, always assume that risk management activities have been done on the project.

12. B - a variance report would be the best option, as it would provide the Sponsor with an understanding of the actual cost performance against the cost baseline. A status report would not be the best option because it only provides a snap shot of the current finances and the Sponsor will not have any information on the baseline. A progress report will provide information on improvements in cost performance from the previous reporting period, but again will not give insights of the performance against the cost baseline. The one-on-one meeting is not the best answer as it would be too cumbersome to meet only to discuss finance weekly.

13. A - a quality audit is the best technique to determine whether your project activities and deliverables comply with organization or project policies. The other answer choices could be other measures you take, but do not replace a formal quality audit.

14. B - because you want a quick estimate and have historical information as well as experts / senior managers available to you, the best estimating technique would be Analagous Estimation.

15. B - Agile project environments are unpredictable and can tend to have ambiguity. Therefore communciation is important due to continuously evolving needs of the project. Of all the options presented, the best strategy is to streamline team member access to information, have frequent checkpoints and co-locate the team. Setting team norms is good, but is not a detailed enough strategy for communications. Escalating to your Sponsor could be an option when you have exhausted all other options and therefore should not be the first choice. Finally, meeting each of your team members one-on-one, when its a large team is really not feasible on a weekly basis and therfore is not the best option.

16. A – the question highlights that the risk of low production yields was not expected. This seems to be a pretty obvious risk for this type of project and means that risk management was probably not conducted on this project. Therefore, the best answer is to conduct all the risk management processes as there could be other risks that have also not been identified and planned for. You want to avoid being in this situation again. Answer choice B is something you would eventually do to create a risk response plan for this issue as well as other issues that are identified, but it should not supersede choice A. Answer choice C and D could be risk response strategies that you could come up with once you conduct all the risk management processes.

17. B – the question indicates that the purpose of the meeting is to determine the causes of the low production yield problem, therefore a root cause analysis will help you get to the crux of the issue. All other tools are quality related, but do not help you understand the causes of the problem.

18. A – because the project is under staffed, you really need to hire more resources to work on the construction and get things back on track. Therefore, you need to crash the project. 

19. A – the root cause of this problem is that project team members do not understand their roles and responsibilities when it comes to project documentation, reviews and approvals. The best approach would be to level-set expectations by creating a RACI chart and presenting this to the team so that everyone is clear on what they are supposed to do on the project moving forward. The other answer options could be a response strategy to address the immediate problem of project documentation slipping through the cracks, however, will not address the root cause.

20. C – in such a situation all project management plan answer choices are relevant, however the most important one would be the communications management plan because your team is a virtual team. Getting work done and ensuring alignment of a virtual team in a manner that attains the project objectives, will be dependent on how successful communications within the project team are.

21. B – of the answer choices presented the only feasible options seem to be option B and D, because both allow you to create requirements based on stakeholder needs. However, the question provides no evidence that experts representing the stakeholder’s needs exist within the organization. Therefore, the best answer is to send the stakeholders surveys.

​22. C – This one is tricky. The project budget cannot be used, because this money is for planned project activities. The contingency reserve cannot be used because this is for known risks. In the scenario described, the threat was unanticipated (therefore not known) and not part of the planned work for the project. Implementing a response is necessary, but out of plan, so a change request (CR) must be submitted to gain permission, including additional funding to execute the work. Answer choice D is incorrect because the project manager does not have direct access to the management reserve. Though funding for the CR (if approved) would come from the management reserve, this answer is not the immediate option.

23. A – a Pareto chart is the quality tool that will be relevant as it helps analyze the frequency or problems caused in a process. A production line is a continuous process and therefore data on package issues and wastage can be recorded on a Pareto chart to help in further analysis.

24. B – given the environmental enterprise factors presented in this question, the Delphi technique would be the best approach. This is a communications technique that allows you to obtain input from several stakeholders, anonymously. It also facilitates a large group reaching a consensus. Stakeholders answer questions and responses are shared anonymously after the first round. Then in the second round, stakeholders have the option to revise their answers in light of the earlier response. Through multiple iterations, the team can reach a consensus.

25. B – using the Monte Carlo simulation is the best approach as it quantifies the impact of uncertainties on the project, by iterating the project hundreds or thousands of time. The end result, is a realistic value for probability and impact. Most often, these values are computed for project cost and schedule.

26. B – because the aircraft has already been through control quality, the deliverable is verified. The next step is to get customer or sponsor acceptance and therefore validate the deliverable.

27. C - an agile approach is adaptive and incremental and this is most suited for this type of the project because the customer does not have a clear idea of what they require in the end deliverable. Rather, they prefer to determine the complete requirements as the project progresses, through increments and feedback to the delivery team. Considering the customer also wants daily quality checks, the Agile approach would be best as quality is discussed daily in such environments.

28. D - the combination of both a and c is a comprehensive description of the product backlog

29. B - pull communications are the best option because of the sheer size of your project team. You may not have the time to send out targetted communications to teh various different groups in your team. So you may create communications that can be 'pulled' by the relevant team members as and when they need it. 

30. C - given the scenario above, the best approach is to spring to action so that you can reduce the impact to the project's critical path. Since the question highlights that you have faced a known risk, it would now be time to use the risk response plan you have developed and the contingency reserve in your budget in order to support this work. Reviewing the risk management plan will also help the team understand what practices to follow when a risk is faced. This leaves option C. While identifying risks is always encouraged, at this point in time, the option does not help the situation at-hand, and therefore is not the best answer.

31. A - this is the most correct answer because its most correct.

32. B - when multiple threats are realized and the team does not know what to do, it means the risk management planning has failed the team. If adequate risk management planning had been conducted, the team would know how to respond to the risks and would note be requesting for a 'war room' meeting in order to create the risk reponse.

33. A - this answer choice accurately describes the critical path and how it impacts the project

34. B – the best action is to review the risk management plan as you must always assume that the risk management processes have been conducted in full (unless otherwise stated). If an action plan (contingency plan) exists to address the issue, then it is a good idea to implement it

35. D – Reviewing the contingency plans will only give the auditor insight on how to react when the project is undergoing some risk. Therefore, it is the correct answer. All other documents would either introduce the auditor to the project, provide status of current issues or provide information on detailed scope

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