PMP Certification Requirements For 2020

^* A secondary degree is defined as a high school diploma, associate's degree, or global equivalent.

^** As of July 2020, PMI no longer has the 4500 or 7500 hours requirement for the PMP exam.

PMP Certification Examination Requirements

If you’re reading this right now, then you understand how important a PMP Certification is to get ahead in your career. By earning a PMP certification you’ll get a significant advantage over your colleagues, make more money, and increase your value by equipping yourself with high-level project management skills. PMP certification salary is 25% more than non-PMP employee compensation in the United States. This has resulted in exponential growth of PMP certificants each year.

You believe that although it’s notoriously difficult, it’s worth the extra effort. And you’re absolutely right. In this page, we’ve compiled all the important information that you need to know about the PMP certification exam. So that you’ll be well-prepared for your PMP certification journey and that all of your time, investment, and effort will not go to waste.

Before starting your PMP certification journey, first you have to make sure that you’re eligible to take the PMP certification exam. PMP eligibility is based on academic education, project management experience, and project management professional training.

You can view this as a PMP certification process infographic here.

Once you’ve satisfied all the PMP certification requirements, you can submit your application online via PMI’s online portal. Once you’ve been approved, you can take your PMP online proctored certification exam in the comfort of your home using OnVue platform from Pearson VUE or at your nearest Pearson VUE Test Center.

The exam will be computer-based, so you’ll be able to receive your score immediately. After passing the PMP certification exam, you’ll be approved to use the PMP credential for 3 years. During these 3 years, you have to earn 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) to maintain your PMP status for an additional 3 years.

The PMP Certification Roadmap

Here are the 8 steps to get the PMP certification:

1. Determine if you are eligible for the PMP certification
2. Signup for the PMTI PMP Boot Camp to get the required 35 contact hours (PDUs)
3. Register to become a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI)®
4. Complete our PMP certification training course
5. Follow the PMP application process below and submit to PMI®
6. Schedule your exam with Pearson VUE
7. Take and Pass the PMP exam
8. Maintain PMP certification with PMTI’s free PDU courses (extra 3 years)

DOWNLOAD THE PMP EXAM SUCCESS GUIDE

PMP Certification Requirements Details

PMP Application Process

1. As a benefit to students, PMTI provides a simple easy-to-use PMP application prep tool to prepare all the information necessary to plug into the PMP application. This tool includes suggestions and best practices to improve your chances of approval to take the PMP exam.
2. Begin the application process by registering at Project Management institute (PMI) to become a member. PMI Membership will cost you $139. The PMP exam will cost you $405 as a PMI member or $555 if you are not a PMI member. It is clearly beneficial to be a PMI member.
3. Head over to certification.PMI.org to get started with the PMP application. PMI will require information on a) Academic Education b) Professional Education c) Experience and d) Exam Details. Use the information collected in step 1 to fill in the following.
   
   1. Academic Education: You will need to input your highest level of education, years attended, name of institution, and field of study.
   2. Professional Education: Here you will provide PMTI’s PMP training course title and when you attend it to satisfy the 35 contact hours requirement.
   3. Experience: Provide your project’s title, job title, approach, dates, project description, and other information.
   4. Exam Details: Confirm the country where you intend to sit for the exam and if you need special accommodations.
4. Our experts will be happy to review your PMP application to determine if it meets PMI rigor and expectations. Submit the application.

PMP Approval & Eligibility Period

It generally takes PMI 5-7 business days to review & respond to your application. But if you’re selected for an audit, PMI will wait until they receive your completed audit documents to verify their accuracy & completeness before they approve your application. So, plan accordingly.

Important: A very small percentage of applications will be subject to a random audit process that’ll require anyone being audited to present evidence to validate all of the information they submitted with their application.

Failing the audit process or submitting an incomplete or inaccurate PMP application could result in resubmitting your application and further delays. You can use the PMTI PMP Application Exam Prep Tool and our complimentary expert review to help you apply for and succeed through the PMP certification exam after you register for one of PMTI’s PMP Exam Prep classes.

