PMP Practice Test 21 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Your project team includes members from diverse cultural backgrounds. You notice that some team members are not contributing ideas during brainstorming sessions, while others dominate the conversation. What should you do to promote inclusion?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Implement a round-robin technique to give each team member an opportunity to speak. The round-robin technique is a structured facilitation method that ensures every team member has an equal opportunity to speak, directly addressing the cultural and behavioral imbalance in brainstorming. This approach aligns with the PMP's emphasis on inclusive leadership and active listening, as it systematically prevents domination and encourages contributions from quieter members without imposing artificial quotas.

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Assign speaking quotas to ensure equal participation

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Allow the dominant members to lead since they are more engaged

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Send a memo reminding the team to be respectful during meetings

Question 2

During a project retrospective, the team identifies several process improvements that could increase efficiency. What is the BEST way to ensure these improvements are implemented?

Accepted Answer

Add action items to the next sprint backlog with assigned owners. Adding action items to the next sprint backlog with assigned owners directly integrates the improvements into the team's workflow, ensuring accountability and timely execution. This aligns with Agile principles where continuous improvement is operationalized through backlog management and sprint planning, not left as an afterthought.

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Instruct the team to implement the improvements immediately

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Ask the project sponsor to approve the improvements

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Document the improvements in the lessons learned register for future projects

Question 3

A project manager is managing a large infrastructure project. The lead engineer has a strong personality and often dismisses ideas from other team members during meetings, causing some to withdraw from participation. What should the project manager do?

Accepted Answer

Speak privately with the lead engineer about the impact of their behavior and set expectations for collaboration. The project manager should address the disruptive behavior directly and privately with the lead engineer, focusing on the impact on team collaboration and setting clear expectations for respectful communication. This aligns with the PMP's focus on conflict resolution and team leadership, as direct, constructive feedback is the most effective way to change behavior without escalating conflict or undermining the engineer's authority.

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Redistribute the lead engineer's tasks to reduce their influence

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Ignore the behavior and hope the team members will stand up for themselves

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Schedule a team meeting to discuss meeting etiquette without singling out the engineer

Question 4

A new regulatory requirement has been announced that will affect your pharmaceutical project's deliverables. The requirement will take effect before your project's planned completion date. What should the project manager do FIRST?

Accepted Answer

Submit a change request to the change control board (CCB). The correct first step is to submit a change request to the change control board (CCB) because a new regulatory requirement that affects project deliverables constitutes a formal change to the project scope, schedule, or cost. The PMBOK Guide mandates that any change to baselined requirements must go through the integrated change control process, where the CCB evaluates the impact on technical specifications, compliance, and project constraints before approval. This ensures the project remains aligned with regulatory standards while managing risks to the pharmaceutical product's validation and market approval.

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Notify the project sponsor and ask for guidance

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Incorporate the new requirement into the project plan immediately

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Ignore the requirement until it is enforced

Question 5

A project manager is developing a process improvement plan to reduce waste in a manufacturing project. The team has identified several non-value-added activities. Which technique should the project manager use to systematically analyze and improve the process?

Accepted Answer

Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma is the correct technique because it combines Lean's focus on eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) with Six Sigma's DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology for systematic process improvement. This directly addresses the project manager's goal of reducing waste in a manufacturing project through data-driven analysis and continuous improvement.

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Pareto analysis

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Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

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Critical Path Method (CPM)

Question 6

During a sprint retrospective, several team members express frustration that the project manager often overrides their decisions, contradicting the agile principle of self-organization. The project manager believes the team lacks experience and needs guidance. What should the project manager do?

Accepted Answer

Acknowledge the feedback, discuss the balance between guidance and autonomy, and agree on decision-making boundaries. It directly addresses the team's frustration by acknowledging their feedback, opening a dialogue about the balance between guidance and autonomy, and collaboratively agreeing on decision-making boundaries. This aligns with the agile principle of self-organization while recognizing the project manager's responsibility to provide necessary guidance, especially for less experienced teams. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement and mutual respect, which is essential for effective team performance in agile environments.

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Ask the product owner to mediate the situation

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Continue as before because the team still needs direction

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Explain to the team that as the project manager, final decisions rest with you

Question 7

Your agile team has been self-organizing, but recently a team member with strong technical skills has been dominating discussions and decisions, causing others to feel disengaged. The sprint velocity is starting to drop. What is the BEST approach to address this?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a team retrospective where members can discuss collaboration norms and decision-making processes. The agile framework emphasizes self-organization and team ownership. Facilitating a retrospective directly addresses the root cause—disengagement due to dominance—by enabling the team to collaboratively redefine collaboration norms and decision-making processes, which restores psychological safety and can reverse the velocity drop without imposing external control.

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Ignore the behavior as long as the team is still delivering

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Reassign tasks to ensure equal participation by controlling the workload

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Speak privately with the dominating team member and ask them to step back

Question 8

A project manager notices that one team member has been consistently missing deadlines, and their work quality is declining. The team member is otherwise talented and has been with the company for years. What should the project manager do FIRST?

Accepted Answer

Schedule a private meeting with the team member to discuss the performance and offer support. The correct first step is to have a private, supportive conversation to understand the root cause of the performance decline. This aligns with the PMP's 'People' domain, emphasizing servant leadership and addressing performance issues confidentially before escalating. It respects the team member's history and allows for collaborative problem-solving.

