1. | How is a project is defined?
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2. | What organization is recognized worldwide for setting project management standards?
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3. | What is the term for a group of related projects managed in a coordinated fashion?
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4. | Which of the following is NOT one of the PMBOK Knowledge Areas?
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5. | Which of the following is NOT a general management skill?
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6. | What are Initiation, Planning, Executing, Controlling, and Closing?
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7. | The sales director comes to you with a request for a new order entry system. What project process group are you in?
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8. | You have moved into the Planning phase before the initiating phase is formally approved. This is an example of
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9. | A project manager has the most authority under which organizational structure?
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10. | You are assigned to install a software upgrade to the customer support servers. Why would this not be considered a project?
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11. | Which items represent milestones? (Select all that apply.)
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12. | Frederico, the director of the marketing department, has approached you with an idea for a project. What is your next step in getting the project going?
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13. | You've been given an idea for a project by a customer. After some preliminary business-case analysis, you've developed a project concept document and submitted it to the customer for review. The customer has some minor changes she'd like to make to the way you've analyzed the project. Where do the changes need to be made?
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14. | In terms of resource loss, who has the most at risk with any given project?
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15. | Given no preset corporate criteria for a project charter, what are some of the minimum requirements you'd want to put into a charter? (Select all that apply.)
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16. | When is a project concept document required? (Select all that apply.)
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17. | A person who's in charge of working through the design process in a computerized system is called:
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18. | Your boss approaches you to develop a project plan to install an upgrade to some existing server software. You tell your boss that this activity doesn't really qualify as a project. When he asks why, what reasons do you give him? (Select all that apply.)
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19. | Some of your project team members are driving you crazy! They're not adhering to the project's schedule, and they're falling way behind. You need to jump-start them. What phase of the project are you in?
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20. | Suppose that you're a project manager working on a software development project. You are working hand-in-hand with a systems analyst. Which person is it who actually makes the decisions about the project-the requirements, scope, etc?
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Answers
1. | C. A project creates a unique product or service and has a defined start and finish. |
2. | B. The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the leading professional project management association with over 100,000 members worldwide. |
3. | D. A program is a group of related projects that can benefit from coordinated management. |
4. | C. The nine PMBOK Knowledge Areas are Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk, Procurement, and Integration. |
5. | A. General management skills are the skills required of any manager to be successful at achieving goals. They include leadership, communications, problem solving, negotiation, and time management. Programming is a skill set specific to an IT organization. |
6. | B. The five process groups are Initiation, Planning, Executing, Controlling, and Closing |
7. | C. Discussions of a client's high-level requirements are part of the Initiation process group. |
8. | C. The overlapping of project phases is called fast tracking. |
9. | A. A projectized organization is designed around project work, and resources are assigned to projects. The project manager makes decisions affecting the project work. |
10. | B. The work you are undertaking does not create a unique product or service. It is part of the ongoing operational maintenance. |
11. | B. The procuring and shipment of servers is a budget and time constraint item, not a milestone. The placing of a server into duty might represent a milestone, however. The assembling of team members and sponsors signing off on requirements don't represent milestones, but functional aspects of formulating the project plan and scope document, respectively. |
12. | A. As a project manager, you start by running through a business-case analysis so that you can validate what the customer is requesting and whether or not the project is viable. A combination of people can help you with this analysis-technical people who understand the technology that can make the project happen, as well as people in the line of business (in this case, marketing) who understand the nuances of what's desired from a business perspective. You could certainly formulate a project concept document even if the project isn't viable , just so that everyone knows what was studied and what determinations were made. In larger projects with more esoteric inputs and outputs, you might ask for a feasibility study from a contractor. |
13. | A. Before writing the project charter, it's important to make sure you've clearly stated the business case within the project concept document. Since the customer has said to you 'This is almost correct, but I have these things I'd like to change,' now is the time for you to update the project concept document before putting it in the charter. The charter is a document that shouldn't really be altered unless there are heavily mitigating circumstances. |
14. | C. The project sponsor is the one who authorizes the project and approves the use of the resources necessary to accomplish the project's goals. From a resource perspective, the project sponsor is the one with the most to lose. You might lose your job if the project goes very poorly, the customer won't get the refinements he or she asked for, and the stakeholders will be disappointed, but it's the project sponsor who'll have to answer for the waste of time, money, and resources. It's the project sponsor who will be in the hot seat when others above him or her are asking the hard questions about how he or she's going to go about fixing a broken and costly project. |
15. | C, E. The project charter contains the name of the project manager and the business case for the project (as well as the name of the project sponsor). The other things listed are a part of the actual project plan-a different document than the project charter. |
16. | B, C. If a corporation has no rule regarding project concept documents, then you don't need to write one. However, for large projects these documents are a must-have because they set up the written dialog between the project manager and the customer and provide a paper path that can be backtracked in case the project goes awry. |
17. | B. A systems analyst is one who understands the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) phases (and quite possibly does not understand anything about formal project management processes as denoted in PMI). She has had training in developing systems by working through the requirements for a given system and then boiling them down into procedures that developers can work from. She uses five distinct phases: Planning, Analysis, Design, Implementation and Operations and Support for the system. |
18. | A. Certainly, upgrading server software is a temporary phenomenon ; however, what you're doing isn't creating anything unique, therefore you really don't have a project on your hands. That being said, it would be no big deal to whip up a quick mini-project plan that details the steps required to systematically come up with a successful upgrade. Upgrading server software can be really scary. |
19. | D. The controlling phase happens when you've launched the project and you're underway. Now, as project manager, you segue into the role of having to keep people motivated and moving forward. |
20. | C. Think of it as similar to an engineer who designs an automobile and a project manager who gets all of the processes rolling to actually manufacture that automobile. The systems analyst is going to formally work out all of the necessary details to get the software developed. In larger shops, she may (either informally or formally) don two hats: systems analyst and project manager, but the processes are very distinct. In larger shops , the project manager has under her a systems analyst (or two or more) doing the systems design work, and then feeding the project manager with (some of) the input necessary to get the deliverables manufactured and out the door. |