PMI · Free Practice Questions · Last reviewed May 2026
24real exam-style questions organised by domain, each with the correct answer highlighted and a plain-English explanation of why it's right — and why the others are wrong.
A project manager notices that two senior developers have conflicting work styles, causing delays. What is the best approach to resolve this?
Escalate to the functional manager for reassignment.
Ask the team to vote on which style to adopt.
Assign them to separate tasks to avoid interaction.
Facilitate a meeting to discuss and resolve differences.
Direct conflict resolution is a key PM skill.
A project team member is consistently late with deliverables, affecting the critical path. The project manager has had informal conversations, but performance hasn't improved. What should the project manager do next?
Initiate a formal performance improvement plan.
A formal plan provides clear expectations and consequences.
Reassign the task to another team member.
Ask the team member's manager to intervene.
Remove the team member from the project.
During a sprint retrospective, the team expresses frustration about unclear requirements from the product owner. The project manager wants to improve the situation. Which action aligns with the Agile principle of self-organizing teams?
Define a new process for requirement clarification and enforce it.
Tell the team to adapt as best they can with the current requirements.
Facilitate a meeting between the team and product owner to co-create a solution.
Encourages collaboration and ownership.
Ask the product owner to provide more detailed user stories.
A new project manager is assigned to a project where the team is geographically distributed across three time zones. Which communication method is most effective for ensuring alignment?
Send a weekly status email to all team members.
Record video updates and share them asynchronously.
Use a group chat for all project communication.
Hold a daily video call at a time that rotates across time zones.
Regular, synchronous communication builds cohesion.
A project manager is leading a team with diverse cultural backgrounds. Some members are reluctant to speak up in meetings. What is the best strategy to promote inclusive participation?
Schedule one-on-one meetings with only the quiet members.
Ask the most senior team member to represent others.
Use anonymous polling tools to gather opinions before decisions.
Anonymous input encourages honest feedback.
Implement a round-robin where everyone must speak.
A project team is experiencing low morale due to high workload and unclear priorities. The project manager wants to improve motivation. Which TWO actions are most effective according to motivational theories?
Recognize individual contributions in team meetings.
Recognition addresses esteem needs.
Increase oversight to ensure no tasks are missed.
Conduct a blame-free review of recent failures.
Offer a bonus for meeting deadlines.
Involve the team in reprioritizing the backlog.
Involvement increases ownership and clarity.
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Practice this domainDuring a project's execution phase, a key stakeholder requests a change that would add a new feature. The project manager estimates the impact: 2 additional weeks to schedule and $15,000 to budget. The project currently has 0 schedule reserve and $5,000 contingency reserve. What should the project manager do first?
Approve the change using contingency reserve and inform the stakeholder
Implement the change immediately since the stakeholder is key
Reject the change because there is insufficient reserve
Document the change request and conduct a formal impact analysis
This is the first step in the change control process as per PMBOK.
A project manager is leading a software development project using agile methodology. The team has completed 3 sprints, but the product owner is dissatisfied because the delivered features do not meet the expected business value. The team claims they followed the prioritized backlog. What should the project manager do?
Facilitate a retrospective with the product owner and team to review the definition of done and acceptance criteria
A retrospective helps identify process improvements and realign on value delivery.
Create a detailed report showing the team's velocity and completed stories
Replace the product owner with someone who has better domain knowledge
Ask the team to add more features to the next sprint to increase value
A project manager is developing the project schedule. After defining activities and sequencing them, what is the next step in the schedule development process?
Estimate activity resources
Resource estimation is the logical next step after sequencing, per PMBOK process flow.
Estimate activity durations
Estimate costs
Develop the schedule baseline
A project has a critical path of 120 days with a standard deviation of 5 days. The project sponsor wants to know the probability of completing the project within 130 days. Using the normal distribution, what is the approximate probability?
97.5%
97.5% is the probability of completing at or below 2 standard deviations above the mean.
95%
84%
68%
A project manager is using earned value management. At month 6 of a 12-month project, the EV is $50,000, PV is $60,000, and AC is $55,000. What is the cost performance index (CPI)?
0.83
1.20
0.91
CPI = EV/AC = 50,000/55,000 = 0.909 ≈ 0.91.
1.10
Which TWO are inputs to the Control Schedule process? (Choose two.)
Schedule data
Project management plan
The schedule management plan is a component of the project management plan and is an input to Control Schedule.
Work performance data
Work performance data provides actual start/finish dates and is an input to Control Schedule.
Organizational process assets
Schedule forecasts
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Practice this domainA company is implementing a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. The project manager wants to ensure that the project delivers value aligned with the organization's strategic goals. Which document should the project manager reference to confirm the alignment?
Project management plan
Scope statement
Business case
The business case justifies the project and shows alignment with strategic goals.
Project charter
A project manager is leading a digital transformation initiative. Midway through the project, a new regulation is introduced that affects the product's compliance requirements. The project sponsor is concerned about potential scope creep and delays. What should the project manager do first?
Escalate the issue to the project sponsor for direction
Update the risk register with the new regulation as a threat
Submit a change request to modify the project scope
Conduct an impact analysis of the regulation on the project
Impact analysis is the first step to understand the effects before taking action.
