PMP Exam Prep 2024 - Practice Test 5 - Project Work (PDF Ch.6)

A few days after introducing a new release to the market, the Product Owner received a complaint from a user, claiming that the product has an annoying defect.

What should the Product Owner do next?

• Create an item to fix the defect, add it to the product backlog, then prioritize it

• Ask the development team to fix the defect immediately since the product is already released

• Estimate the effort required to fix the defect, then decide what to do accordingly

• Ask the development team to roll back the last release in order to work more on exploring undetected defects

Answer explanation

In Scrum, any change request, whether to implement a new requirement or fix a defect, should be inserted in the Product Backlog and then prioritized by the Product Owner.

If the defect is critical, the Product Owner can prioritize it to be tackled in the upcoming sprint.

The fact that the product is already on the market doesn't mean that discovered defects should be immediately fixed.

Additionally, going to an older version (i.e., rollback) is not a wise decision taking into consideration that only one defect was detected.

Finally, the product owner is not the one responsible for estimating efforts; it’s the responsibility of the development team

During the project execution phase, the Change Control Board (CCB) approved a change request that no one on the project team knew how to implement.

What should the project manager do to deal with this issue? (Select two)

• Document the issue in the issue log

• Hire a subject matter expert

• Formally request the CCB to revoke their decision

• Ask the team to do more research on how to implement the approved change request

Answer explanation

Hiring a subject matter expert and conducting more research will help your team implement the change request.

This is considered a problem-solving approach since it entails finding solutions to the encountered issues or challenges.

Uncertainty can be reduced by collecting more information through conducting research, engaging experts, or performing a market analysis (PMBOK 7th edition, page 229).

Neither documenting the issue in the issue log nor asking the CCB to revoke their decision could help resolve the issue.

Halfway through a sprint, the development team realized that they planned for more work than they could possibly complete.

What should the project manager advise the development team to do next?

• Ask the product owner to remove some work items from the sprint backlog

• Collaborate with the product owner to reprioritize the product backlog items

• Continue work and put off discussing this issue to the sprint retrospective

• Inform the product owner during the sprint review that some features could not be completed

Answer explanation

First, the development team should collaborate with the product owner in order to remove some work items from the sprint backlog.

The sprint backlog is a living artifact that should be updated whenever something new is learned or discovered.

Afterward, in the sprint retrospective, the team should discuss how they can improve their estimations.

The agile team should be proactive and should not wait for the sprint review in order to inform the product owner that they couldn’t complete the affected work.

Reprioritizing the product backlog items

won’t help solve this problem.

This activity is often undertaken during the refinement sessions with the purpose of making user stories ready for the next iterations.

A project manager is leading a software project. The project team has finished all of the tasks in the iteration backlog early and decided to work on code clean-up for the rest of the iteration. In spite of their intention to decrease technical debt, which will save the customer maintenance fees in the future, neither the customer nor the project manager seems to be happy.

What could be the reason behind the customer’s dissatisfaction?

• They wanted to avoid scope creep

• They wanted to avoid gold plating

• They wanted to prioritize the scope

• They wanted to minimize costs by ending the iteration earlier

Answer explanation

The probable reason for customer dissatisfaction is there are more prioritized items in the product backlog that the team could have worked on instead of the code clean-up activity.

Stakeholders are the ones responsible for defining and prioritizing the scope and requirements for the project team (PMBOK 7th edition, page 14).

Since the customer didn’t ask for the code clean-up work, then it could not be considered as scope creep.

What the team did is “gold plating”, which implies doing additional activities that were neither agreed upon nor included in the iteration backlog, with the intention to please the customer.

By definition, gold plating entails providing extra value to the customer.

However, the customer can get more value by prioritizing the product backlog.

In such a scenario, the customer expects to get notified when the project team completes all of the iteration backlog items.

In an adaptive approach, the scope is variable while the project cost and schedule are fixed.

Consequently, the customer would not be interested in ending a pre-approved iteration earlier.

A newly assigned interim project manager got a call from one of the project vendors claiming that they had already completed 50% of the agreed-upon work and asked for payment.

What should the project manager refer to in order to check whether they need to pay the vendor or not and how much should they get paid?

• Request for proposal

• Contract

• Response to bid

• Procurement management plan

Answer explanation

The contract is the document the project manager should refer to in order to verify the payment procedure.