Paying for the PMP Exam

Once your application is approved, you’ll receive an invitation via email to pay for the exam at PMI’s website. See the table below for membership and exam fees. Once the payment is made, you’ll receive a PMI Eligibility ID both online and by email.

PMP Application Fees

Cost Category	PMI® Member	Non-Member
Non-Member	$139	N/A
PMP Exam Fee	$405	$555
PMP Retake Fee	$275	$375

For more information on the complete value of being a PMI member, see our PMP Certification Guide.

PMP Certification Practice Test

We have compiled a set of 50 PMP exam style questions below based on the PMP exam outline and A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge(PMBOK ^® Guide) 6th Edition from Project Management Institute, Inc 2020.

© PMTI. All the questions and answers were supplied courtesy of Yad Senapathy, MS, PMP - PMBOK^® Guide contributor

1. As part of a strategy to handle negative risk, a project manager decided to adopt less complex processes, conduct more tests and choose a more stable supplier. What strategy would this be classified as?

1. Acceptance
2. Transference
3. Mitigation
4. Avoidance

2. You are the Project Manager for a highly publicized local project that has a BAC of $1.2 million. The project requires EPA approval to complete the work that has already begun. A colleague informs you that a source from inside the EPA has stated that the work will probably not be approved due to an environmental hazard introduced as a result of the work. Your colleague tells you that it is better to keep quiet at this stage because of the potential for a huge financial loss if the project is cancelled. Your best course of action is to:

1. Submit a workaround to Integrated Change Control
2. Send a registered letter to your sponsor to document your knowledge of the situation and to resign as project manager
3. Develop a contingency plan and fallback plan
4. Pursue additional information from your colleague’s source within the EPA

3. A project Manager is gathering information while trying to identify risks. All of the following are information gathering techniques except:

1. Brainstorming
2. Root Case Analysis
3. Benchmarking
4. SWOT Analysis

4. You are five months into your project and have a CPI of .95. You have estimated your EAC to be 115% of your BAC. As a cost savings measure, you are trying to reduce your travel related expenses but your charter dictates that the team must be at the many remote customer locations no less than 25% of the time. This is an example of a:

1. Constraint
2. Choice
3. Necessity
4. Assumption

5. You are a Project Manager on a very large project that your organization’s future depends upon. Your sponsor has been personally interested in all aspects of your planning and has requested a meeting regarding your team’s progress. Your team has been creating a WBS based on the Project Scope Statement that was developed from the Project Charter. They have labeled a higher point in the WBS that they have labeled a Planning Package. This Planning Package is product of:

1. Progressive Elaboration
2. Control Accounts
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Rolling Wave Planning

6. The PM and four team leaders have been working on a document that includes business needs and objectives, a high-level description of the project and product scope, rough-order-of-magnitude budget, a set of proposed milestones, and acceptance criteria for a very large, critically important project. Who is most likely to have had major input to this document?

1. Senior management
2. Customers
3. Stakeholders
4. Functional managers

7. The PMP is collaborating with the sponsor to identify the most critical stakeholders for their project. They have determined that four key stakeholders are firm supporters, two are relatively neutral and two oppose the project. Their document not only identifies key stakeholders, it recommends the most politically savvy means of enlisting maximum support on the project. This document is created during which of the following processes:

1. Manage Stakeholder Expectations
2. Plan Communications
3. Identify Stakeholders
4. Analyze Stakeholders

8. At the beginning of the project, you determined it was important to determine the stakeholders’ attitudes toward your project and to calculate the effect those attitudes will have on the success of the project. After identifying each person impacted by the project, you and your project management team evaluated your stakeholders using a power/influence grid. All stakeholders placed in the upper right quadrant are considered to have

1. A high level of power; a high level of influence
2. A moderate level of power; a high level of influence
3. A high level of power; a moderate level of interest
4. A high level of power; a high level of impact

9. Eco-Chemical Corp is creating a charter to implement quality practices and standards at all of its manufacturing facilities to ensure they comply with OSHA Star Site requirements. Each of the plant managers has specified requirements regarding scope, resources, and cost. Completion dates for work at each facility have been included in the charter. These dates

1. May or may not be included in the final schedule
2. Are milestones which help the project manager build the schedule
3. Are mandatory milestones and must be included in the schedule
4. Will be negotiated by the team during the planning process

10. The charter for a multi-million dollar, two-year project at a six-billion dollar global corporation involves three divisions and nine facilities. Leadership at all business units has been involved in the process of developing the charter. The project manager and his project management team have completed the charter document. Who authorizes the charter?

