CAPM Mock Test 2025 Series: Part 4

When the project sponsor decides to terminate the project for any reason, the project manager should follow their instructions and terminate the project. In this case, the project manager should immediately start the “close project” process.

Option B: This scenario doesn’t describe any disputes between the project manager and the sponsor concerning contracts’ terms, consequently claims administration is not the right answer.

Story Mapping is a technique used where features, epics, or user stories are prioritized and organized by business value in a sequential manner. It helps teams visualize the product from the user’s perspective and prioritize work based on delivering the most value first (PMI Guide to business analysis, page 204).

Use Case Diagrams are used to visualize the interactions between users (actors) and a system to achieve specific goals. They help in illustrating how a user might interact with the system to complete a task, making it ideal for showcasing the overall relationship between users and system functions.

On large projects, one sponsor might not be enough. A Steering Committee is established when a large project involves multiple business units, organizations, or individuals who all have a substantial stake in the project’s success and outcomes. The project manager needs to be proactive and respond to this change. The initial communication plan for a single sponsor may not work for a steering committee. To ensure effective communication with the committee, the project manager must understand their communication requirements and preferences.

In the project closing phase, the project team including the project manager, should implement the associated processes to formally complete or close a project (PMBOK 7th edition, page 171). It’s important that the closing process is done formally by following the defined procedures to avoid any future liabilities. Procedures are either established by the organization for internal projects or mutually determined by the customer and the provider in the project contract or master-level agreement (PMBOK 7th edition, page 76). Completing project work by accomplishing all tasks in the scope, fixing defects, or updating documents, is not sufficient to avoid penalties. These activities, among others, should be formally approved by the customer first.

The Bottom-up estimation technique is used when project requirements are decomposed into small, feasible work elements which are then aggregated to estimate the cost of the entire project. The Bottom-up technique can be used to provide a precise estimate of both the project cost and duration.

Positive risks, also known as opportunities, represent potential events or conditions that could benefit the project if they occur.

A Pareto diagram is a histogram that ranks issues from the ones with the highest frequency to the ones with the lowest frequency. The diagram is created according to Pareto’s Law, which states that 80 percent of the problems come from 20 percent of the issues (also known as the 80/20 rule).

The amount of budget deficit or surplus at a given point in time expressed as the difference between Earned Value(EV) and the Actual Cost (AC), is known as Cost Variance (PMBOK 7th edition, page 238).

The bottom-up method can be used as an estimation technique for the project’s overall cost by estimating the approximate value of smaller components and using the total sum of these values to find the overall cost. This type of estimation is used to create the project schedule or budget. The project work is typically subdivided into smaller parts and each component is given a duration and cost estimate. The individual duration estimates are aggregated to determine the schedule, while the individual cost estimates are aggregated to determine the budget.

Passive risk acceptance is an appropriate approach when it is best to handle the risk when it does occur. No proactive action is needed for passive acceptance other than periodically reviewing the threat to ensure that it does not change significantly (PMBOK 7th edition, page 123).

Risk transfer involves transmitting future risks from one party to another. A common example of risk transfer is purchasing insurance where the risk of a person or an organization is transferred to the insurance company.

Option C: Asking the sponsor to deal with the risk is an escalation rather than a risk transfer.

Option B & D: Other risk response strategies include avoiding, mitigating, or accepting the risk (PMBOK 7th edition, page 123).

Since the project manager has received an approved change request, they should ensure its appropriate implementation.

Option C: Since the change request specifically entails the replacement of the defective component, the project manager shouldn’t repair it instead.

When dealing with complex issues, such as updating a plan or dealing with legal matters, it would be best to document such discussions and decisions using a formal written format. According to the PMI – Process groups Guide and PMBOK 6th Edition (Pages 206 & 499): “The buyer, usually through its authorized procurement administrator, provides the seller with formal written notice that the contract has been completed. Requirements for formal procurement closure are usually defined in the terms and conditions of the contract”.

