Free PMP Practice Exam Sample Questions and Answers in 2024 [Updated]

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Are you a professional who aspires to be a Project Manager?

If yes, in order to become a certified (PMP)® (Project Management Professional Course), you will need to meet the education and experience requirements, and pass the PMP exam. The Project Management Institute is in charge of administering the exam. PMP® Certification Exam Structure:

• Exam time: 230 minutes 
• Breaks in between: One additional break for a total of two 10-minute breaks for computer-based tests; there will be no scheduled breaks for paper-based exams.
• Number of questions: All 180 questions should be answered.
• Question types: There is a combination of multiple-choice, multiple responses, match the following and limited fill-in-the-blank.
• The exam is based on 3 domains:

1. PEOPLE – 42% of the exam items focused on the skills and activities associated with effectively leading a project team.
2. Upon PROCESS – 50% of the exam items, reinforcing the technical aspects of project management.
3. BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT – Approximately 8% of the exam items highlight the relationship between projects and organizational strategy.

Enroll in our PMP Certification today and develop a strong foundation in the principles of project management.

Learn the (PMP)®Course from a PMI® Certified Institute:

• The required 35 hours of project management education will be able to be accumulated through attending the PMP® course.
• Attending a course by a PMI® certified center ensures that your hours are verified by the training provider who has been accredited by PMI.
• Always ensure that the training provider you choose is able to issue you with such a certificate before committing time and money so that the hours you spend will count towards this requirement

Here’s a list of 20 Sample PMP Exam Questions and Answers that you can try to solve and assess yourself.

Q 1. Consider that you have just been assigned to a new change-driven project. The team has never worked together before, but they are all experienced with agile techniques. Which TWO of the following techniques do you think would be most useful for promoting your team’s performance?

Answer: By creating a detailed schedule with regular milestones.

Allowing the team to collaborate and develop a plan to execute the project.

To expose and eliminate communication bottlenecks.

By creating a change control procedure so that only needed changes are addressed and implemented.

Reason: The answer to this question is that it is a change-driven (i.e., Agile) project and the team has experience with this type. A servant leader style is most appropriate for this environment. Empowering a team to self-organize and work collaboratively and eliminating bottlenecks are characteristics of such a leadership style.

A detailed schedule with milestones will not benefit the team’s performance, particularly if the work will be accomplished via a product backlog. Similarly, a change control procedure is generally not needed for change-driven projects since change is built into the system between iterations or sprints

Q 2. As a Project Manager, you wish to use a document that shows the work assigned to each of your project team members. What is the title of the document that you will use?

Answer: A RAM (Responsibility Assignment Matrix) document illustrates the association between work packages/activities and team members. This document makes it easy for team members to view all the project activities for which a particular person is assigned, and the level of their responsibility.

Q 3. Assuming the role of a Project Manager, you are currently involved in a Close Project or Phase process. Which one of the following activities do you think might be unnecessary

Answer: Finalizing all activities across all of the Project Management Process Groups.

Measuring the scope of the project against the project management plan.

Performing activities such as finalizing open claims, updating procurement records to reflect final results, and archiving such information for future use are the action points to work on.

If the project is terminated before completion, start procedures to investigate and document the reasons for this early termination

Reason: Here, closing out a contract involves administrative activities such as finalising open claims, updating records to reflect final results, and archiving such information for future use. A Procurement Close could be done at any given stage of the project and is not associated just with the project or phase process.

Q 4. Consider a case that your project is 4 weeks behind schedule and you have been asked to crash the project in order to make up the lost time. The tasks shown in the table below are all on the critical path. Which of the tasks listed below would you crash?

Answer: Identify the task you will crash :

•  Tasks C & E
•  Tasks B & D
•  Task A
•  Tasks D, E & F

Reason: When crashing a project, you will always crash those tasks/jobs that have the least crash cost. While all of these options will result in a 4-week reduction in duration, crashing tasks C and E have been found to be the most cost-effective.

Tasks C & E = 2,000 + 3,500 = 5,500

Tasks B & D = 2,500 + 3,500 = 6,00

Tasks D, E, & F = 3,500 + 3,500 + 4,000 = 11,000

Q 5. Which TWO activities will a Project Manager consider while acquiring resources for their project?

