PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Test 23 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A project manager is using a servant leadership approach. During a sprint, the team is struggling to complete their tasks due to unclear requirements. What should the project manager do?

Accepted Answer

Work with the product owner to clarify the requirements and provide the team with the necessary information. A servant leader removes impediments for the team. By working with the product owner to clarify the requirements, the project manager directly addresses the root cause of the team's struggle—unclear requirements—without taking over the work or delaying resolution. This aligns with the agile principle of empowering the team while ensuring they have the necessary information to complete their tasks.

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Take over the task of clarifying requirements and update the user stories yourself

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Coach the team to ask better questions during sprint planning

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Wait until the sprint retrospective to discuss the issue

Question 2

You are a project manager for a marketing campaign project. A team member has proposed a new approach that could improve the campaign's effectiveness but would require additional budget and extend the timeline. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Submit a change request with an analysis of the benefits, costs, and risks. As a project manager, you must follow the formal change control process when a proposed change affects the project's budget and timeline. Submitting a change request with a thorough analysis of benefits, costs, and risks ensures that the change is evaluated based on objective data and approved by the appropriate stakeholders, maintaining project governance and alignment with business objectives.

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Encourage the team member to implement the new approach informally

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Approve the change since it improves effectiveness

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Reject the proposal to stay within the original plan

Question 3

A project manager discovers that a team member has been working overtime for weeks to meet a deadline. The team member appears stressed and burnt out. The project manager is concerned about the team member's well-being and the sustainability of the project. What should the project manager do?

Accepted Answer

Schedule a private meeting to discuss the workload, express concern, and explore options for support or reprioritization. It aligns with the PMP's focus on servant leadership and proactive stakeholder management. By scheduling a private meeting, the project manager demonstrates empathy, addresses the root cause of burnout, and collaboratively explores solutions like reprioritization or resource reallocation, which sustains both team well-being and project delivery.

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Increase the project budget to hire additional help immediately

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Warn the team member that overtime is not sustainable and require them to stop

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Ignore the situation as long as deadlines are met

Question 4

In a large-scale project, the project manager notices that sprint velocity has been declining over the last three sprints. The team is demotivated and blaming each other for missed commitments. What should the project manager do first?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a retrospective to identify root causes and collaboratively develop improvement actions. The first step in addressing declining sprint velocity and team demotivation is to facilitate a retrospective. This aligns with the PMP's focus on servant leadership and collaborative problem-solving, allowing the team to identify root causes (e.g., technical debt, unclear requirements) and co-create improvement actions, which restores ownership and morale.

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Reassign tasks to the highest-performing team members

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Replace the Scrum Master with a more experienced one

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Meet with the product owner to reduce the scope of upcoming sprints

Question 5

A project manager is leading a team that includes members from different departments. One team member frequently misses team meetings and fails to update task status. What should the project manager do?

Accepted Answer

Schedule a one-on-one meeting to discuss the issue and understand any challenges. The PM should first address performance issues privately to understand root causes, such as personal challenges or workload conflicts, before taking any formal action. This aligns with the PMP's emphasis on servant leadership and proactive conflict resolution, ensuring the team member feels supported and can improve without public embarrassment.

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Bring up the issue in the next team meeting to encourage accountability

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Remove the team member from the project

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Report the issue to the team member's functional manager

Question 6

A project manager is leading a hybrid project. The team has members in three countries, and communication has been challenging. The project manager wants to improve collaboration and build trust among remote team members. Which TWO actions should the project manager take?

Accepted Answer

Rotate meeting times so that no single region always has an inconvenient time. Rotating meeting times distributes the inconvenience of early or late meetings across all time zones, which demonstrates fairness and respect for team members' work-life balance. This action directly addresses the challenge of remote collaboration in a hybrid project by fostering trust and inclusivity, which are critical for team cohesion. Option E is correct because a virtual team charter establishes clear communication norms, availability windows, and expectations, reducing ambiguity and enabling more effective asynchronous and synchronous collaboration.

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Implement a reward system for individual performance metrics

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Assign a single point of contact in each country to relay information

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Require all team members to relocate to a central office for the project duration

Question 7

During project execution, the project manager notices that two team members are in frequent conflict, which is affecting the team's overall performance. The project manager wants to resolve the conflict effectively. Which THREE actions align with PMI's recommended approach?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a joint meeting to discuss the issue and find common ground. Facilitating a joint meeting aligns with PMI's collaborative conflict resolution approach, where the project manager acts as a neutral facilitator to help conflicting parties discuss issues openly and find common ground. This technique, often called 'confronting' or 'problem-solving,' is the most effective method for resolving interpersonal conflicts and restoring team performance, as it addresses the root cause directly.

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Address the conflict in a team meeting to model transparency

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Escalate the conflict to the project sponsor for resolution

Question 8

You are managing a hybrid software development project. During the daily stand-up, two senior developers get into a heated argument about the best technical approach for a critical feature. The argument is delaying the meeting and causing tension. As the project manager, what should you do first?

Accepted Answer

Intervene, acknowledge both perspectives, and schedule a separate meeting to resolve the conflict. As the project manager in a hybrid project, you must facilitate conflict resolution without imposing a technical decision that exceeds your role. By acknowledging both perspectives and scheduling a separate meeting, you keep the daily stand-up focused on coordination while ensuring the technical debate is resolved by the appropriate experts, preserving team autonomy and project momentum.