The Why Why diagram, known also as the Cause and effect diagram, fishbone diagram, or Ishikawa diagram, helps determine the primary or root cause of the problem by breaking down the causes of the issue into distinct branches. (PMI – Process groups guide, page 250).

The project manager should notify the sponsor of any identified risks that may impact the business value of the project. Business value measurements are used to ensure that the project deliverables remain consistent with the business case and benefits realization plans. Business value can be financial or non-financial (PMBOK 7th edition, page 102). A make-or-buy analysis is considered a tool for measuring financial business value. The sponsor can determine whether to continue the investment or not if the payback period turns out to be more than 3 years after updating the make-or-buy analysis.

When issues occur, the right course of action implies informing the client of what happened, suggesting potential solutions for the issue, and then submitting a change request. This is aligned with the philosophy stating “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions” (PMBOK 7th edition, page 28). Later on, when the issue is fixed, a lessons-learned meeting should be conducted to avoid similar problems in the future.

Option D: Holding the information and not updating the customer on what’s going on with the project can have a bad impact, both on the project and its manager’s transparency.

The project manager can help their team get self-organized by mentoring them on how to make their own decisions. This will empower them to pick their own tasks without waiting for assignments or asking for permission or direction from the project manager every time.

Cost Variance (CV) = -$40,000, Actual Cost (AC) = $200,000, and Planned Value (PV) = $140,000. The Earned Value (EV) is calculated using the following cost variance formula: CV = EV – AC, meaning that the project’s EV = CV + AC = -$40,000 + $200,000 = $160,000.

Management reserve is used to deal with unidentified risks, aka “unknown-unknowns”. Management reserve is part of the project budget, but it’s not part of the cost baseline. It is not an estimated reserve either; it is rather defined according to the organization’s processes and policies. It can represent 5% of the total project cost, for example. As the name indicates, this reserve is controlled by management and not by the project manager. Therefore, any usage of this reserve should be pre-approved by management (PMBOK 7th edition, page 242).

A corporate knowledge base is part of the Organizational Process Assets. Enterprise Environment Factors (EEFs), however, include procedures, policies, and legislation that have an impact on how the project manager manages a project (PMBOK 7th edition, page 239). Examples of EEFs include Organizational culture, Market standards and conditions, Codes of conduct, Quality standards, Work authorization systems, Risk databases, etc. (PMI Process group, pages 38 & 39)

A secondary risk is a risk caused by a response to a primary risk; the secondary risk would not exist if the risk response was not taken.

Money spent during or after the project execution due to poor quality is referred to as the Cost of Non-Conformance.

Internal and External Failure Costs fall under Non-Conformance Costs.

Option A: Internal failure costs are failure costs that are associated with defects found by the project team before the product gets released, such as Rework or Scrap costs.

Option C: External Failure Costs, on the other hand, are failure costs associated with defects found by the customer, meaning costs incurred after the product is delivered to the customer, such as costs of Warranty work, Liabilities, Lost business, etc.

The time it takes to complete a task from start to finish is referred to as cycle time (PMBOK 7th edition, page 99).

Option A & D: Actual Time and Real Time are used interchangeably to refer to the daily period during which team members are productively working on their assigned tasks.

Option C: When the Agile team is fully productive and they’re not being interrupted by attending meetings or checking emails, we’re talking about the Ideal Time or Ideal Days.

A predefined template format is usually followed when developing user stories in order to indicate the user’s class (their role), what this class wants to realize (their goal), and why they want to achieve this goal (the benefit) (Cohn 2004). Using the term “so that” in a user story is not mandatory if the purpose is clear enough to everyone; otherwise, “so that” should definitely be used when writing each user story.

​The root cause analysis technique helps identify the fundamental reasons why the solution is underperforming. It allows the business analyst to investigate why the expected business value is not being realized and uncover the variances between actual and expected results​. The cost-benefit analysis, on the other hand, is used to evaluate the solution’s performance against its costs. It helps determine whether the solution provides sufficient value to justify its continued use or if changes need to be made.

Option A: While stakeholder engagement is important, it does not help diagnose or fix the underperformance of a solution.