Answer: Comparing the labour rates to what is allocated in the project budget.

Creating a staffing management plan.

While planning communication protocols for virtual team members.

Sending team members to the training needed for the project.

Reason: The part of acquiring resources involves verifying if the costs of the selected team members will fit within the given project budget. If virtual team members are an option, then special communication procedures will need to be put in place to minimise misunderstanding and conflict. Here, creating a staffing management plan would take place during the plan’s resource management process, and sending team members to training programmes would occur during the development of the team process

Q 6. You have just been assigned to a photo transfer project. You are starting to meet with the stakeholders and have made few observations. You notice that the team of seven software developers has been getting quite a bit of autonomy in how they conduct their work. The sponsor is pleased with the work so far, and it is the business representative, who has been giving the team regular feedback on their deliverables. Which methodology do you think the team is most likely to follow?

Answer:  Adaptive

Predictive

Hybrid

Waterfall

Reason: Here, the small autonomous teams that have earned the trust of project stakeholders are seen as characteristics of an adaptive culture. Yes, the fact that the team is receiving regular feedback is also a clue that an iterative and incremental lifecycle is being followed.

 Q 7. You are now assigned as the Manager of a project after the previous manager quit the company. From the first few meetings with the project team, you find that the morale of the team is very low. You speak to a few of the team members in private and you get to know that they are not getting opportunities to participate in team development activities and that they did not find opportunities to grow. Which of the following do you think is a primary factor in this situation?

Answer: The use of zero-sum rewards in the project.

They use a poorly defined resource calendar.

The presence of so many hierarchical levels in the project organisation chart.

There is poor communication planning.

Reason: A good resource calendar identifies the time when the project team members can participate in team development activities. If the team members are not able to find time for such activities, it is likely because the calendar has been poorly planned out.

Q 8.  Yes, it is true that conflicts are common and unavoidable in projects. Which of the following do you think are the three most common sources of conflicts in projects?

Answer: Schedules, Costs, Resources

Schedules, Project Priorities, Resources

Cost, Resources, Personalities

Project priorities, Resources, Cost

Reason: A conflict can come from seven main sources, of which the first three items listed below account for 50%. They are :

Schedules

Project priorities

Manpower/human resource availability

Technical opinions

Procedural or project administration

Costs

Personalities

Q 9. Determine the critical path with reference to the following network diagram.

Answer: B-C-E-F

A-D-F

A-D-E-F

B-C-D-F

Reason: Here, there are 3 different paths in the diagram, and we can calculate their duration as:

A-D-F = 4 + 10 + 8 = 22 days.

B-C-E-F = 5 + 7 + 8 + 8 = 28 days

B-C-D-F = 5 + 7 + 10 + 8 = 30 days

Among the above-mentioned paths, we can see B-C-D-F has the longest duration. Also, A-D-E-F is not actually a complete path because activity D is not a predecessor of activity E.

Q 10. Determine the CORRECT statement.

Answer: Validate scope is concerned with the correctness of deliverables.

Control quality is concerned with the acceptance of the deliverables.

Validation of scope can only be performed at the end of the project.

Control quality is usually performed before scope validation, but these two can be performed in parallel also.

Reason: Validate scope is mostly concerned with the acceptance of deliverables, while control quality is concerned with the correctness of the deliverables. Control quality is normally performed before scope validation, but these two can be performed in parallel. The validate scope can be done at the end of each project phase in the project life cycle and also at other points throughout the project as part of M&C, i.e., validate scope can be done multiple times in the project.

 Q 11. Consider that you are a Manager of a highly critical project. You walk into your office and receive a phone call from your client asking for an urgent review meeting about the delay in the delivery of one of the major pieces of the job for the project. You open your e-mail and you get bombarded with the emails coming from two members of your team about a conflict that started between them this morning. After a few minutes, you also get a phone call from one of them, while the other one shows up at your office. Which method of conflict resolution would you employ right away?

Answer: Collaborating

Forcing

Compromising

Smoothing

Reason: Collaboration or problem-solving is the best way to resolve conflict, but not here, in this situation. Since you should opt for a technique to deal with the conflict immediately and it’s explained that there is an urgent meeting on a very important issue in your critical project that you take care of, the best way in this situation would be to delay the conflict resolution, i.e., smoothing.

