Answers

1. D - Pareto charts, control charts and histograms are quality management

tool. The question is asking for a tool that help the project manager
collect stakeholder information and focus group is one of the effective
tools available to the project manager.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 402] [Project Stakeholder Management]
2. A - Project stakeholders are involved in each of the project management
processes. The Develop Project Charter is the first project management
process where the key project stakeholders get engaged for the first time.
Stakeholders provide expert judgment and participate in facilitated
sessions during the charter development.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 71] [Project Integration Management]
3. D - This organization is called a composite organization. [PMBOK 5th
edition, Page 25] [Project Framework]
4. A - The decomposition technique allows the project manager to create
smaller and more manageable pieces of work from the larger work
packages. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 151] [Project Time Management]
5. C - Only internal stakeholders can provide expert judgment on effective
management strategies for internal stakeholders. Project customers are
important stakeholders but usually they lack the knowledge on internal
stakeholders, and hence cannot provide an accurate feedback.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 401] [Project Stakeholder Management]
6. A - The Create WBS process identifies the deliverables at the lowest
level in the WBS, the work package. Project work packages are typically
decomposed into smaller components called activities, which represent
the work that is necessary to complete the work package. [PMBOK 5th
edition, Page 126] [Project Time Management]
7. C - Contingency funds are used to handle cost uncertainty due to
unforeseen purchases that may be needed during a project. These funds
are generally used for items that are likely to occur but are not certain to
occur. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 206] [Project Cost Management]
8. C - Staffing is typically highest during the execution phase of the project.
The other three responses may not hold true. Projects can move forward
into subsequent phases without the deliverables of the prior phase being
completely approved; this is known as fast tracking. Changes during the
initial phases of the project are the least expensive. The influence of the
stakeholders is highest during the start of the project and declines as the
project moves to completion. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 40] [Project
Framework]
9. D - Standardized stakeholder list is not a valid organizational asset
used in the Plan Human Resource Management process. The other
choices are valid assets. Other assets include historical information on
organizational structures that have worked in previous projects and
organizational processes and policies. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 260]
[Project Human Resource Management]
10. A - Project reports and presentation distributed to the stakeholders get
archived in the organizational process assets during this process.
Stakeholder register is the project document that gets updated the most
 during this process.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 409] [Project Stakeholder Management]
11. A - When lessons-learned gathering and documentation is postponed till
the very end, the project manager must scramble for bits and pieces of
project history to compile into a lessons-learned document. Often,
because the project is in closeout, the project manager has only a few
team members remaining, which makes compiling and obtaining project
information from the remaining few resources difficult.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 46, 280] [Project Integration Management]
12. D - A probability and impact matrix will help filter the high-risk items and
high-impact items from the others, so that you can focus your attention on
these riskier items. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 331] [Project Risk
Management]
13. C - Control Costs is the process of managing the project's costs and the
changes that threaten the bottom line. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 215]
[Project Cost Management]
14. A - The procurement management plan, schedule baseline, and the cost
baseline typically gets updated as result of a significant change in
procurement contracts or strategy. However, the quality management
plan is least likely to get updated during this process since quality
requirements always need to be met by all contractors. The contractors
can be allowed more money or time to complete the works but cannot be
allowed to compromise the quality of the works.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 385] [Project Procurement Management]
15. A - The issue escalation process is explicitly documented in the
communications management plan. The rest of the choices are the
sections that appear both in the communications management and the
stakeholder management plans. [PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 296, 403]
[Project Stakeholder Management]
16. C - The project scope statement provides the product description,
acceptance criteria, key deliverables, project boundaries, assumptions,
and constraints about the project.
The scope management plan and the requirements management plan
are the subsidiary plans of the overall project management plan and they
detail how the project team needs to manage the project scope
and requirements respectively. These plan do not document the actual
scope of the project. Accepted Deliverables is the wrong answer since
deliverables are accepted post completion and validation, the
identification of the key deliverable is done early during the planning
phase of the project. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 202] [Project Scope
Management]
17. B - The work package is the lowest and most detailed level of the WBS
and can be scheduled, cost estimated, monitored, and controlled.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 126] [Project Scope Management]
18. D - The Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) is a hierarchical presentation of
the project risks sorted by risk categories. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 560]
[Project Risk Management]
19. A - Present Value = Future Value / (1 + rate)^period
Present Value = 5,000,000 / (1 + 15%)^5 = 2,485,884
 [PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 195, 198] [Project Integration Management]
20. C - Projects help in achieving organizational goals whey they are aligned
with the organization's strategy. If the projects are misaligned with the
organizational strategic goals, they are most likely to produce undesirable
results either in the short-term or the long-term. NPV and IRR
calculations are great measures, however, these are not applicable since
these projects will not contribute to any of the revenue streams.
Investment requirement is important but is useless on the projects that
are not aligned with the strategic goals of the organization.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 12, 198] [Project Integration Management]
21. B - Each contract is unique and so are its obligations, provisions and
clauses. Any contract that need to be terminated must be terminated in
accordance with the termination clause of that contract. These contract
termination provisions are agreed and signed off by both parties at the
time of the contract award.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 381] [Project Procurement Management]
22. D - Start to Finish relationships indicate that the next task cannot be
completed until the one preceding it has started. This type is not
commonly used. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 157] [Project Time
Management]
23. C - A RACI chart outlines in matrix form, the project tasks and for each
task, who is responsible, who is accountable, whom to consult, and
whom to inform. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 226] [Project Human
Resource Management]
24. B - The cost variance (CV) equals EV - AC. In this case, the CV =
$5,000. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 224] [Project Cost Management]
25. C - In this scenario the earned value has been overstated while the
reported actual cost is ok. Earned value should be the sum of PVs of all
completed activities. The initial 20advance should not be part of this.