Option B: Prototyping is a technique used during the development and design, and not to evaluate the performance of a fully implemented solution.

Option D: The issue lies with the performance of the current solution rather than the overall scope of the project. Revising the scope may be a result of findings from root cause or cost-benefit analysis, but it is not the initial step in evaluating why the solution is underperforming.

This chart is a burndown chart that shows that there is work left at the end of the sprint (PMBOK 7th edition, page 108). In fact, 3 story points are left to be completed in order to finalize all the planned work for the exhibited 7-day sprint.

The project manager should involve the key stakeholder from the very beginning of the project to help reduce and uncover risks, as well as increase her “buy-in.” While implementing an agile approach may benefit the project, it does not address the issue of stakeholder management. If the question were “what’s the appropriate approach for the project?”, then adopting an agile approach would be the right answer taking into consideration the frequently changing requirements.

In such situations, the project manager should not pay and should instead follow the chain of command and solicit their support in providing security to the project team. This situation is considered bribery or at least palm greasing. Nevertheless, the project manager should act proactively and take all security measures.

Accuracy describes how close a measurement is to an accepted value. Precision describes the statistical variability of produced measurement (it can be far off the accepted value) (PMBOK 7th edition, page 55).

A user story is a brief description of deliverable value for a specific user (PMBOK 7th edition, page 192). A user story is not a narrative story about users; it is a small, granular work unit.

Focus groups are designed to gather input and feedback directly from participants, typically including customers, users, or prequalified stakeholders, during the requirements elicitation phase of a project. The primary benefit is the opportunity for direct interaction and discussion, which helps uncover detailed requirements, preferences, and issues.

The product owner should let the team do their work and answer any questions they might have during the sprint.

Facilitated workshops are highly effective for engaging cross-functional stakeholders in a structured environment. They bring together different teams or departments to collaboratively define product information, requirements, and solutions. The structured nature of the workshop allows for focused discussions and ensures that stakeholders from various functions can contribute their perspectives.

A traceability matrix helps manage scope creep by linking requirements to their source (e.g., stakeholders, project goals) and ensuring that only approved and necessary changes are incorporated into the final product or solution. This prevents unnecessary features or requirements from being added, which is a primary cause of scope creep.

Decision Tree Analysis is a risk quantification method that helps project managers evaluate the potential outcomes, risks, and rewards of various decisions. It quantifies risks by assigning probabilities and values to different branches of the tree, aiding in decision-making (PMBOK Guide 7th Edition, page 175).

The Measurement Performance Domain focuses on assessing how well the project is performing in relation to its objectives. It involves tracking progress, evaluating performance metrics, and determining whether the project is meeting its intended goals. (PMBOK 7th Edition, page 58)

The correct value is “Responding to Change over Following a Plan”. All of the other alternatives are the right values of the Agile Manifesto (Agile Practice Guide, page 8).

In adaptive life cycles such as Agile, the deliverables are developed over multiple iterations. A detailed scope is defined and approved at the beginning of each iteration, allowing flexibility to accommodate changes throughout the project (PMI Guide to business analysis, page 16).

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a prototype with just enough features to be presented to early users, who can then provide feedback for future product development (PMBOK 7th edition, page 243).

The role of the project manager in resolving conflicts within the team is to focus on the issues and not the people involved. By concentrating on the root cause of the conflict rather than personal differences, the project manager can facilitate constructive dialogue and find solutions that address the problem without creating personal hostility. (PMBOK Guide 7th Edition, page 30)

Control Costs is the process of monitoring and updating project costs while managing changes to the cost baseline. The key benefit is ensuring the cost baseline remains stable throughout the project.

Velocity is a measure of the amount of fully completed work in a sprint. Partially done tasks should not be counted. In this case, velocity = 3 + 5 + 8 + 2 = 18 points.

This is an example of negative risk, therefore, the project manager should use either mitigation to minimize the impact of the risk or avoidance to completely eliminate the risk.

Options A & B: Exploit and enhance are positive risk response strategies (PMBOK 7th Edition, pages 123 & 125).