Q 12. As a Product Owner of an agile social media application project, you noticed that your competitor has now released an exciting new feature for their app. You realise that the feature will be well-received. What action should you take now

Answer: Add this feature to the product backlog and reprioritize your product backlog.

To add this feature to the current sprint backlog and reprioritize the sprint backlog.

By creating a change request for this feature.

Update the work breakdown structure to include the new feature.

Reason: In agile projects, such as Scrum, one does not utilise a formal change control procedure since doing so would slow the team down. The Product Owner instead is authorized to approve changes. The PO would not add this feature to the sprint backlog, however, since the team is already committed to the scope for the current sprint. Therefore, adding the feature to the product backlog and reprioritizing the backlog is the best answer

Q 13. As a manager of a project and after a periodic project schedule meeting, the scheduler member working on your team comes to you with the following list of activities. Here, he mentions that the project is faced with 2 weeks of delay and as a corrective action, he proposes to perform activity H parallel with activity G, instead of after it. What would be your response?

Answer: With this, all the delay can be recovered, so accept the proposal.

Accepting the proposal will help me reduce my spending on resources.

It might affect the activity, so reject the proposal.

There is no effect on the critical path, so reject the proposal.

Reason: According to the list of activities seen here, activity H has float and is not very critical. Therefore, changing its sequence to perform it sooner will not help in changing the project finish date. The best way is to analyze and complete the critical activities early on

Q 14. Consider that this is the first time in your career that you are assigned as the manager of a project with 250 stakeholders. Earlier, you had never dealt with this number of stakeholders in a project. What do you think would be your best course of action in this situation?

Answer: Derive an effective way to gather the requirements of all stakeholders.

If not, all the stakeholders are really important. Eliminate some of them to increase your efficiency.

Understand and collect the requirements of the most influential stakeholders.

Try to find who the most important stakeholders are and make sure to satisfy them.

Reason: As a Project Manager, you cannot eliminate any of the stakeholders or just consider their requirements according to their degree of importance or influence. You have to consider and gather the requirements of all stakeholders.

Q 15. If you are a Project Manager, and in the middle of project execution, you realise that completing the project will take longer than the estimated original plan, what is the best course of action you would take?

Answer: To meet your managers and inform them that the project cannot be completed on time.

By increasing the working hours of the project staff.

Change the product scope.

Investigate and try to find schedule compression options and then present your managers with the derived options.

Reason: The most responsible way to face such a problem would be to find a solution to overcome the project’s late completion. Of course, in the next step, if you find that schedule compression is not possible, you might choose another option.

Q 16. Consider that you are just getting ready for a meeting with the customer to discuss the work done so far. Prior to the meeting, what do you think you should do to make sure you are well prepared and everything goes right?

Answer: The work deliverables have been accepted.

A list of change requests is available.

The deliverables have been tested and verified.

The organization’s process assets are available.

Reason: You must ensure that the deliverables have been tested and verified. The idea is that you will never want to show the customer a deliverable that has not been tested and verified to meet its requirements, before asking them to accept it.

Q 17. You are the Manager of a Sports Complex construction project. During the planning phase of this project, one of the team members was asked to prepare activity duration estimates. He sends you an email including duration estimates for two activities as follows: Activity A: 15 days +a lag of 4 days; Activity B: 1 month +a lead of 2 weeks. What do you think would be a possible objection to these estimates?

Answer: The activity duration estimate should mention the predecessor or a successor activity to which the lag or lead is attached.

The team member should have shown the standard deviation of the estimations.

An activity duration estimate should not include any information relating to the lag or lead time.

The estimate should have the same units of measure.

Reason: Activity duration estimates are quantitative assessments showing the work periods required to complete an activity. They should not show any lag or lead information.

Q 18. You are the Manager of a construction project, and you are reviewing an earned value analysis report which includes only the variance information. Schedule variance is $320,000 and cost variance are $100,000. Your estimate is that the planned value of the project at this point should be $2,000,000.

