PMP (Project Management Professional) Practice Exam

Correct: A — Project charter. The charter is the document signed by the sponsor that formally authorizes the project’s existence and gives the project manager authority to apply organizational resources. Without it, the project is not officially sanctioned.

Why not the others: the scope statement (B) defines deliverables but comes after authorization; the risk register (C) tracks risks and is built during planning; the WBS (D) decomposes scope into work packages and is also a planning artifact. All three are downstream of the charter.

Correct: A — Project scope statement. The scope statement defines product scope, project scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, exclusions, assumptions, and constraints — exactly the “what is and is not included” reference the team needs.

Why not the others: the issue log (B) tracks problems already raised, not scope; the communication plan (C) defines who gets what information, not what the project will deliver; a test plan (D) is a quality artifact and only addresses verification, not scope definition.

Correct: A — Evaluate impact and submit through change control. Integrated change control requires that any change to a baseline be assessed for cost, schedule, scope, quality, risk, and resource impact before approval. The PM’s first move is always evaluation.

Why not the others: implementing immediately (B) bypasses the change-control board and violates baseline integrity; rejecting without review (C) ignores the legitimate possibility that the change adds value; escalating without analysis (D) hands the sponsor a decision they can’t make without the impact data.

Correct: A — Earned value analysis. EVA integrates scope, schedule, and cost into a single set of metrics (SV, CV, SPI, CPI), and is specifically designed to diagnose schedule and budget variance together rather than separately.

Why not the others: SWOT (B) is a strategic-context tool, not a performance diagnostic; Monte Carlo (C) is a risk-simulation technique for forecasting uncertainty, useful for predicting variance but not diagnosing it; MoSCoW (D) is a requirements-prioritization technique with no schedule or cost dimension.

Correct: A — Sprint retrospective. The retrospective is explicitly dedicated to inspecting how the team worked and identifying improvements for the next iteration. It is the only Scrum ceremony whose purpose is the team’s own process improvement.

Why not the others: sprint planning (B) commits to the next iteration’s work; the daily standup (C) synchronises within an iteration; the sprint review (D) inspects the product increment with stakeholders, not the team’s process.

Correct: A — Stakeholder engagement plan. This plan defines the strategies and actions required to promote productive involvement of stakeholders. It identifies engagement levels (unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive, leading) and the actions needed to move stakeholders toward their target level.

Why not the others: the risk matrix (B) classifies risks, not stakeholders; the test plan (C) is a quality artifact; the WBS (D) decomposes deliverables, not relationships.

Correct: A — Contract / agreement. The contract defines the legally binding terms, deliverables, payments, and remedies between the buyer and seller. It is the authoritative governance document for each procurement.

Why not the others: the charter (B) authorizes the project internally, not the vendor relationship; the scope baseline (C) defines what the project will deliver, not vendor obligations; the WBS (D) decomposes work but has no contractual standing.

Correct: A — Control chart. A control chart plots a process variable over time against statistically derived upper and lower control limits, used to determine whether a process is in control (predictable) or out of control (variation requires investigation).

Why not the others: a Gantt chart (B) shows schedule, not quality; a RACI matrix (C) clarifies roles and responsibilities; a PERT chart (D) shows schedule network dependencies and probabilistic duration estimates — none of these address process variability.

Correct: A — Avoid. Avoidance changes the project plan to eliminate the threat or its cause entirely (e.g., changing scope, schedule, or approach so the risk no longer applies).

Why not the others: Accept (B) takes no action and absorbs the consequence if it occurs; Transfer (C) shifts the impact to a third party (insurance, contracts) but doesn’t eliminate the threat; Mitigate (D) reduces probability or impact but the threat still exists.

Correct: A — Lessons learned documentation, fed back into OPAs. Capturing and storing lessons learned is the specific mechanism by which one project’s knowledge becomes the organization’s asset. Without that step, knowledge leaves with the team.

Why not the others: scope verification (B) confirms deliverables but is not knowledge transfer; risk reassessment (C) is an ongoing planning activity, not a closing one; reassigning the team (D) is administrative and actively works against retention if lessons aren’t captured first.