PMP Practice Questions

The project manager is preparing for the kickoff meeting of a project that follows a ‘plan the work and work the plan’ style. Upon studying the project charter, the

project manager realizes that the project objectives will have to undergo frequent changes throughout the project.

What should the project manager to do?

After a sprintis finalized, the team members were discussing during the retrospective meeting that the prioritization of the backlog was coming from two different

sources. This is causing confusion to the project team.

What should the project manager do?

A project manager is overseeing a hybrid project with two distinct workstreams: hardware operating predictively and software operating adaptively. However, the procurement contract for the software vendor has been finalized with clauses based on a predictive way of working. Meanwhile, many software work items are undergoing different prioritizations on the Kanban board.

What should the project manager do?

The project manager is creating a status report to show the progress of completed training artifacts intended for delivery to bank branches for a new project for both

new and existing customers. During the review process, it is discovered that some of the artifacts were duplicated by two project team members.

What should the project manager do?

Health Records Modernization at Hospital Case Study

A project manager led a health records modernization project at a hospital with a project budget of $US5 million and an 18-month timeline. The project involved multiple stakeholder groups including medical, administrative, and IT staff; board members; patients; insurance companies; external vendors; regulatory bodies; and union representatives.

Stakeholder management was complex and a major undertaking for the project manager, but it was critical to achieve a positive project outcome. When the project started, the project manager conducted stakeholder analysis, using the information to create both a power/interest and an influence/impact matrix. The analysis showed that while the hospital board members and regulatory bodies had high power but moderate interest, the medical staff (doctors and nurses) had both high influence and high impact on the project. Administrative staff showed high interest but lower power, while patients and insurance companies had moderate interest and varying levels of influence. Based on the analysis, the project manager created a stakeholder engagement strategy that documented expectations, communication preferences, and influence levels in a stakeholder register. The project manager also made a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) chart to show roles and responsibilities; and created communication channels and frequency for each stakeholder group, an issue escalation system, and a feedback system for continuous stakeholder input.

To execute the modernization process of health records, the project manager realized that medical staff members would need to change their daily workflows. To facilitate change management for these stakeholders, the project manager created a clinical advisory committee, appointed department-specific “champions,” created focus groups for requirements gathering, started a training program, and developed key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure satisfaction.

During project execution, several challenges emerged. The doctors expressed concerns about the system’s impact on patient care, the nurses’ union raised workload concerns, the IT department faced resource constraints, the insurance companies requested additional features, and the administrative staff worried about data security. The project manager responded to these challenges by increasing the frequency of stakeholder meetings, implementing a change management program, creating a beta system for stakeholder testing, developing contingency plans for various stakeholder scenarios, and establishing an issue resolution process.

Despite these mitigation efforts, the medical staff required additional training, leading to a change request for a 2-month extension and a 10% budget increase. The board of directors approved this to help ensure high adoption and satisfaction rates among staff members. The project helped establish new good practices in future programs for stakeholder management in the organization’s project management office (PMO). The documented lessons learned became a reference for future projects of similar scope and complexity.

How should the project manager handle the IT department’s resource constraints while at the same time maintaining project momentum?

(Refer to the Health Records Modernization at Hospital Case Study exhibit.)

An agile team recently finished a product that met stakeholder expectations. However, a subsequent audit revealed that the product does not comply with local

regulations. The team lead learns the team focused on the functions of the product and not the regulatory issues.

What should the team lead do differently for the next project?

During the execution phase of a project, a new regulation is published. A subject matter expert (SME) on the project team contacts the project manager and tells them

that the new regulation might heavily impact the project ' s delivery.

What should the project manager do?

The project manager is utilizing a hybrid management approach for a creative project. The organization is undergoing a change aimed at improving cross-functional

collaboration, which may impact the project scope.

What should the project manager do first?

As part of a restructuring effort, a company has transitioned from a projectized to a functional organization. The project manager is concerned that the team members will become disengaged from their work on the current project because they are now reporting to a functional manager.

What should the project manager do?

A project manager is responsible for building a new data center and developing new monitoring software before a fixed deadline. Although the software features are not fully defined, the project scope is set, and a contract has been signed.

What should the project manager do?