1. Sponsor or initiator at a level appropriate to funding the project
2. Key stakeholders who will be on the change control board
3. Portfolio steering committee
4. All executives impacted by the project

11. While developing the project charter, the performing organization considers the level of risk involved in the project. Projects with risks too high to be within the organization’s risk tolerance levels may be rejected before the charter is signed. Since details of the project have yet to be determined, which of the following tools and techniques would be most appropriate during initiating?

1. Delphi technique
2. 5-why method
3. Risk data quality assessment
4. Scatter diagram

12. One year ago, a large government contractor landed a contract for a five-year project. The contractor’s certified project manager formalized a charter, used the contract as the basis for the scope, schedule, and cost plans, and identified specific resources to help complete all the remaining plans. The team is now creating deliverables and generating work performance information. The project management team begins on the next phase of the project and finds that the work breakdown structure identified a set of deliverables using abbreviated labels. The pm team is now having trouble determining what work is actually required. What did the project team neglect to do?

1. The team failed to create a WBS dictionary to describe the work, name the sponsor, estimate costs, define quality requirements and provide technical requirements
2. During Plan Quality, the team failed to create the correct test specifications for inclusion in the checklists for quality control
3. The team failed to create a WBS dictionary to document the details behind each WBS component
4. They failed to identify the risk of cumulative changes to the project creating a new set of deliverables

13. You have completed the budget for your project and determined that in the third month your costs will increase by 500% due to the acquisition of some heavy machinery. When you meet with Hank, your contact in the accounting department, Hank informs you that the company has already committed 60% of its project budget to another project; therefore, the required funds will not be available at the time you planned to purchase the equipment. What technique have you used

1. Cost aggregation
2. Budget reserve analysis
3. Funds distribution balancing
4. Funding limit reconciliation

14. For the first time in your career you actually have resources solely dedicated to the completion of your project. Each of your team members is an expert in his or her field and has worked on several previous similar projects. You and the team have identified the activities and the resources that will be needed, and have entered best-case duration estimates into each identified activity. Your scheduling tool has calculated an amount of buffer to insert at the end of the project path and at the end of each feeder path to ensure that none of the deliverables will be late. What scheduling method are you using?

1. Critical Path Method
2. Critical Chain Method
3. Critical Buffer Method
4. Precedence Chain Method

15. During the development of the scope statement, the project manager and project management continue to grow over the next year. These considerations are referred to as

1. Requirements
2. Assumptions
3. Constraints
4. Success criteria

16. The charter for your project has finally been signed and you are determining which configuration items will be included, where they will be stored, and how the stakeholders will interact with them. You are also scheduling periodic configuration audits and configuration tracking. Which of the following is NOT related to your activities?

1. Develop project management plan
2. Project management information system
3. Quality audit
4. Change control

17. A project manager is using a template which he/she found in the company’s organizational process assets. The template classifies change requests as corrective actions, preventive actions and defect repairs. The template does not explain the differences among the three categories. Which of the following is true regarding change requests?

1. Corrective and preventive actions are related to eliminating variances, present and future, from the project management plan by modifying performance against the baselines
2. Defect repair requests apply only to the product of the project and are the output of Perform Quality Control
3. Defect repairs are identified as the result of using check lists
4. Corrective actions and preventive actions are only recommended following monitoring and controlling processes

18. You are planning the execution of an extremely complex project utilizing new technology. Risk management is a new concept to your company, but management recognizes the need for proactive measures on your project. While determining your risk management plan, you make sure you include which of the following:

1. Only the risks which must be addressed
2. All the risks and their response plans
3. The names of the risk owners
4. Definitions of risk impact and probability

19. You are in charge of a project to build a new bridge across the Salt River. Your team has been working together to identify all the risks and to analyze them. Which of the following is MOST likely to impact your original prioritization of risks?

