PMP People — Leading Projects Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

During a project audit, a new regulatory requirement is discovered that affects your project's deliverables. The compliance team says it must be implemented immediately. Your project is already behind schedule. Which THREE actions should you take?

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

Accepted Answer

Communicate the situation to key stakeholders, including the sponsor and compliance officer. As a project manager, you must immediately communicate critical regulatory changes to key stakeholders like the sponsor and compliance officer (A) to ensure transparency, secure support, and align on the urgency. Concurrently, you must analyze the impact of the new requirement on scope, schedule, and cost (E) to understand its full implications. Based on this analysis and initial communication, a formal change request must be submitted through the change control process (D) to incorporate the regulatory requirement, ensuring proper documentation, assessment, and approval, even for mandatory changes. This aligns with the PMBOK Guide's emphasis on stakeholder engagement, proactive risk communication, and integrated change control when external mandates impact project constraints.

Answer

Instruct the team to implement the requirement immediately without formal approval

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Ignore the requirement until the next phase to avoid further delay

Question 2

Your agile team is self-organizing, but a team member is consistently missing sprint commitments. The rest of the team is frustrated. As a Scrum Master, which THREE actions should you take?

Accepted Answer

Coach the team member individually to understand the root cause of the missed commitments. As a Scrum Master, your primary role is to coach the team and individuals to improve their performance and self-organization.

Option B: By having a private, one-on-one coaching session, you can uncover the root cause of the missed commitments—such as unclear requirements, personal blockers, or skill gaps—without embarrassing the team member in front of the group. This aligns with the PMP's emphasis on servant leadership and the agile principle of individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Option C: Facilitating a team retrospective is crucial for the team to self-organize and find solutions to its own problems, including team member performance issues and team frustration. This empowers the team to take ownership of their process and improvements.

Option D: If coaching reveals a skill gap or a need for support, providing additional training or pairing with a senior developer is a proactive way to remove impediments and help the team member improve their capabilities, aligning with the Scrum Master's role in fostering continuous improvement and skill development within the team.

Answer

Assign simpler tasks to the team member to increase their success rate

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Remove the team member from the team and replace them with a more capable person

Question 3

Your project team includes members from different generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials). Some younger team members feel their contributions are not valued equally. Which TWO actions would best promote an inclusive environment?

Accepted Answer

Implement a system where each team member presents their work in team meetings regularly. Ensures all voices contribute. Option D provides equal opportunity for leadership. Option A is wrong because focusing on weaknesses can reinforce stereotypes and create division, which is counterproductive to an inclusive environment. Option C is wrong because it may not address inclusion. Option E is wrong because while mentorship is valuable, this specific setup might reinforce a hierarchical structure rather than directly empowering younger members to demonstrate their equal value and leadership potential.

Answer

Provide training on generational differences focusing on each generation's weaknesses

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Create a social media group for team bonding

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Assign mentors from older generations to younger team members

Question 4

A project manager notices that two senior developers have conflicting work styles, causing delays. What is the best approach to resolve this?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a meeting to discuss and resolve differences.. Facilitating a meeting to discuss and resolve differences (D) is the best approach because it directly addresses the root cause of the conflict—work style incompatibility—by fostering open communication and collaborative problem-solving. As a project manager, you act as a servant leader, using conflict resolution techniques like 'confronting' or 'problem-solving' to turn the disagreement into a constructive dialogue that aligns the team toward project goals. This approach preserves team cohesion and leverages the developers' expertise without escalating or avoiding the issue.

Answer

Escalate to the functional manager for reassignment.

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Ask the team to vote on which style to adopt.

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Assign them to separate tasks to avoid interaction.

Question 5

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?

Accepted Answer

Initiate a formal performance improvement plan.. The project manager has already attempted informal resolution, and the continued impact on the critical path requires a formal performance improvement plan (PIP) to document the issue, set clear expectations, and provide a structured path for improvement. This aligns with the PMI's progressive discipline approach, where informal coaching precedes formal action to protect the project's schedule and maintain team accountability.

Answer

Reassign the task to another team member.

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Ask the team member's manager to intervene.

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Remove the team member from the project.

Question 6

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?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a meeting between the team and product owner to co-create a solution.. It aligns with the Agile principle of self-organizing teams, where the team collaborates with the product owner to co-create a solution for unclear requirements. The project manager acts as a facilitator, empowering the team to resolve the issue collectively rather than imposing a top-down process or ignoring the problem. This approach fosters ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement, which are core to Agile frameworks like Scrum.

Answer

Define a new process for requirement clarification and enforce it.

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Tell the team to adapt as best they can with the current requirements.

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Ask the product owner to provide more detailed user stories.

Question 7

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?

Accepted Answer

Hold a daily video call at a time that rotates across time zones.. Rotating the daily video call across time zones ensures that no single team is consistently disadvantaged by an inconvenient meeting time, promoting equitable participation and alignment. This synchronous communication method is most effective for real-time collaboration and immediate clarification, which is critical for a geographically distributed team to maintain shared understanding and project momentum.

