Free PMP Practice Questions

Q1.A utility is choosing between three investment proposals for a metering programme. Proposal A has a net present value of minus 0.3 million and a payback period of two years. Proposal B has a net present value of plus 1.8 million, an internal rate of return of 12% and a payback period of five years. Proposal C has a net present value of plus 0.6 million, an internal rate of return of 8% and a payback period of four years. Which proposal should the project manager recommend?

• A.Proposal B, because its net present value and internal rate of return are both the highest of the viable options.
• B.Proposal A, because the shortest payback period returns the money fastest and reduces exposure.
• C.Proposal C, because it balances a positive net present value against a shorter payback than Proposal B.
• D.Proposal A, combined with Proposal C, because together they recover the investment sooner than Proposal B alone.

Domain: Process

Q2.A predictive rail signalling project runs in four phases with a gate at the end of each one. The project manager wants confidence that the agreed end state is still the one the organisation wants. When should the vision and its success criteria be re-confirmed?

• A.At each phase gate, alongside the go or no-go decision.
• B.Only at closure, when the benefits are measured.
• C.Only if a stakeholder raises a concern about the direction of the project.
• D.Monthly, at the same time the cost report is produced.

Domain: People

Q3.A predictive records digitisation project has been forecasting a breach of its schedule tolerance for three weeks. The project manager held the news back while the team attempted a recovery, planning to report it at the phase gate in a fortnight if recovery failed. The agreed threshold requires escalation within two working days of a forecast breach. What should the project manager do?

• A.Continue the recovery attempt and report at the gate, since a problem that gets resolved needs no escalation.
• B.Escalate now, setting out the forecast breach, the recovery attempted so far and the options, and accept that the escalation is already late.
• C.Ask the steering committee chair informally whether the phase gate is soon enough.
• D.Include the breach in the next weekly status report rather than using the escalation path.

Domain: Business Environment

Q4.An energy company is consolidating four data centres into one, and the sponsor has said the business case rests on a large reduction in energy consumption that will be reported at handover. Kwame is writing the plan and the old sites are still running today. What should he do?

• A.Capture the current energy consumption of the four sites now as a defined information requirement, before any site is decommissioned.
• B.Estimate the previous consumption at handover from the equipment vendors' published specifications.
• C.Ask the sponsor to remove the energy reduction claim from the business case to avoid a measurement dispute.
• D.Add energy reporting to the closure activities so it is owned by the operations team after handover.

Domain: Process

Q5.Marcus has circulated a document he calls the project management plan for a factory automation project. It contains a Gantt chart, a cost estimate and a list of who is on the team. The sponsor asks whether the plan is complete before the funding gate next week. How should Marcus respond?

• A.It is not complete: it still needs the subsidiary management plans and the approved scope, schedule and cost baselines.
• B.It is complete once the risk register and issue log are attached to it.
• C.It is complete, because a schedule, a budget and a team list are what the sponsor funds.
• D.It is complete for the gate, and the remaining detail can be added after execution starts.

Domain: Process

Q6.A regional bank is replacing its payments platform. The chief financial officer signs the funding, has no appetite for technical detail, and has already asked to be kept out of the weekly discussion. How should the project manager treat her?

• A.Keep her satisfied with a short, decision-focused briefing covering money, dates and the decisions she owns.
• B.Bring her into the weekly working sessions so that nothing affecting the funding is missed.
• C.Send her the full detailed report each week, since she is the person paying for the work.
• D.Monitor her with light-touch updates only, because she asked to be left out of the discussion.

Domain: People

Q7.On a predictive hotel refurbishment, the client's operations manager has been asking the site team for small additions on almost every visit: an extra socket in each room, a wider serving hatch, better lighting in the corridor. None of it has been re-priced and the contractor is now two weeks behind. What should the project manager do?

• A.Stop absorbing the additions, and put each of them through the change process so the time, cost and resource impact is assessed and agreed.
• B.Absorb the smallest items to protect the client relationship and put only the larger ones through the change process.
• C.Escalate the pattern of requests to the sponsor and ask for the operations manager's access to the site team to be restricted.
• D.Record each addition in the issue log and present the accumulated impact at the next monthly review.

Domain: Process

Q8.Marcus is estimating the cable pull on a substation upgrade. Historical records from the same crews give a steady rate of 15 metres of ducting cable an hour, and the design calls for 1,200 metres. What is the BEST estimating approach here, and what does it produce?

• A.Parametric estimating, giving 80 hours.
• B.Analogous estimating, borrowing the cable pull duration from the last substation.
• C.Three-point estimating, because a single measured rate should never be trusted on its own.
• D.Bottom-up estimating, breaking the pull into sections and estimating each separately.

Domain: Process

Q9.During refinement on an adaptive insurance claims product, the product owner has moved an item called "claims document handling" close to the top of the backlog. The team estimates it at roughly three iterations of work and cannot see how to deliver any of it inside one. What should the project manager encourage the team to do?

• A.Split the item during refinement into stories small enough to be delivered and reviewed inside a single iteration.
• B.Raise a change request so that the additional scope of the item is formally approved before work begins.
• C.Extend the length of the next iteration so the item can be completed in one piece.
• D.Move the item back down the backlog until the team has capacity to take all three iterations at once.

Domain: Process

Q10.A project manager on a water treatment upgrade reviews six situations from the past week against the project's governance escalation triggers. Which THREE require escalation? Select THREE.

• A.The forecast schedule variance now breaches the tolerance recorded in the project management plan
• B.The mitigation depends on a decision by the regional grid operator, which sits entirely outside the project's control
• C.A design change proposed by the supplier affects a second project sharing the same substation
• D.A team member asks to swap the order of two tasks scheduled for next week
• E.A defect was found and corrected inside the iteration, within the agreed quality tolerance
• F.The weekly status report went out one working day late

Domain: Business Environment