1. A limited-time offer to purchase necessary equipment at a 30% discount
2. Annual budget forecasts are due next month and the PM needs to ensure the sponsor has all the cost information required to continue the project
3. Inclement weather may delay installation of the concrete supports on the bridge
4. The company's chief engineer is taking a sabbatical during the summer months

20. Your project is sixty percent complete with a CPI of .91 and an SPI of .98. While reviewing your past performance in order to predict the status of the project at completion, you determine that the project scope was not as well defined as you thought, technical standards have been unrealistic, the product design did not have engineering’s input and your team has just learned of a new regulatory requirement. One of the documents which would have helped manage each of these problems proactively is the:

1. Change management plan
2. Assumptions log
3. Risk register
4. Project management plan

21. The team is evaluating the identified risks and is using several techniques. Which of the following does not include an estimate of the degree of risk as part of the estimating technique?

1. Program Evaluation and Review Technique
2. Monte Carlo Simulation
3. Sensitivity analysis
4. Root cause analysis

22. The project manager and her team are finalizing their risk response plans and have evaluated three risks with an impact in excess of $50,000 each. One risk will be outsourced, insurance will offset the second risk and the team will partner with the QC department to manage the third risk. In addition, twelve risks have been logged on the watch list and are considered actively accepted. What is the team’s next step?

1. Calculate a contingency reserve, including amounts of time, money and resources needed to handle the accepted risks
2. Create a new watch list to record all accepted risks
3. Monitor all identified risks and continue to look for new risks
4. Create backup plans for the outsourced risk because the vendor does not have a good relationship with the team

23. A project to produce a major new product for LINCo was chartered with approvals from three vice presidents and the general managers of 5 manufacturing facilities. Joe W. Ambaugh has worked closely with his project management team, the technical team, the sponsor and the customers to create a fully developed project management plan. During the planning process, modifications to the original scope, the summary budget and summary milestones have been required and were approved by the sponsor. What is Joe’s next step?

1. Follow the procurement management plan by sending out the requests for proposal, conducting a bidders’ conference and obtaining proposals from the vendors
2. Begin the execution of the project plan by meeting with all stakeholders and ensuring everyone understands his/her assignment on the project
3. Update the charter to reflect the agreed upon changes and meet with the three vice presidents to achieve final buy-in
4. Call a meeting to present the completed plan, including the approved scope, schedule and cost plans to the eight key stakeholders for final approval

24. Projects often require the acquisition of commodity items to support the team’s efforts. When executing the project, to which of the following project documents does the project manager refer to identify the items to be acquired and the justification for the method of acquisition?

1. Blanket purchase order
2. Make or buy decision
3. Make or buy analysis
4. Resource breakdown structure

25. Your plan is to seek a cost plus contract with a qualified vendor to produce a very complex key deliverable for your construction project. Your scope statement is not very well defined, but you need to complete the project with a high level of quality within twelve months. You have created the procurement documents, sent them to all the qualified vendors and received their proposals. What is your next step?

1. Select the vendor offering the lowest price and negotiate a contract
2. Select the vendor offering the best combination of price and technical solution and negotiate a contract
3. Select the top three vendor proposals, refine your requirements and request a more specific and comprehensive proposal from each of the finalists
4. Negotiate a contract based on the best proposal and add incentives to encourage the vendor to meet the most stringent quality requirements.

26. You are reviewing your processes to ensure that you and the team are following the plan exactly as stated. When you look at the reports for the past six weeks, you notice that four of your team members are consistently a day late in completing deliverables. You are looking for a tool which you can ask the team to use to link the late deliverables to the team members’ actions. Which of the following will best help in this effort?

1. Pareto diagram
2. Scatter diagram
3. Cause and effect diagram
4. Process analysis

27. During the planning for his $22 million project, Bud Viser and his team were diligent about identifying, analyzing and prioritizing risks. They created five response plans, adding $1.7 million in contingency funds to the BAC and 4.5 months of work to the schedule. The symptoms of one of the identified risks are occurring and the risk owner is implementing the response. In which process are the activities identified in the response plan implemented?