It is now well after normal office work hours, and you don’t have access to the analyst who prepared the report, though you see that the report shows an SPI of 1.16 and a CPI of 1.05. What does this information tell you about the project?

Answer: Your project is ahead of schedule and under budget.

Your project is behind schedule and under budget.

Your project is ahead of schedule and over budget.

Your project is behind schedule and over budget.

Reason: Here, an SPI > 1.0 means the project is well ahead of schedule. An SPI =1.0 means the project is right on schedule, and an SPI < 1.0 means it is behind schedule. Since the SPI is > 1 here, then it is ahead of schedule. Similarly, here for CPI, which is 1.05 and is > 1.0. This means the project is under budget. This can be verified by noting that we can see a positive schedule and cost variance, which also indicates being ahead of schedule and under budget.

Q 19. Consider a Project Manager here. He has increased the project costs by $200,000, but he has completed the project 4 weeks earlier than it was planned. What activity is best described in this situation?

Answer: The Critical Path method

Resource levelling

Budgeting

Schedule compression

Reason: Schedule compression means reducing the duration of the project through assigning more budget or resources.

Q 20. Being the Project Manager, you observe that a team member is repeatedly completing tasks with errors, resulting in rework. On investigation of the team member’s past track record, it is established that the individual does not have a skill gap. What would be your first action in this situation?

Answer: Ask for a replacement from the Functional Manager.

Adjust the schedule to provide for extended durations for tasks assigned to the individual.

Report the non-performance to the Functional Manager.

Discuss the concern with the individual to figure out what the actual cause is.

Reason: The cause of non-compliance to expected performance levels needs to be identified before any other action is taken. The situation requires the Project Manager to investigate and establish the cause of the problem before evaluating the alternatives stated in the other three choices. Discussing with the resource is the first step that the Project Manager can take to understand the actual cause of the poor performance.

Q 21. What do you mean when you term “project management”?

Answer: The implementation of information, skills, tools, and procedures in project management is used to ensure that project requirements are met.
Deliverables and information are shared between the project and operations for the execution of the delivered work at each stage. This implementation takes place either by transferring project resources to operations toward the project’s conclusion or by transferring operational resources to the project from its start.

Conclusion

The PMP® Certification Exam is challenging. Anyone who aspires to obtain PMP® certification should be well prepared. First-time test takers should work hard to clear the examination. It may seem an uphill task, but on successfully clearing the examination, the PMP has the ability to work in any industry, with any methodology and any location. Such is the versatility that this certification provides. With PMPs earning almost 17% more than their non-certified counterparts, this certification is fast gaining popularity.

I hope this piece of information I have shared here helps you to gain some knowledge about the PMP Certification and take your first step towards a successful career.

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• 10 Best PMP CERTIFICATIONS IN SINGAPORE

FAQs

Q 1. Can I write the PMP® exam from home?

Ans :PMI has initiated the PMP Online Exam at home option. The candidate can schedule to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam online from the comfort of their home. PMI has arranged convenient options to fit every candidate’s schedule and to secure the exam in the same manner as it is administered in a test center.

Q 2. Can I take the PMP® exam without experience?

Ans : No, you cannot take the PMP exam without the required project management experience and education.

Q 3. Is a PMP® certification worth it?

Ans :You might be wondering if PMP certification is worth it and if it is valuable for your career. According to a PMI salary survey, the PMP certification is totally worth it. It suggests that project managers with PMP credentials garner higher median salaries than non-credentialed professionals – 22% higher on average.

Q 4. Is the PMP® certification more valuable than an MBA?

Ans :Some of the main advantages of a PMP over an MBA are: A PMP trains you for a very specific role and industry, which can be helpful when looking to grow your project management career. Earning a PMP certification is less expensive than getting an MBA degree.

Q 5. What can I do with a PMP® certification?

Ans :You can take up key roles in big organizations, with high paying PMP jobs.
Such as:
1. Managing a PMO Office. The PMO office is the one that provides guidance, direction, and oversight of the project management functionalities within a company.
2. Construction Project Manager.
3. Project Manager Consultant.
4. Project Managers.

Q 6. Which institute is best for PMP® certification?

Ans : Henry Harvin Management Academy is a PMI® accredited training centre that offers the PMP® certification training course.

 

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