A project manager is reviewing lessons learned from a completed project. The project delivered on time and on budget but did not achieve the expected market share increase. Which document would most likely explain this discrepancy?
Benefits realization plan
This plan defines the metrics and timing for achieving benefits.
Work breakdown structure
Project charter
Risk register
An organization is transitioning from a traditional waterfall approach to agile. The project manager is tasked with leading a pilot agile project. During sprint planning, the product owner prioritizes features based on stakeholder feedback. However, the team is concerned that the prioritized features do not align with the organization's strategic goals. What should the project manager do?
Request a change to the project charter
Facilitate a meeting with the product owner and key stakeholders to realign priorities
Collaborative realignment ensures the backlog supports strategic goals.
Tell the team to trust the product owner's decisions
Escalate the issue to the project sponsor
Which TWO of the following are typically included in a business case? (Choose two.)
Risk register
Cost-benefit analysis
Cost-benefit analysis is a key component of a business case.
Alignment to strategic objectives
Strategic alignment is a core part of the business case.
Detailed project schedule
Communication plan
Which THREE of the following are key considerations when evaluating the strategic value of a proposed project during portfolio selection? (Choose three.)
Strategic alignment
The project must support the organization's strategic goals.
Return on investment (ROI)
ROI measures the financial value of the project.
Organizational culture
Resource availability
Risk exposure
Assessing risks helps determine if the project is worth pursuing.
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Practice this domainA project manager is leading a software development project. The sponsor insists on using a waterfall approach, but the team has experience with agile and believes it would be more effective. What should the project manager do first?
Facilitate a meeting with the sponsor and team to discuss trade-offs.
Engaging stakeholders to find a solution that aligns with both business needs and team capability.
Adopt agile without informing the sponsor.
Follow the sponsor's directive and use waterfall.
Escalate to the PMO to resolve the conflict.
During project execution, a key stakeholder requests a feature that is not in the scope. The project manager analyzes the request and determines it would add significant business value but also increase risk. What should the project manager do?
Reject the request to avoid scope creep.
Accept the request and manage the risk with a contingency plan.
Initiate a change request and present the trade-offs to the change control board.
Following the change management process ensures alignment with project goals.
Ignore the request because it is out of scope.
A project manager is developing the business case for a new product. Which of the following is the primary purpose of the business case?
To define how the project will be executed, monitored, and controlled.
To provide justification for undertaking the project based on expected business value.
The business case establishes the project's value and alignment with strategy.
To outline how the project's benefits will be delivered and measured.
To authorize the project manager to use organizational resources.
A project manager is leading a project that is aligned with the organization's strategic goal to increase market share. However, during execution, a competitor releases a similar product, reducing the expected benefits. What should the project manager do?
Immediately stop the project to avoid further losses.
Continue the project as planned because the strategic goal has not changed.
Update the business case and present the revised benefits to the steering committee for a go/no-go decision.
Keeping stakeholders informed of changes in business value supports informed decision-making.
Add more features to differentiate the product from the competitor's.
A project manager is defining the benefits management plan. Which TWO of the following are key components of a benefits management plan?
Metrics for measuring benefits and the timing of measurement.
Metrics and timing are crucial for tracking benefit realization.
Work breakdown structure (WBS) for benefit delivery.
Target benefits and their alignment with organizational strategy.
Benefits must be clearly defined and linked to strategy.
Business case assumptions and constraints.
Project charter approval signatures.
You are the project manager for a large infrastructure project funded by a government grant that requires the project to deliver specific social benefits within three years. The project is currently in its second year, and a recent audit reveals that the project is on track to exceed its budget by 20% due to unexpected material cost increases. The grant terms stipulate that any cost overrun must be absorbed by the organization, not the grant. Additionally, the project benefits are measured based on the number of beneficiaries served, which is currently 70% of the target. The project sponsor is concerned that cutting costs may reduce the number of beneficiaries and jeopardize the grant conditions. The project team has identified two options: (1) reduce the scope of the project to stay within budget, which would lower the beneficiary count to 60% of target; or (2) request additional funding from the organization, but the CFO is reluctant because the project's return on investment is already marginal. What should the project manager do?
Conduct a benefits analysis to determine the minimum viable beneficiary count and then propose a revised plan that optimizes cost and benefits.
This approach balances cost and benefits while respecting grant constraints.
Escalate the issue to the steering committee for a decision.
Implement option 1 to control costs and then inform the sponsor of the reduced benefits.
Request additional funding from the CFO, emphasizing the risk of non-compliance.
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Practice this domainThe PMP exam has 180 questions and must be completed in 230 minutes. PMI rates performance as Proficient, Needs Improvement, or Below Proficient — not a numerical score out of 1000. A passing result requires Proficient in most domain areas.
Scenario-based project questions covering stakeholders, risk, scope, schedule, agile, hybrid, and predictive delivery concepts.
The exam covers 4 domains: People — Leading Projects, Process — Managing Technical Aspects, Business Environment — Strategy and Value, Business Environment: strategy and project benefits. Questions are weighted by domain — higher-weight domains appear more on your actual exam.
No. These are original exam-style practice questions written against the official PMI PMP exam objectives. They are not copied from the real exam. Courseiva focuses on genuine understanding, not memorisation of braindumps.
Courseiva tracks your accuracy per domain and routes you toward weak areas automatically. Free, no account required.