1. Administer risk responses
2. Monitor and Control Risk
3. Direct and Manage Project Execution
4. Monitor and Control Project Work

28. You are forty percent complete on your project and are attempting to forecast the team’s ability to meet deadlines and achieve defect free deliverables based on performance to date. You are especially focused on meeting the objectives of the process improvement plan and ensuring processes are producing correct results. Which of the following tools would best meet your need to predict future performance?

1. Statistical sampling
2. Six sigma
3. Run chart
4. Pareto diagram

29. It is your job to communicate to the customer that their project is currently more than 3 weeks behind schedule. This message should be:

1. Informative and written
2. Formal and written
3. Formal and verbal
4. Informal and verbal

30. You are a brand-new project manager in a balanced matrix environment. Your organization has in the past demonstrated to be risk averse. Your project sponsor has requested a cost estimate from you for your IT project. She would like the cost estimate to be as accurate as possible. Your best decision would be to use:

1. Analogous estimating techniques
2. Bottom-Up estimating techniques
3. Top down estimating techniques
4. Expert judgment techniques

31. The Buyer has requested that the seller sign a fixed price contract. Fixed price contracts are also known as which of the following?

1. Cost plus
2. Lump sum
3. Purchase order
4. Time & material

32. A project manager has a large list of stakeholders in his stakeholder register. The PM wants to document the current and desired stakeholder engagement level as – unaware, resistant, neutral, supportive, or leading. The PM decided to ask the PMO for a template. What is the PM going to use next?

1. Responsibility Assignment Matrix
2. Requirements Traceability Matrix
3. Risk Probability Impact Matrix
4. Stakeholders Engagement Assessment Matrix

33. A project manager is managing several projects. Three of those projects are not performing well. The project manager has looked at the charts that show how much availability exists with each of the team members in a project. Finally, the project manager decided to fast track a project. The objective of fast tracking a project is to:

1. Compress the duration of the activity
2. Increase schedule tracking controls
3. Reduce risks
4. Reduce project duration

34. After the unpredictable grand success of their child safety door knobs for homes, SaveChildLife, the company has been inundated with proposals from many automobile manufacturers to implement similar technology. They could only pick one of those proposals and forego all others due to the limited number of resources available in the field. They referred to the economic value of the next best alternative they gave up as _______________________.

1. Sunk Cost
2. Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP)
3. Opportunity Cost
4. Lost Cause

35. Which one of the following represents an accurate combination of project manager competencies according to PMI Talent Triangle?

1. Technical, strategic, and transactional
2. Formal, transactional, and consultative
3. Leadership, strategic, and organizational
4. Technical, leadership, and strategic

36. Functional managers in a project are complaining that their employees cannot cope with the new requirements that keep cropping up. Which of the following is the most likely cause of your project’s problems?

1. The project manager may not have adequate experience/knowledge in developing and installing security business applications and cannot direct his team or the functional managers
2. The sponsor is not assisting the project manager in getting the necessary support from the functional teams
3. The project management team missed identifying some project stakeholders
4. The project manager did not follow basic PMI procedures such as project charter approval and other project management processes, so he is unable to obtain support from functional groups

37. Sara is a project manager who is concerned about uncontrolled expansion of project or product scope. What document and process will help Sara ensure all requested changes and recommended corrective actions to scope are integrated with integrated change control and scope baseline?

1. Requirements traceability matrix, control scope
2. Collect requirements, define scope
3. Integrated change control, control scope
4. Requirements traceability matrix, control quality

38. Mark is the project manager on a large construction project. There are some rumors that a potential union strike could cause some delays. The PM and the project team discuss the issue and conclude there is no action they can take to minimize the impact of a union strike. This would be an example of what type of risk response strategy:

1. Share
2. Avoid
3. Accept
4. Transfer

39. The project manager is conducting a team performance assessment. This evaluation of the team’s effectiveness may include reviewing indicators such as:

1. Are risks in the project aligned with the information in risk register?
2. Are individual team member skills and team cohesiveness improving?
3. Are human resource objectives in compliance with the project plan objectives?
4. Are project staff assignments and resource calendars appropriately updated?

40. A stakeholder cube is a:

1. Multi-colored representation of stakeholders’ requirements
2. Control quality tool that assists in identifying defects
3. Specialized team placements in agile environments
4. 3-dimensional model with power, influence, impact etc.

