PMP Exam Crash Program 2024

The development team completed 24 of the planned 28 story points for the sprint. During the sprint review, the customer approves the completed deliverables, but he admonishes the team as being lazy and incompetent for failing to complete the entire sprint backlog. How should the scrum master respond?

• Meet with the customer in private and challenge them to be more respectful to the team

• Discuss the reasons for the failed sprint during the next daily standup meeting

• Encourage the team to commit to completing fewer story points for the next sprint

• Challenge the team to work on their days off until they cover the shortfall

Answer explanation

The correct response is to meet with the customer privately to address their disrespectful comments. This protects the team's morale and fosters a constructive relationship, rather than publicly discussing failures or pushing for unrealistic commitments.

You are acquiring the necessary resources for your project. The organization where you are employed is an international company with locations in several countries. With personnel located around the globe, you will be forming your project team as a virtual team, and the team members will be allowed to work from their home offices. What special considerations do you need to take into account while working with your team?

• Project expenses

• Communication planning

• Pre-assigned team members

• Team members with disabilities or mobility issues

Answer explanation

Effective communication planning is crucial for virtual teams, as team members are dispersed globally. It ensures clarity, coordination, and engagement, addressing potential challenges like time zone differences and varying communication styles.

The quality management has been perfect for the project up to this point. Suddenly, the quality assurance (QA) lead who developed and performed most of the quality activities for the project has been temporarily reassigned to help another project. What should the project manager do?

• Submit a change request to adjust the cost baseline and the schedule baseline

• Request the team to develop replacement quality activities

• Assign another team member to carry out the originally planned quality activities

• Pause quality activities until the QA lead returns to the project

Answer explanation

Assigning another team member to carry out the originally planned quality activities ensures continuity in quality management, preventing delays and maintaining project standards while the QA lead is temporarily unavailable.

You are preparing for an upcoming software development project. The project will be initiated and planned using a predictive approach, while the development team will use Kanban. A budget has been established for training, and you need to determine how to allocate those funds. What is your best course of action?

• Send the development team to a seminar on maximizing WIP

• Provide training to transform T-shaped people into I-shaped people

• Deliver training to convert I-shaped people into T-shaped people

• Train the team on how to best prioritize the features to be developed

Answer explanation

Delivering training to convert I-shaped people into T-shaped people enhances team versatility, enabling them to collaborate better and adapt to various tasks in a Kanban environment, which is crucial for effective project execution.

You are planning a kick-off meeting for your new project. The meeting will communicate the start of the project, key milestones, and other relevant information. Which of the following best describes the objective of this meeting?

• Inform and engage stakeholders and gain commitment

• Manage threats and opportunities throughout the project

• Ensure that the project is completed on schedule and budget

• Secure resources required to complete project deliverables

Answer explanation

The objective of the kick-off meeting is to inform and engage stakeholders about the project, ensuring they understand key milestones and fostering commitment to the project's success.

You are a project manager conducting a meeting with your project team. The goal of the meeting is to improve the overall team environment to enhance project performance. The meeting becomes contentious with team members interrupting each other and being disrespectful to each other's suggestions. You attempt to return civility to the meeting by establishing ground rules for acceptable behavior, but working relationships may already be damaged. What might you have missed that could have prevented this situation?

• Sharing the team management plan with the project team

• Involving the project team in the creation of a team charter and gaining agreement with the content

• Allowing the team members to work independently and avoid interaction

• Making sure each team member has a copy of the project charter

Answer explanation

Involving the project team in creating a team charter fosters collaboration and respect, establishing a foundation for positive interactions. This could have prevented the contentious atmosphere by aligning team values and expectations.

A vendor has been contracted by a buyer to develop a new device. The vendor insisted that the contract thoroughly capture the device specifications. The buyer does not have clear requirements upfront and, therefore, requested that the vendor develop the device using agile. The vendor delivers as per the contract, but the buyer is not satisfied with the outcome. Which Agile Manifesto's value was most likely not appropriately applied?

• Business people and developers must work together

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Pair programming over continuous integration

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiations

Answer explanation

The vendor's focus on contract specifications over ongoing customer feedback indicates a failure to apply 'Customer collaboration over contract negotiations'. Agile emphasizes adapting to customer needs rather than strictly adhering to contracts.

For the last few iterations, a stakeholder has been approaching the scrum master with a suggestion to modify the way the team carries out its development work. According to the stakeholder, the change will save time without affecting the project backlog. What action should be taken by the scrum master?

• Review the suggestion with the team and allow them to determine the best approach

• Ask the stakeholder to submit a change request to update the schedule baseline

• Reject the suggestion to ensure the team is shielded from stakeholder interruptions

• Use the daily standup meeting as a venue to discuss the suggested change

Answer explanation

The scrum master should review the suggestion with the team, as they are best positioned to assess its impact on their workflow. This collaborative approach fosters team autonomy and ensures any changes align with their practices.

You review the WBS of your project and realize that due to the lack of in-house expertise, some of the deliverables will need to be outsourced to a vendor. However, the requirements for these deliverables are not well-understood at the moment. Therefore, you decide that the outsourced portion of work will need to be managed using an agile framework. What is your best approach in negotiating an agreement with the vendor?

• Seek an informal agreement rather than a formal contract

• Secure a fixed-price contract for the outsourced scope

• Negotiate aggressively for the most advantageous terms

• Pursue a shared-risk-reward contract relationships

Answer explanation

Pursuing a shared-risk-reward contract aligns with the agile framework, allowing flexibility and collaboration. This approach fosters a partnership with the vendor, encouraging innovation and adaptability as requirements evolve.

As a scrum master, you are facilitating a retrospective for a sprint that failed to meet all of its objectives. Members of the development team and the product owner are arguing over who is responsible for the failure. After performing a root cause analysis, you uncover the source of the conflict. Of the following, what did you most likely discover?

• The product owner determined how many user stories were to be completed during the sprint

• The development team decided how many user stories were to be completed during the sprint

• You, as the scrum master, failed to assign user stories to the development team

• The Gantt chart did not include enough story points

Answer explanation

The product owner, responsible for prioritizing the backlog, likely set an unrealistic number of user stories for the sprint, leading to conflict with the development team over the unmet objectives.