A contract is a mutually binding agreement that obligates the seller to provide the required services and the buyer to pay a predetermined amount on an agreed-upon date or schedule (PMBOK 7th edition, page 191).

A project has been hampered by many quality issues, putting the project at risk.

Which meeting should the project manager conduct with the team to figure out how to avoid or deal with such problems in the future?

• Kick-off

• Lessons learned

• Risk review

• Team building

Answer explanation

Lessons learned meetings are collaborative retrospective sessions for discussing, documenting, and soliciting feedback about the project's successes and missteps.

These meetings are a must for the project team to learn from previous mistakes and improve future processes and projects.

Lessons learned meetings should be held whenever needed, to review the way a project has been progressing, note important learnings, and set new ways for amelioration.

Team building activities aim to increase collaboration among team members.

Kick-off meetings are meant for communicating the objectives of the project and ensuring the stakeholders’ commitment to the project.

Risk review meetings are used to verify the status of existing risks and identify new ones (PMBOK 7th edition, page 180).

However, capturing lessons learned from current or closed risks commonly happens in the lessons learned meetings.

At the end of a sprint retrospective, a team member stated that the meeting output is almost the same as the previous ones and suggested canceling it or at least reducing its frequency.

What should the Scrum Master do in this case?

• Extend the sprint timebox in order to allow for more improvements to be discussed in the retrospective

• Reduce the frequency of retrospectives to once every two sprints

• Go with voting, and if all team members agree, then skip retrospectives

• Keep the same frequency of retrospectives and reflect on how to make them more relevant and actionable

Answer explanation

The sprint retrospective is one of the main scrum events, which aims to help the team adjust and improve their work processes over time.

The scrum master’s role is to maintain scrum practices, therefore they should neither cancel the retrospective meeting nor reduce its frequency.

On the other hand, extending the sprint timebox denotes smoothing the problem rather than trying to solve it.

Instead, the scrum master should reflect on why the retrospective meeting is not driving the intended value to the team.

The scrum master may need to better facilitate the meeting, engage team members, solicit and collect more feedback, check various metrics, and use different investigation techniques such as the why-why method to help them take future actionable measures accordingly.

The scrum master can also use ESVP, for instance, which is a short activity for assessing

participants’ engagement.

This technique entails asking team members to describe anonymously their attitude toward the retrospective as being an Explorer, Shopper,

Vacationer, or Prisoner.

During a construction project, the construction team finds out that the designed model for the swimming pool requires some raw material that is no longer available in the local market.

However, there is an alternative with the same price and probably a better quality.

What should the project manager do next?

• Update the resource management plan to replace the old material with the new one

• Submit a change request in order to get formal approval for using the new material

• Order a sample of the new material and check its compliance with the quality management plan

• Use the new material right away since it has the same price and probably a better quality

Answer explanation

The project manager should submit a change request to the Change Control Board (CCB) according to the procedures described in the change management plan.

The project manager should not use the new material unless the CCB approves the change request.

The CCB may decide to further investigate the new material, import the old material from another country, or even change the swimming pool design.

In the case of using a new material, the resource management plan should be updated.

After multiple negotiation sessions, all terms and details were agreed upon and the seller finally got the 18-month building project contract for $715,500.

What type of project is used in this scenario?

• Time and Material

• Fixed Price

• Cost Reimbursable

• Cost Plus Incentive

Answer explanation

Fixed price contracts are used for projects with clear requirements where a price is fixed in return for the seller’s services and/or products.

Time and Material (T&M) contracts set a quote for hourly wage plus the cost of materials instead of quoting a fixed price for the entire project.

Cost Reimbursable contracts, on the other hand, reimburse the contractor for the actual costs they incur to provide their services and/or product, plus an additional fee.

A Cost Plus Incentive contract, for instance, is a cost-reimbursable contract that incentivizes the contractor to bring their best performance by completing the project under budget or before deadlines.

During the execution of a construction project, the supplier informed the project manager that delivering the new order of steel bars may have a 3-day delay.

What should the project manager do next?

• Negotiate the delay with the vendor to get it reduced

• Look for another vendor

• Evaluate the impact of the delay

• Update the project schedule

Answer explanation

The project manager should evaluate the impact of the delay before making any decision.

A delayed activity doesn’t necessarily result in the whole project delay.

For instance, if the activity is not on the critical path and it has a lag of more than three days, then the delay won’t probably have any impact on the project.

Therefore, there is no need for negotiating the delay or looking for a new vendor to get the order delivered on time.