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Escalate the issue to the project sponsor for a decision

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Let the team resolve the conflict on their own without intervention

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Decide on the technical approach yourself to move forward quickly

Question 9

You are leading a virtual team across three time zones. A team member from the offshore location has been consistently missing deadlines, causing delays. When you inquire, the member says they are overloaded with work from another project. What is the best course of action?

Accepted Answer

Discuss the situation with the member and their functional manager to resolve the workload conflict. The root cause is a resource conflict across projects, which is a functional management issue. As a project manager, you must collaborate with the team member and their functional manager to negotiate priorities and workload balance, rather than unilaterally escalating or replacing the resource. This aligns with the PMI principle of 'engaging with stakeholders' and the 'manage team' process, where addressing resource constraints through negotiation is the first step before considering administrative actions.

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Assign additional resources to help the member complete tasks

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Replace the team member with someone who can meet deadlines

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Issue a formal warning to the team member about performance expectations

Question 10

Your agile project is in its third sprint. The product owner has been pressuring the team to deliver more features each sprint to meet stakeholder expectations. Sprint velocity has dropped for two consecutive sprints, and the team seems demotivated. As the project manager, what should you do?

Accepted Answer

Coach the product owner on agile principles and facilitate a discussion on sustainable pace and prioritization. The root cause of the velocity drop and team demotivation is a mismatch between stakeholder pressure and the team's sustainable pace. As the project manager, you must coach the product owner on agile principles—specifically that velocity is a measure of capacity, not a target—and facilitate a discussion to reprioritize the backlog so the team can deliver value without burnout. This aligns with the PMBOK Guide's emphasis on servant leadership and protecting the team from external pressure.

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Add more developers to the team to increase capacity

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Extend the sprint duration to allow more time for feature completion

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Ask the team to work overtime to catch up on the backlog

Question 11

You are managing a project to develop a mobile app. The sponsor asks you to skip user acceptance testing (UAT) to meet an aggressive launch date. The team is concerned about quality risks. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Explain the risks of skipping UAT and propose a change request to adjust the schedule. It demonstrates the project manager's responsibility to balance stakeholder requests with quality standards. By explaining the risks of skipping UAT—such as undetected defects leading to user dissatisfaction or rework—and proposing a change request to adjust the schedule, you follow the PMI ethical code and the change control process. This approach respects the sponsor's authority while advocating for project quality, aligning with the 'People' domain of leading the team and stakeholders.

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Refuse the request without further discussion

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Comply with the sponsor's request to meet the deadline

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Proceed with UAT secretly and report the launch date as planned

Question 12

A risk event that was identified and included in the risk register has occurred. The impact on the project schedule is moderate. What should the project manager do first?

Accepted Answer

Implement the agreed-upon risk response from the risk register. When a risk event that was identified and included in the risk register occurs, the project manager should first implement the agreed-upon risk response that was already planned and documented. This is because the risk response plan was developed during risk planning and approved by stakeholders, making it the immediate and correct action to take. Implementing the pre-agreed response ensures a timely, consistent, and controlled reaction to the risk, minimizing disruption to the project schedule.

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Ignore the event since the impact is only moderate

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Escalate the issue to the project sponsor for guidance

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Develop a new risk response immediately

Question 13

Your project team includes members from diverse cultural backgrounds. During a meeting, you notice that some team members are not contributing ideas, while others dominate the discussion. What should you do to foster inclusive participation?

Accepted Answer

Establish a team charter with ground rules that encourage equal participation. Establishing a team charter with ground rules is a proactive, collaborative approach that addresses cultural differences in communication styles. It creates a shared agreement on meeting norms, such as turn-taking or idea-sharing methods, which fosters inclusive participation without singling out individuals. This aligns with the PMP's focus on leading diverse teams through agreed-upon processes rather than imposing top-down rules.

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Allow the meeting to proceed naturally as it is a cultural difference

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Require each team member to speak at least once per meeting

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Privately ask the dominant members to speak less

Question 14

During a hybrid project, an executive stakeholder bypasses you and directly instructs a team member to add a new feature. The team member is now confused about priorities. What should you do first?

Accepted Answer

Meet with the executive stakeholder to explain the project's change control process and the importance of proper communication channels. As the project manager, you must first address the root cause of the confusion—the executive stakeholder's bypass of the formal change control process. By meeting with the executive, you reinforce the importance of proper communication channels and the change control board (CCB) process, which protects the project from scope creep and ensures all changes are evaluated for impact on cost, schedule, and quality. This aligns with the PMBOK Guide's principle of managing stakeholder engagement and maintaining a single point of accountability for project decisions.

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Ignore the issue and allow the feature to be added to maintain stakeholder satisfaction

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Reprimand the team member for accepting instructions without your approval

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Add the feature to the backlog and treat it as a priority

Question 15

You are leading a Scrum team. For the past three sprints, the team has consistently completed all committed user stories. The product owner wants to increase the team's velocity by 20%. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a retrospective to identify process improvements that could sustainably increase velocity. Velocity is a measure of past performance, not a target. The team should self-organize to improve their process sustainably through retrospectives. Option A is wrong because reducing the definition of done to skip testing compromises quality, increases technical debt, and is unsustainable. Option B is wrong because instructing the team to commit to more stories forces a target on velocity, which can lead to burnout and does not address process improvement. Option D is wrong because estimating stories with lower story points artificially inflates velocity, masking true performance and hindering accurate planning.

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Reduce the definition of done to skip testing activities

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Instruct the team to commit to more stories each sprint

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Ask the team to estimate stories with lower story points to increase velocity