Answer

Send a weekly status email to all team members.

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Record video updates and share them asynchronously.

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Use a group chat for all project communication.

Question 8

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?

Accepted Answer

Use anonymous polling tools to gather opinions before decisions.. Anonymous polling tools create a psychologically safe environment where team members from diverse cultural backgrounds can contribute without fear of judgment or loss of face. This aligns with the PMI Talent Triangle's emphasis on emotional intelligence and inclusive leadership, as it removes power dynamics and cultural barriers that inhibit verbal participation in meetings.

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Schedule one-on-one meetings with only the quiet members.

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Ask the most senior team member to represent others.

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Implement a round-robin where everyone must speak.

Question 9

A project manager is building a new team from scratch. To maximize team performance, which THREE actions should the project manager take during the forming stage?

Accepted Answer

Plan team-building activities to build relationships.. During the forming stage of Tuckman's model, team members are often polite and uncertain; planned team-building activities help establish trust and social bonds, which are essential for later stages. This aligns with the PMBOK Guide's emphasis on developing the team as a key process in the People domain.

Answer

Empower the team to make all project decisions.

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Encourage open conflict to surface issues.

Question 10

A project manager is leading a cross-functional team where two key members have conflicting priorities. One member insists on following a strict process, while the other wants to expedite delivery. The project manager needs to resolve the conflict to keep the project on track. Which approach is most effective?

Accepted Answer

Facilitate a meeting to discuss both perspectives and find a solution that meets core needs.. Facilitating a meeting to discuss both perspectives aligns with the PMP's 'Manage Conflict' process under the 'People' domain. This collaborative approach, known as 'collaborating' or 'problem-solving,' seeks a win-win solution that addresses the core needs of both team members—ensuring quality while meeting delivery timelines—without forcing a compromise that dilutes value or ignoring the issue.

Answer

Enforce the strict process to ensure quality.

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Suggest a compromise where both give up some requirements.

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Ignore the conflict and hope it resolves itself.

Question 11

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.

Answer

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 12

A project manager is assigned to a complex project with a team distributed across three time zones. The project requires high collaboration and frequent decision-making. The project manager wants to select a team structure that maximizes communication and efficiency. Which organizational structure is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Establish a virtual team with core overlap hours and use collaboration tools.. A virtual team with core overlap hours and collaboration tools directly addresses the challenge of a distributed team across three time zones. This structure maximizes communication by synchronizing work during overlapping hours and leverages technology (e.g., Slack, Zoom, Jira) for asynchronous collaboration, ensuring frequent decision-making without requiring physical co-location.

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Use a functional structure where each team works independently.

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Co-locate all team members in a single location.

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Implement a matrix structure with dual reporting.

Question 13

A project team is in the performing stage of development. The project manager is leaving for a two-week vacation. What is the best way to ensure the team remains productive?

Accepted Answer

Empower the team to make decisions within agreed boundaries and check in periodically.. The team is in the performing stage, characterized by high autonomy, trust, and self-organization. Empowering the team to make decisions within agreed boundaries leverages their maturity and maintains productivity, while periodic check-ins provide necessary oversight without micromanagement. This approach aligns with the Tuckman model and servant leadership principles, ensuring the team remains effective in the project manager's absence.

Answer

Appoint a temporary project manager to oversee the team.

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Ask the team to pause all non-urgent decisions until your return.

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Schedule daily status calls to monitor progress.

Question 14

A project manager notices that the team's velocity has decreased over the last two sprints. Retrospectives have not identified clear causes. The project manager suspects that team members are overworked and possibly experiencing burnout. What should the project manager do first?

Accepted Answer

Schedule individual meetings to discuss workload and well-being.. The first step when suspecting burnout is to engage directly with team members to understand their individual workloads and well-being. This aligns with the PMP's emphasis on servant leadership and proactive people management, as it addresses the root cause before taking further action. Individual meetings allow the project manager to gather specific data on overwork, which retrospectives failed to surface, enabling a targeted response.

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Continue monitoring; the velocity may recover naturally.

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Reduce the project scope to lower pressure.

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Add more team members to distribute the workload.

Question 15

A project manager is building a new project team. Which TWO actions are most effective for establishing a high-performing team?

Accepted Answer

Conduct a kick-off meeting to align on goals and build rapport.. A kick-off meeting aligns the team on project goals, establishes shared understanding, and builds rapport among members, which are foundational for collaboration and high performance. Option E is correct because developing a team charter with the team's input fosters ownership, clarifies norms, and sets expectations for communication and decision-making, directly contributing to team cohesion and effectiveness.

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Avoid discussing potential conflicts to maintain harmony.

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Mandate overtime to meet aggressive deadlines.

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Assign roles and responsibilities without team input.