hardMultiple Choice
PK0-005 Practice Question: The project manager for a software upgrade…
You are the project manager for a software upgrade project at a mid-sized company. The project has a budget of $500,000 and a timeline of 12 months. The team consists of 10 members, including developers, testers, and a business analyst. The project is in month 8, and the team has completed 60% of the work but has spent $400,000. The sponsor is concerned about the budget overrun and asks for a recovery plan. The original estimate at completion (EAC) was $500,000. Using earned value management, you calculate the cost performance index (CPI) is 0.75 and the schedule performance index (SPI) is 0.90. The team is demoralized due to scope creep and unclear requirements. The business analyst recently left, and the replacement is not yet fully onboarded. Which of the following is the BEST course of action to bring the project back on track?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates focus on the numerical EVM metrics (CPI=0.75, SPI=0.90) and jump to a budget or schedule recovery action, ignoring the contextual clues about scope creep and demoralized team, which indicate that the real problem is uncontrolled requirements, not just poor performance.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Conduct a scope review with the sponsor and key stakeholders to prioritize remaining features and freeze requirements.
The root cause of the budget overrun and schedule delay is scope creep and unclear requirements, which have demoralized the team and led to inefficient work. By conducting a scope review with the sponsor and stakeholders to prioritize remaining features and freeze requirements, you directly address the source of rework and wasted effort. This action stabilizes the project baseline, allowing the team to focus on delivering the highest-value work within the remaining budget and timeline, and it prevents further uncontrolled changes that would worsen the CPI and SPI.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Outsource the remaining development work to a vendor to accelerate completion.
Why it's wrong here
Outsourcing adds procurement, onboarding and coordination overhead while the CPI of 0.75 shows cost, not capacity, is the constraint. Vendors suit skills gaps or fixed-scope work; here scope creep and unclear requirements need re-baselining and requirements definition first.
- ✗
Immediately reduce the team size to cut costs and ask the remaining team to work overtime.
Why it's wrong here
Cutting headcount and mandating overtime reduces velocity further and worsens the 0.90 SPI, while demoralised staff losing colleagues will slow delivery. This suits a bloated, over-resourced team; here the shortfall is scope control and requirements clarity, not excess labour.
- ✗
Request an additional budget of $100,000 from the sponsor and extend the schedule by two months.
Why it's wrong here
Requesting more budget and time treats the symptom, not the scope creep and unclear requirements driving the 0.75 CPI. Additional funding suits genuinely under-estimated, well-defined work; here the sponsor asked for recovery within constraints, so the baseline must be re-scoped first.
- ✓
Conduct a scope review with the sponsor and key stakeholders to prioritize remaining features and freeze requirements.
Why this is correct
Addressing scope creep and unclear requirements directly attacks the root cause depressing CPI to 0.75 and SPI to 0.90. Prioritising remaining features with the sponsor and freezing requirements reduces rework and stabilises the backlog, letting the understaffed team recover cost and schedule performance within the $500,000 budget.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 954 original PK0-005 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PK0-005 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PK0-005 exam.