41. Lessons learned register is an output of Manage Project Knowledge process and is created early in the project. It is kept consistently updated throughout the project. It contains:

1. The wisdom of the team
2. Challenges and problems encountered and how they can be avoided
3. Information to be used as an input to administrative closure
4. Feedback from the customer as to what you could have done better

42. The project team is implementing the project management plan and wants to be certain they are maximizing benefits from quality audits. Which of the following would not be a goal of the quality audit effort?

1. Identify nonconformity, gaps, and shortcomings
2. Reduce cost of quality and increase customer acceptance
3. Verified deliverables
4. Confirm implementation of approved change requests

43. A project manager intends to use a pull-based on-demand scheduling where work is pulled from a large backlog of work to balance work demand against the team’s delivery throughput. What would the PM do next?

1. Use Kanban system based on theory-of-constraints
2. Use critical path method to identify schedule flexibilities
3. Assign resources upfront to all the work determined in define scope
4. Use rolling wave planning based on adaptive life cycle

44. A team member looked at a schedule and corrected it, stating, “testing can only be completed after the module software development”. What is the team member referring to?

1. Constraint
2. External discretionary dependency
3. Internal mandatory dependency
4. Expert judgment

45. A Project Manager is using PERT technique to estimate activity durations in a project. For Activity-A, if the optimistic estimate is 2 weeks, pessimistic estimate is 3 times the optimistic estimate and mostly likely estimate is 4 weeks, what should be the duration project manager should consider for Activity-A?

1. 4 Weeks
2. 3.5 Weeks
3. 6 Weeks
4. 2 Weeks

46. A project manager has been put in charge of upgrading the data storage and retrieval software for a large manufacturing firm. The team is in a meeting where they come up with the following information. Which one of the following risks has the greatest impact on the project?

1. Interface issues
2. Delay getting team
3. Poor vendors
4. Unknown bugs

47. Change requests can include corrective actions, preventive actions, and defect repairs. These change requests are produced by:

1. All planning and most executing processes
2. Most monitoring and controlling and some executing processes
3. All initiating and closing processes
4. One initiating, three planning, and six executing processes

48. A project manager has gathered a list of over 250 tasks and their estimated durations in a project that were identified and estimated by the team and organized them into a project schedule network diagram. The PM then conducted network analysis on the project and found something very interesting. An activity has 0 days of total float and 0 days of free float, what does this mean to the project?

1. The project does not have adequate lead and lag times built in
2. The activity is on the critical path
3. The duration of the activity should be compressed
4. A buffer, reserve or contingency should be added to the activity duration

49. A project manager is working in a weak matrix organization and is required to report all events to 4 department heads and two directors in the sponsoring team. Due to a recent equipment situation, several new risks have been identified. As a result, in the monthly report, the project manager reports an expected monetary value (EMV) of -$45,000 on a potential event in the project. This implies the EMV:

1. Is an opportunity and must be exploited
2. Is a threat and if addressed, may be mitigated
3. Represents actual returns on the event
4. Represents the most optimistic returns on the event

50. A project manager has completed conducting risk review and risk audit meetings by using risk management plan, risk register, and risk reports. What would the PM do next?

1. Implement the changed risk
2. Document the new risk with acceptance strategy in the risk register
3. Update the risk register with new risks, outdated risks, and realized risks
4. Start developing a strategy to respond to the new risk

PMP Certification Practice Test Answers

1. C - Actions such as adopting less complex processes, more testing, or choosing a more stable supplier would be considered as mitigation risk strategies. These actions reduce the probability and/or impact of risks.

2. C - A is not correct because a workaround is an unplanned response to an unknown risk that has occurred. In this situation, the risk has not occurred; it is only rumored to possibly occur. The correct response is C because the process of “Identify Risks” is an iterative process that happens throughout the life of the project. Because the risk is now identified, the risk register is updated with the risk and its contingency and fallback plans. Answer D is not an ethical course of action.