A Cost Performance Index (CPI) of less than 1 means that the project is over budget.

Business analysis is fundamentally about understanding the problem or opportunity the organization is facing. One of the key roles of business analysis is to conduct a thorough needs assessment to ensure that the root causes of problems are understood, rather than addressing symptoms repeatedly. This step is crucial before project initiation to provide clarity on the problem and set a proper foundation for the project.

The best course of action for the project manager to handle unsupportive stakeholders is to create an efficient communication plan as well as a stakeholder engagement plan. As a project manager, you can’t disregard or ignore any stakeholders regardless of their attitude towards your project. If anything, you should give more attention and put more effort into engaging unsupportive ones in case they have a key role or big influence on your project. An efficient communication management plan and stakeholder engagement plan will help you identify these unsupportive stakeholders’ level of interest and power and plan your communication and the way you’re going to engage them accordingly, making it easier to ensure their collaboration and even possible to win their support.

Option D: Refusing to manage the project doesn’t mean the project will be canceled, thus it won’t change the fact that certain stakeholders will still lose their jobs. Moreover, since the project was chosen for execution, it’s intended to bring added value despite its downside for some involved stakeholders.

In the described scenario, the project manager has escalated the risk to the program manager. When a threat is considered to be outside the project scope or when the appropriate response exceeds the project manager’s authority, risk escalation is the suitable risk response strategy (PMBOK 7th edition, page 123). Risk escalation involves passing the risk to the right owner (the program manager in this case) to ensure that it is recognized, understood, and managed appropriately.

Backlog refinement refers to the progressive elaboration of project requirements where the Agile team collaboratively integrates reviews and updates with the sole purpose of satisfying the customer and product owner’s needs (PMBOK 7th edition, page 235).

As a facilitator, the project manager must ensure that all attendees take part in the meeting by encouraging them to share their ideas and opinions and engaging them in the discussed topics. It’s among their responsibilities as a facilitator to ensure that everyone takes part in the decision-making, problem-solving, brainstorming, etc. activities that take place during meetings.

Promoting participation and maintaining the ideas and discussions flow during such events is an indication of efficient facilitation.

Option A & C: Changing meetings from face-to-face to virtual or limiting their duration does not guarantee more engagement or participation.

Option B: Limiting the intervention of talkative participants will only result in more inactive attendees.

Velocity refers to a Scrum development team’s rate of delivering business value. An agile team’s velocity is calculated by simply adding up the estimates or story points of all the features, user stories, requirements, or tasks successfully delivered by all team members during an iteration.

The stakeholders can submit a change request that can be recorded, evaluated, and either approved or rejected by the Change Control Board (CCB). As long as the change management process is followed, the project scope can be changed. The project sponsor could be part of the CCB which will be deciding on the stakeholders’ change request. Therefore, it’s not appropriate for the project manager to escalate the situation to the project sponsor.

The acronym DEEP describes the characteristics of a well-refined product backlog. It stands for:

Detailed appropriately: Items are sufficiently detailed for the stage they are in.

Emergent: The backlog evolves as more is learned about the product.

Estimable: Items should be estimable, meaning the team can provide a rough idea of the effort required.

Prioritized: Items are ranked in order of importance or business value.

The project manager is facing a risk of not meeting the requirements or expectations of all stakeholders. The artifact of risk identification is the risk register, therefore upon identifying a risk the risk register should be updated.

Parametric estimating calculates cost or duration by using an algorithm that leverages historical data and project-specific parameters.

Complexity reflects how challenging a user story is to implement. It includes technical difficulties, integration issues, and other factors that affect the effort required to complete the story.

The schedule management plan, scope baseline, and enterprise environmental factors are all inputs to the Define Activities process (PMI Process Groups, page 91).

Option E: Project documents are the documentation created throughout the five Process Groups to initiate, plan, execute, manage and control, close, and deliver the project. They are not a required input to the “Define activities” process.

This approach allows the project team to assess whether the outstanding backlog items are essential for the product’s functionality or user satisfaction. If the remaining items are non-critical, the team can proceed with the release while potentially scheduling the unfinished items for future iterations.