Further, since the buyer is not liable for the inventory cost and only
reimburses the costs associated with completed deliverables, the cost of
the inventory does not become part of the actual cost until that inventory
is consumed during the construction process. The inventory is an asset
for the contactor until it is consumed on the project and at that time it
becomes a cost for the project.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 218] [Project Communications Management]
26. B - Encode -> Transmit -> Decode -> Acknowledge -> Feedback is the
right sequence.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 293] [Project Communications Management]
27. B - The Delphi technique involves anonymous questionnaires circulated
to a group of experts and provides an unbiased assessment of the risks.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 324] [Project Risk Management]
28. A - A review of procurement process originating from the Plan
Procurement Management through Control Procurements is conducted
during the Close Procurements process and not during the Control
Procurements process. Procurement performance review is a tool and
technique of the Control Procurements process and includes activities
such as reviewing seller-prepared documentation and buyer inspections,
 identifying performance successes or failures, and determining progress
against procurement statement of work.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 383, 388] [Project Procurement
Management]
29. D - Project should never be prioritized based on their budgets. Selecting
the projects that maximize organizational revenue or selecting the
projects that maximize the business value seem good options. However,
adding to business value takes precedence over adding the
organizational revenue, since there can be projects that add more to the
revenue but add less to the business value.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 15] [Project Integration Management]
30. B - Communication, trust building, and interpersonal skills are the actions
used to close the gaps. Please note that the question is asking about a
technique that can be used to identify these actions. PMBOK
recommends expert judgment as an appropriate identification technique
in this situation.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 403] [Project Stakeholder Management]
31. B - Stage Gates, Phase Gates and Kill Points all refer to a phase end
review with the objective of obtaining authorization to close the current
phase and start the next one. This is a retrospective review of the current
phase. Phase planning, on the other hand, is performed early during the
planning phase of the project. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 41] [Project
Framework]
32. A - The question is asking for a tool and technique used during the
Control Quality process. The SIPOC model is a specific type of a
flowchart which is a tool and technique of the Control Quality process.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 236, 237] [Project Quality Management]
33. D - Requirements Traceability Matrix is an output of the Collect
Requirements process. It is used for tracing requirements to project
scope, objectives, and test strategy. Tracing requirements to project risk
is not a valid use. [PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 117, 118] [Project Scope
Management]
34. A - The Bill of Material (BOM) is not used as an input in the Create WBS
process. The other three are valid inputs. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 125]
[Project Scope Management]
35. A - There is nothing such as earned cost or accrued rate of return. The
total cost of ownership is the purchase price of an asset plus the costs of
operation.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 369] [Project Integration Management]
36. C - The Identify Risks process is an ongoing, iterative process as risks
are often identified throughout the project's life cycle. [PMBOK 5th
edition, Page 321] [Project Risk Management]
37. D - Risk categories provide a structure that ensures a comprehensive
process of systematically identifying risks and that contributes to the
effectiveness and quality of the process. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 317]
[Project Risk Management]
38. A - Create WBS is a process in the Project Scope Management area.
The other options are all Project Time Management processes. [PMBOK
5th edition, Pages 105, 141] [Project Time Management]
39. A - The method used by most project management software packages to
construct a project schedule network diagram is Activity-On-Node (AON).
This method uses boxes or rectangles, called nodes, to represent
activities. It connects the nodes with arrows showing the logical
relationships among them. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 156] [Project Time
Management]
40. A - The WBS is a hierarchical decomposition of the work to be performed
by the project team. It defines the total scope of the project. It represents
the work specified in the currently approved project scope statement.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 126] [Project Scope Management]
41. C - Creating the WBS is a very important process, but often a previous
WBS can be used as a template to save time and avoid the risk of
forgetting something important. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 127] [Project
Scope Management]
42. A - Finish-to-Start relationships indicate that the next task is not able to
start until the one preceding it is completed. This is the most commonly
used type of activity relationship. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 157] [Project
Time Management]
43. A - Since you have little authority over the projects you manage, you are
working for a weak matrix organization. In such organizations, the
functional managers have more authority. To obtain the required
resources from the functional managers, you need to use the
"Negotiation" tool and technique from the Acquire Project Team process.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 270] [Project Human Resource Management]
44. A - To provide the best results, a quality audit should be a structured
process performed by an independent entity. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page
247] [Project Quality Management]
45. C - A hierarchical-type organization chart can clearly show roles and
reporting relationships within a team. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 165]
[Project Human Resource Management]
46. D - The identification of key project deliverables can only be done once
the project requirements are collected, analyzed and documented. This is
done during the Collect Requirements process. Further, the key project
deliverables are documented in the project scope statement which is an
output of the Define Scope process. The best position of the newly
proposed "Identify Key Deliverables" process should be between the
Collect Requirement and Define Scope processes.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Pages 110, 120] [Project Integration Management]
47. A - The ability of stakeholders to influence the project is typically highest
during the initial stages and gets progressively lower as the project
progresses. The project manager should more actively manage the
project stakeholders during the project initiation and planning phases in
comparison to the later stages of the project.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 406] [Project Stakeholder Management]
48. D - While it is not feasible to invite everyone to the risk identification
meetings, everyone should be encouraged to identify risks as they
encounter them. [PMBOK 5th edition, Page 321] [Project Risk
Management]
49. C - Upper and lower control limits allow the control chart to serve its
 purpose of indicating when a process is in or out of control. [PMBOK 5th
edition, Page 238] [Project Quality Management]
50. A - Rolling Wave Planning is a technique used to create a more detailed
work plan while keeping the right level of detail for each activity: Activities
happening sooner have more detail than those further in the future.
[PMBOK 5th edition, Page 152] [Project Time Management]