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Reassign the work to another team member immediately

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Ignore the issue, assuming it will resolve itself

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Provide negative feedback during the next team meeting as a warning

Question 9

In an agile software project, the sprint velocity has dropped from 30 story points to 18 over the last two sprints. The team members report that they are spending too much time on unplanned technical debt. The product owner is pushing for more features. What should the project manager do FIRST?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a discussion between the team and product owner to prioritize technical debt alongside new features. The project manager's first responsibility is to facilitate a collaborative discussion between the team and the product owner to address the root cause—unplanned technical debt—while balancing the need for new features. This aligns with the agile principle of transparency and stakeholder collaboration, ensuring that technical debt is explicitly prioritized in the backlog alongside feature work. Removing or ignoring the debt would only compound the velocity drop and degrade product quality.

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Reassign two team members to a separate 'debt reduction' team to isolate the issue

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Remove testing from the definition of done to increase velocity

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Increase the sprint workload to motivate the team to deliver more features

Question 10

During a project status meeting, an executive stakeholder bypasses you and directly instructs a team member to add a new feature to the current sprint. The team member looks confused. What should you do FIRST?

Accepted Answer

After the meeting, privately remind the executive about the change control process and offer to submit a change request. The PM must protect the team from scope creep while maintaining stakeholder relationships. Privately reminding the executive about the change control process and offering to submit a change request addresses the issue diplomatically, enforces the formal change management system, and ensures the team member is not put in a conflicting position. This aligns with the PMP's focus on leading through influence rather than confrontation.

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Ignore the situation and continue the meeting

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Tell the team member to add the feature as requested to satisfy the stakeholder

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Immediately interrupt the executive and explain that all changes must go through you

Question 11

The project sponsor asks you to skip the quality testing phase to meet an aggressive deadline, arguing that the team is experienced and can deliver without it. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Explain the risks of skipping testing and propose alternatives such as reducing scope or extending the schedule. As a project manager, you must balance the sponsor's request with your ethical duty to deliver a quality product. Skipping quality testing introduces significant risk of defects and rework, which could ultimately delay the project further. By explaining these risks and proposing alternatives like reducing scope or extending the schedule, you demonstrate proactive leadership and adherence to the PMI Code of Ethics, specifically the responsibility to make data-driven decisions.

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Comply with the sponsor's request to avoid conflict

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Refuse the request and insist on following the original plan

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Agree to skip testing but document the sponsor's request for future reference

Question 12

During a team meeting, a junior developer hesitates to share an innovative idea due to fear of criticism. The project manager notices this and wants to foster a culture of psychological safety. What should the project manager do first?

Accepted Answer

Explicitly invite the developer to share and reassure that all ideas are valued.. The project manager's first action should be to directly invite the hesitant developer to share their idea in the moment, explicitly stating that all ideas are valued. This immediate, public invitation and reassurance directly addresses the fear of criticism and models psychological safety, which is a foundational behavior for fostering an innovative team culture. In the PMP context, this aligns with the 'Servant Leadership' principle and the 'Team Performance Domain,' where the PM actively creates an environment of trust and safety.

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Move on to the next agenda item to avoid discomfort.

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Assign the developer a task to present the idea next week.

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Privately praise the developer for past contributions.

Question 13

You are the project manager for a software development project using Scrum. During the daily stand-up, two senior developers get into a heated argument about the technical approach for a user story. The sprint goal is at risk. What should you do FIRST?

Accepted Answer

Ask the developers to resolve the conflict after the meeting and escalate if they cannot. The Scrum framework empowers the development team to self-organize and resolve technical disagreements. The project manager should facilitate the team's autonomy by asking the developers to resolve the conflict after the stand-up, escalating only if they cannot reach a consensus, thus protecting the sprint goal without imposing a top-down decision.

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Report the conflict to the product owner and ask for a decision

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Intervene immediately and decide the technical approach to resolve the conflict

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Cancel the stand-up and schedule a separate meeting to resolve the issue

Question 14

Your project is using a predictive approach, and you have just completed the work breakdown structure (WBS). What is the NEXT step in project planning?

Accepted Answer

Sequence the activities and develop the project schedule. After completing the WBS, the next step in a predictive (waterfall) project is to sequence the activities and develop the project schedule. The WBS decomposes deliverables into work packages, but the schedule requires identifying the specific activities needed to produce those work packages, determining their dependencies, and estimating durations. This directly feeds into creating the project schedule, which is the logical next step before cost estimation or risk identification.

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Define the project scope statement

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Identify risks

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Estimate costs for each work package

Question 15

Arrange the steps for developing a project charter in the correct order.

Accepted Answer

Step 1: Identify the sponsor, Step 2: Define the business case, Step 3: Draft the charter, Step 4: Obtain approval, Step 5: Communicate the charter.. The project charter is developed by identifying the sponsor, defining the business case, drafting the charter, obtaining approval, and then communicating it.

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Step 1: Define the business case, Step 2: Identify the sponsor, Step 3: Draft the charter, Step 4: Obtain approval, Step 5: Communicate the charter.

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Step 1: Identify the sponsor, Step 2: Define the business case, Step 3: Draft the charter, Step 4: Communicate the charter, Step 5: Obtain approval.

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Step 1: Draft the charter, Step 2: Identify the sponsor, Step 3: Define the business case, Step 4: Obtain approval, Step 5: Communicate the charter.