The Finish-to-start dependency consists of a successor activity that cannot start until the predecessor activity finishes.

Lead is the amount of time whereby a successor activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor activity.

Option B: Lag is the amount of time whereby a successor activity will be delayed with respect to a predecessor activity.

Options A, D: Delay and overlap are not official terms used by PMI.

Basis of estimates are supporting documents that detail the assumptions, constraints, ranges, and confidence levels in establishing project estimates.

Option A: A risk register is a centralized repository for documenting and managing risk which is an output of risk management processes. It includes details such as the assigned risk owner, probability, impact, risk score, and planned responses.

Option B: The assumption log records all the assumptions and the constraints of the project.

The project manager in this situation has thoroughly reviewed the project requirements and completed a cost analysis to finalize the project budget estimation.

The project manager should recommend using Spike. As a research story, a spike represents a time-boxed effort that is dedicated to learning, architecture & design, prototypes, etc. to better understand critical technical or functional details and thus make accurate estimations (Agile practice guide, page 56).

To complete performance index (TCPI) answers the question: “What performance rate must be achieved on the remaining work within the remaining resources to stay within budget?” Greater than one indicates harder to complete; less than one indicates easier to complete.

A business analysis plan typically includes the business analysis approach, the level of effort, and the stakeholder engagement plan. It provides a summary of all key decisions regarding the business analysis work, such as stakeholder engagement and requirements management​ (PMI Guide to Business Analysis, page 134).

Successful leaders are able to communicate the project vision to their team so that everyone has a shared vision of the bigger picture. When the whole project team understands this vision, individuals are able to see where they fit in and how each of them contributes to the success of the project (PMBOK 7th edition, pages 23-25).

Processes fall into three categories:

Processes used once or at predefined points in the project.

Processes that are performed periodically as needed.

Processes that are performed continuously throughout the project.

Acquire resources is performed as resources are needed, therefore it falls under the category of processes that are performed periodically as needed.

Option A: Develop project charter is performed once at a predefined point in the project.

Option B, C: Most of the monitoring and controlling processes are under the category of processes that are performed continuously throughout the project.

The project manager should excel in active listening by acknowledging, clarifying, confirming, and addressing barriers that hinder understanding.

The project manager should also possess the ability to build consensus, navigate obstacles, and sustain interest and enthusiasm within the team.

A project manager who truly understands Agile knows that tailoring its processes is a continuous task. Projects are undertaken to create a unique service, product, or result which means that every project is unique. This is where process tailoring steps in. Process tailoring addresses the fact that project management processes are not “one size fits all”. Every project has its own process needs and based on that, the project team needs to conduct the needed adjustments to their processes. This can include adding, removing, or revising processes.

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 project manager has 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.

Option A: Extending the sprint timebox denotes smoothing the problem rather than trying to solve it.

Options B & C: The project manager should not cancel the retrospective meeting nor reduce its frequency. Instead, the project manager should reflect on why the retrospective meeting is not driving the intended value to the team.

An interaction matrix is typically used as a one-time tool to evaluate the relationships and dependencies between various elements, such as requirements or components, at a specific point in time. It is not meant to be maintained or updated throughout the project; instead, it serves its purpose during a particular phase of the analysis. This distinguishes it from other project documents that may evolve over time, like a traceability matrix, which is maintained throughout the project to ensure ongoing alignment of requirements (PMI Guide to business analysis, page 196).

Monitoring cost performance to isolate and understand variances from the approved cost baseline is a key action in the cost control process.

The communications channels formula is N * (N-1) / 2, where N is the number of stakeholders. Using this formula 8 * (8-1) / 2 , we get 28 communication channels.

Big user stories or large-scale features are known as Epics. Epics usually involve a high-level feature, requirement, or customer request with a few lines of description, as they might only depict the final desired output. Epics could expand over months and even take over an entire release or several releases.

Among the drawbacks of the critical path method is the assumption that all project resources are available all the time, not taking into consideration resource dependencies.