3. C - Benchmarking is a technique for planning quality.

4. A - A constraint is factor that limits a project’s options.

5. D - Rolling Wave Planning as a form of progressive elaboration planning where the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail at a low level of the work breakdown structure, while the work far in the future is planned at a relatively high level of the work breakdown structure, but the detailed planning of the work to be performed within another one or two periods in the near future is done as the work is being completed during the current period.

6. A - (A) Senior Management is most likely to have the financial authority appropriate to funding a very large project. Stakeholders (C) is too general a category. Customers (B) are the end users of the product and, although involving the customer in the charter definition often helps increase their commitment to the project, they are most likely to be involved in Collect Requirements, (D) Functional managers help staff large projects or may sponsor small, tactical projects.

7. C - Stakeholder Management Strategy is an output of (C) Identify Stakeholders. It is an input to A and B. Stakeholder analysis is a tool and technique used during Identify Stakeholders

8. A - The team is measuring power and influence. Stakeholders in the upper right quadrant of the grid rank higher than stakeholders in the other 3 quadrants.

9. C - Mandatory milestones are specified in the charter and must be met during the project.

10. A - Although obtaining signatures from B, C and D is often politically correct, the signature of the sponsor at a level appropriate to funding the project (A) is authorization for the project.

11. A - Delphi technique is an information gathering technique in which the team obtains information from a selected group of experts who have managed similar projects to help identify high-level risks. 5-why method is a tool to identify the root cause of a risk and is more commonly used in the planning process group where more detail is known about the project. Risk data quality assessment is used in qualitative risk analysis. Scatter diagrams show relationships and are a quality control tool.

12. C - A is incorrect because the WBS dictionary does not include the name of the sponsor. Test specifications (B) are not part of the WBS. The WBS dictionary contains all of the detail information about each deliverable in the WBS (C). The question does not suggest changes have occurred (D)

13. D - A is the technique of rolling costs estimated at a detail level up through the WBS to ensure all deliverables are considered. B applies to risk management. C is a false term D is the technique of ensuring that planned expenditures are within funding limits.

14. B - A uses float to help manage start and end dates for project activities. B inserts buffers to account for the uncertainty in the duration of the tasks and allows flexible start/end dates not to exceed the remaining buffer. C and D do not exist.

15. B - Definition

16. C - You are in completing your configuration management plan in Develop Project Management Plan. The configuration management system (CMS) is a subset of the PMIS and the change control plan is a subset of the CMS. The quality audit is a tool and technique used in Preform Quality Assurance.

17. A - A is a true statement; these change requests do not impact baselines, only actions. B, C and D are incorrect. Defects occur in processes as well as products, thus, repair requests are also an output of Perform Quality Assurance. Defect repairs are also generated as a result of process analysis or quality audits. Corrective and preventive actions may be requested by anyone and are outputs of planning and executing processes as well as monitoring and controlling.

18. D - A, B and C are included in the risk register. The risk management plan contains D as well as the methodology, budget, roles and responsibilities, a probability and impact matrix and other information regarding our approach to managing risk.

19. A - Following a qualitative risk analysis, updates to the risk register include a list of risks requiring response in the near term (A). B, C and D are unlikely to be an immediate issue.

20. C - A plan (A, D) describes how activities will be managed. The assumptions log lists factors believed to be true for planning purposes. The risk register identifies all risks, including causes, probability, impact, proposed responses, owners and current status.

21. D - Root cause analysis is used to identify risks, not analyze them. A and B use optimistic and pessimistic as well as most likely estimates to determine possible outcomes. C predicts the outcome of a decision if a situation turns out to be greater or less than the original estimate.

22. A - A common active acceptance strategy is to establish reserves of time, money and resources to handle the risks if one of them should occur. The watch list is part of the risk register. C is an activity in Monitor and Control Risks. D is likely to happen during execution of the project and also be a part of Monitor and Control Risk.

23. D - Plan Procurements and Conduct Procurements processes are generally concurrent with all project management planning (A). All stakeholders do not have assignments on a project (B). The charter is usually not updated (C). Changes to scope, schedule or cost baselines due to progressive elaboration are approved by the sponsor (or a CCB) and are usually presented to the signers of the charter before continuing with the project.

24. B - A is an OPA. B is the document; C is the tool and technique used to reach the decision. D identifies resources by category.

