Project Management Questions (Past Exam Paper Answers)

Question 1 (15 points) Your Score:

You are an experienced project manager and a Project Management Professional on a job interview for a project management position at a large company. You’ve completed the screening interview and have just been led to the office of the hiring manager for the position. After several minutes of casual conversation, she tells you she has a delicate question to ask.

“I feel it’s important for you to understand the environment you’ll be working in,” she begins. “We are undertaking a multi-million-dollar software development project involving several business units in our organization. We’re not a company which has taken project management seriously in the past, and we’ve paid for it with big cost overruns and schedule delays on similar systems we’ve built in the past.”

“I had to persuade some senior managers that our customary way of doing things wasn’t working, and it was time to embrace project management as a discipline. They authorized me to create this job opening, but I can tell you there’s a lot of skepticism about project management here. Whoever takes this job is going to have to be able to articulate its value to the project team and a lot of the key stakeholders.”

She nods in your direction, and says “You’re a PMP, so you tell me how we can justify the use of project management processes and best practices for this project to the people we’ll be working with? What’s in it for the organization as a whole, and what’s in it for them?” 

Question 2 (15 points) Your Score:

You are the same project manager described in Question 1. You make such a good impression during the job interview that the hiring manager hires you immediately. You hit the ground running and persuade a lot of skeptical team members to give the PMBOK-compliant predictive life cycle processes you recommended a shot. They include a well-developed integrated change management process which includes a Change Control Board (CCB). The CCB consists of the project sponsor, the functional managers involved with the project and you. The change management process requires all requests for requirement changes to be submitted to the CCB for evaluation and possible approval.

Two months have passed since the project requirements gathering was completed. The software construction is in full swing, a senior stakeholder who had some input into the requirements and is not a member of the CCB comes by your cubicle with a sour expression on his face.

“I was talking with one of the software developers on the project and happened to see some of the web pages she was putting together. I was the one who provided the requirements for the features she was working on. When I saw what she did, I realized that there were more details than I originally thought of to be considered. I told her she needed to change what was there, and she told me she couldn’t just do it on my say-so, that I had to fill out something called a ‘change request.’”

“What’s the big deal?” he complains. “These changes are essential, and I think she should just do them. Why do I have to go through all of this ‘change request’ nonsense to get this done?”

How would you respond?

Question 3 (15 points) Your Score:

You are an experienced project manager who has successfully led a number of large projects involving multi-disciplinary teams whose members were drawn from around your organization and even included some members from outside vendors. One afternoon, a junior project manager in your organization asks to speak to you about a project he has just been assigned to manage.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve just been assigned to manage Project Genesis. I’m happy to have the opportunity, as it’s the largest project I’ve been asked to lead so far in my career. I am a little concerned about leading the project team effectively and hoped I could get some advice from you.”

“So far, all of my projects have involved people who were all part of a single department and had worked with each other for at least a couple of years. Some of those projects involved months of work and thousands of hours of effort. We did have to deal with a lot of scope changes and a variety of other problems but were able to complete the projects successfully in the end. A large part of our success was due to the team members knowing each other for years and working quite well together. Actually, I felt blessed!”

“Project Genesis is a different story! Members of the team include technical specialists drawn from all over the company. Most have them don’t even know each other at all and have never worked with each other. They have different skill sets and levels of experience.”

“You’ve been in situations like this before yourself. What advice can you give me about managing and leading a team life this effectively?

What advice would you offer to the junior project manager?

Question 4 (15 points) Your Score:

You are an experienced project manager who has been assigned to lead a large, mission-critical project with a deadline which can not be extended for any reason. It was decided to use a predictive life cycle for the project. Your project team and stakeholders have collaborated well and worked hard to define requirements, create a well-defined work breakdown structure, sequenced activities and estimated effort and durations for all of them.

You’ve integrated all of the information your team has generated into a proposed baseline schedule using scheduling software, applying your understanding of scheduling best practices. You’ve presented that schedule to the project steering committee for their review and approval. You thoughtfully scheduled a formal schedule review meeting for the steering committee at which you intend to address their questions and issues.

Shortly after the meeting starts, one of the stakeholders raises a hand to ask a question. “This is the first time I’ve ever really looked closely at a project schedule. Thanks for your effort in creating it, as I can see from the number of activities that it must have taken a lot of effort,” he begins.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though. It looks like you’ve included a number of activities in one sequence which don’t refer to actual work being done. You’ve labeled each of them as ‘Buffer’. If I add up all of the calendar time for all of those buffers, it seems to extend the project’s overall duration by three weeks. Why would you do that?”

How would you respond?

Question 5 (20 points) Your Score:

You are an experienced project manager who is well-known in your organization for being extremely knowledgeable about earned value management. One day, an individual with little formal project management training who happens to be serving as a program manager for a large and important program comes to you. She presents you with the latest earned value management data for the program shown below:

She then sighs deeply and speaks. “I can use your help! My project managers have provided me with these statistics. Based on the little understanding I have of this earned value management stuff, I told them it looked like we were in pretty good shape with the program overall. After all, it seems like the numbers indicate the program as a whole is trending about 4% under budget and is less than 4% behind schedule. I don’t see any significant cause for concern here, as I’m confident I can take some actions to bring the project back on track.”

She points a finger in your direction and continues, “You were described to me as someone who knows how to interpret these statistics. While my project managers offered me their thoughts, I wanted to get an objective opinion from someone not involved with the project. What do you think they mean? Should I be concerned about the program overall or any of its individual projects?”

What would you tell the program manager?

Question 6 (20 points) Your Score:

You are a project manager who has just been assigned to a software development project. Lisa, the project sponsor, calls you into her cubicle one afternoon.

“Thanks for taking the time to speak with me,” she says with a smile. “Before we discuss anything else about planning, I wanted to talk with you about the problem which has plagued every software project I’ve been involved with here – quality.”

She shakes her head ruefully. “We ALWAYS face serious pushback from our user community after we release a new system. They complain bitterly that the software doesn’t work well and often refuse to use it. We actually had to force people to use the last new system we did by shutting down the old system they had been using.”

“We do conduct user acceptance testing before a release, and the testing team always gives me a report on the testing results before I approve the product. In spite of that, I always receive dozens of complaints from users after they start using the new system.”

“You were recommended for this project because you are a PMP. What do you think we might be doing wrong in managing quality? What else should we be doing to ensure the next system we build will work to everyone’s satisfaction?”

What advice would you give to Lisa?