PM Test Center

During a simple home repair project, Eva is planning on putting two coats of paint on her dining room. After the second coat of paint dries, she intends to hang up a picture of her family in the room. The activity relationships described in this example are known as:

A. Soft logic
B. Lag
C. Mandatory dependencies
D. Critical path

Answer: C. Mandatory dependencies
When you have activities that inherently require other activities to be completed, they are called mandatory dependencies, or hard logic. Discretionary dependencies, or soft logic, allow some flexibility and is based on preference. In this example, Eva must finish her first coat of paint before applying the second coat of paint. Then she must wait for the second coat of paint to dry before she can hang up her picture; she does not have any flexibility on the dependencies.

An output of a scope process that links requirements to their origin is called:

A. WBS dictionary
B. Requirements traceability matrix
C. Scope baseline
D. Requirements documentation

Answer: B. Requirements traceability matrix
The requirements traceability matrix, an output of the Collect Requirements process, helps ensure that each requirement adds business value by linking it to the business and project objectives (PMBOK®).

Part of your project includes the construction of a new room and although it is not your company’s core competency, you decide to perform a make-or-buy analysis. After you conduct your due diligence and make your decision, you will be creating a request for proposal. Which process are you working on?

A. Plan Procurements
B. Select Sellers
C. Conduct Procurements
D. Plan Contracting

Answer: A. Plan Procurements
The four current processes in the procurement knowledge area are Plan Procurements, Conduct Procurements, Administer Procurements, and Close Procurements. Make-or-buy decisions and procurement documents, such as a request for proposal, are performed in the Plan Procurements process.

As a senior project manager, Jim is asked to review the work of other project managers in the organization. Wendy, a fairly new project manager, is working with her team to sequence activities. One thing Jim should ensure is that Wendy has already performed the __________ process.

A. Develop Schedule
B. Estimate Activity Resources
C. Define Activities
D. Estimate Activity Durations

Answer: C. Define Activities
Although all of the choices are time management processes, only the Define Activities process precedes the Sequence Activities process. The primary output of Define Activities is an activity list, which a project manager must obviously have in order to sequence activities.

Your project team currently consists of you and three others. If you add one more individual to the team, making a total of five people, how many more communication channels will you have?

A. 3
B. 4
C. 6
D. 10

Answer: B. 4
Communication channels are calculated by n(n-1)/2. That means, if you have four people (like the example), you have six channels [4(4-1)/2 = 4(3)/2 = 12/2 = 6]. Alternatively, you can simply draw four dots on a page and draw a line from each dot to every other dot. That may be a challenge if you have, say, a forty person team. Anyway, the question asks for how many more channels. Therefore, if four people have six channels and five people have ten channels, the difference is four.

Which of the following estimating types provides the most accuracy?

A. Parametric
B. Analogous
C. Bottom-up
D. Top-down

Answer: C. Bottom-up
Bottom-up estimating, which may also be called grass roots, engineering, or definitive estimating, will provide the most accuracy since activities are estimated with the greatest level of detail. However, that level of accuracy comes at a cost. In order to be more accurate than parametric and analogous, it will also take the longest amount of time to create.

A quality management tool used to determine show cause and effect is:

A. Decision tree
B. Pareto diagram
C. Control chart
D. Fishbone diagram

Answer: D. Fishbone diagram
A Fishbone diagram, also known as Ishikawa Diagram, uses cause and effect to determine how quality is defined on the project.

The intern who will be verifying address labels will not be able to check them until they have obviously been printed. However, you recognize that she does not have to wait until all of the labels have been printed; rather she can begin shortly after the printing of the labels begin. This is an example of:

A. Finish-to-start
B. Finish-to-finish
C. Start-to-start
D. Start-to-finish

Answer: C. Start-to-start
The start of successor is determined by the start of the predecessor. Translation: when labels start printing out, the intern can start verifying them. You may even add a little lag (i.e. delay) if you wish.

You are planning a series of programming tasks and you know that your quality engineers will be testing the code after the programmers have completed the code. This is an example of:

A. Finish-to-start
B. Finish-to-finish
C. Start-to-start
D. Start-to-finish

Answer: A. Finish-to-start
In this example, programmers must complete the code before the testing begins. As a result, there is a finish-to-start relationship. The predecessor determines when the successor can begin, in other words, the testing cannot start until the programmers have finished the code.

Key components of a basic communication model are:

A. Encode, message and feedback-message, medium, noise, decode
B. Sender, message, receiver
C. Inputs, tools & techniques, outputs
D. Sender, encode, message and feedback-message, decode, receiver

Answer: A. Encode, message and feedback-message, medium, noise, decode
According to the PMBOK®, key components are encode, message and feedback-message, medium, noise, decode. All other choices are “noise”.