PM Test Center

You are performing a quality audit to determine whether or not your project team’s testing activities follow your organization’s project policies. What process are you working in?

A. Perform Quality Assurance
B. Perform Quality Audit
C. Perform Quality Control
D. Perform Quality Activities

Answer: A. Perform Quality Assurance
The key word in the question is audit. Auditing is a primary tool in the quality assurance. Essentially, you are auditing to ensure appropriate quality standards. There is no such process as Perform Quality Audit or Perform Quality Activities.

Adam wants to show his stakeholders defect types ranked by frequency of occurrence. What tool should he use?

A. Pareto chart
B. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
C. Control chart
D. Cause and effect diagram

Answer: A. Pareto chart
Pareto charts are based on the Pareto Law (the 80/20 principle). This type of histogram shows categories of defects in order of frequency of occurrence. By ranking defect types this way, you could visually see which 20% of the causes to address in order to solve 80% of the problems.

The project you are managing is nearing its end. Your testing team is currently inspecting the final deliverable. Which process is your project on?

A. Verify Scope
B. Control Scope
C. Perform Quality Assurance
D. Perform Quality Control

Answer: D. Perform Quality Control
According to the PMBOK®, Quality Control is the process of monitoring and recording results of executing the quality activities to assess performance and recommend necessary changes. In short, inspection! Do not confuse quality control with scope verification, the latter involving a formal sign-off by the customer.

If 1 sigma is equal to 68.26% and 6 sigma is equal to 99.9997%, what does 2 sigma equal?

A. 74.52%
B. 81.24%
C. 88.79%
D. 95.46%

Answer: D. 95.46%
2 sigma is 95.46% while 3 sigma is 99.73%.

Costs that are usually associated with conformance are:

A. Training and testing
B. Scrap and rework
C. Liabilities
D. Lost business

Answer: A. Training and testing
Costs of conformance include prevention costs (e.g. training) and appraisal (e.g. testing). All other choices are costs of nonconformance.

When using a control chart, which of the following tells you that the process is out-of-control?

A. The UCL is higher than the LCL.
B. The highest and lowest plots are more than 1% apart.
C. There are seven or more consecutive plots on either side of the mean.
D. The LCL is lower than zero.

Answer: C. There are seven or more consecutive plots on either side of the mean.
When there are seven or more consecutive plots either above the mean or below the mean, the process out-of-control and should be investigated.

As Elaine documents test results, she completes each case with either a pass or a fail. This is an example of:

A. Standard deviation
B. Mutually exclusive
C. Statistical independence
D. Fitness for use

Answer: B. Mutually exclusive
Mutually exclusive, at the most basic level, means that two things cannot happen at the same time. In this example, each test case is either a pass or a fail. Elaine cannot choose both.

When applying six sigma, what is the approximate number of expected defects out of every 1,000,000?

A. 0
B. 3
C. 27
D. 600

Answer: B. 3
Six sigma represents 99.9997% defect-free, which is 3.4 out of every 1,000,000.

Charles is testing widgets and he is told that each has a 10% probability of being defective. After examining nine widgets, what is the likelihood of the next one having a defect?

A. 100%
B. 50%
C. 0%
D. 10%

Answer: D. 10%
If each widget has a 10% of being defective, then the tenth widget has a 10% chance of having a defect. Statistical independence states that one event has nothing to do with the next event.

Who is considered the father of the modern quality movement and known for establishing Total Quality Management (TQM)?

A. Deming
B. Shewhart
C. Crosby
D. Juran

Answer: A. Deming
W. Edwards Deming was an American who did much of his work in Japan before winning over the US just before his death. Total Quality Management is meant to bring quality awareness to every process within an organization.