25. C - A cost plus contract presumes you have not developed a detailed scope baseline, so A is not a good answer. B is slightly better since you are considering a solution as well as price. However, on major procurement items, the overall process of requesting and evaluating responses from sellers can be repeated, so C is the best answer to get the best possible solution before signing the contract. There is nothing in the question to imply that an incentive is required.

26. C - Quality assurance uses all quality-related tools. The process analysis is the method used to determine why processes are not going according to plan. The cause and effect diagram is the tool the team would use to conduct the root cause analysis within the process analysis.

27. C - A does not exist. In B, the risk owner recognizes the symptoms. In C, the team carries out the activities in the plan. D is the responsibility of the project manager.

28. C - A is used to test conformance to standards. B is a business management strategy promoting quality. C is the study and analysis of historical information to predict future outcomes. D is a histogram used to identify causes of an error. All of these can be used in quality assurance.

29. B - You may call to soften the blow but status on slippage should be formal and documented.

30. B - Bottom-Up Estimating is a method of estimating a component of work. The cost of individual activities is estimated with the greatest level of specified detail. The detailed cost is then summarized or “rolled up” to higher levels for subsequent reporting and tracking purposes.

31. B - Lump Sum contract is also referred to as a “Fixed Price” or “Firm Fixed Price” contract.

32. D - As part of data representation, a tool and technique for the process, Plan Stakeholder Engagement, the project management team uses a SEAM – Stakeholders Engagement Assessment Matrix to document the current and desired stakeholder engagement levels as – unaware (of impacts), resistant (to change), neural, supportive and leading. A stakeholder engagement assessment matrix supports comparison between the current engagement levels of stakeholders and the desired engagement levels required for successful project delivery.

33. D - Fast tracking is doing activities in parallel to reduce the duration of the project, not the activity. Fast tracking is a schedule compression technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence are performed in parallel for at least a portion of their duration. An example is constructing the foundation for a building before completing all of the architectural drawings. Be sure to read the question and all answers carefully, the word activity makes answer A incorrect. If you are torn between 2 answers, reread the question.

34. C - The economic value of the next best alternative foregone when a given alternative has been selected is called opportunity cost. Sunk cost is money spent in a project that did not return any benefit. ACWP or Actual Cost is another term for money spent thus far in the project. Lost cause is not a project management term.

35. D - Project manager competencies include technical, leadership, and strategic / business skills.

36. C - The project management team must identify the project stakeholders, determine their requirements, interest, and expectations, and manage their influence as much as possible in relation to those requirements to ensure a successful project. Options A, B & D are not root causes of the problem. The main issue is not identifying the stakeholders and the resulting unidentified requirements. D is too broad a statement. Nothing in the question indicates a charter was not approved. More alarming in answer D is “other PM processes were not followed” without qualifying which ones. So, D is less correct answer.

37. A - The requirements traceability matrix is a document generated in collect requirements. It provides the means to trace requirements from requirements origin to testing. This document links requirements to the project goals, origin, deliverables, WBS, product design, and test scenarios. The control scope process then manages any changes to the product scope to see this objective is achieved.

38. C - There are some risks that you cannot avoid or mitigate. When this situation occurs all, you can do is accept the risk and inform key stakeholders about their potential. The accept strategy indicates that the project team has decided not to change the project management plan to deal with a risk or is unable to identify any other suitable response strategy.

39. B - A, risk audits and risk assessments are conducted in Monitor Risks. Plan Resource Management addresses answer C. D is a function of Manage Team. As project team development efforts such as training, team building, and co-location are implemented, the project management team makes formal or informal assessments of the project team’s effectiveness. These Team Performance Assessments which are an output of Develop Team may include indicators such as desired and expected improvements in individual skills and increased team cohesiveness.

40. D - Stakeholder cube is a refinement of the grid models previously mentioned. This model combines the stakeholder grid elements (power, influence, impact, etc.) into a three-dimensional model that can be useful to project managers and teams in identifying and engaging their stakeholder community. It provides a model with multiple dimensions that improves the depiction of the stakeholder community as a multidimensional entity and assists with the development of communication strategies.

41. B - The lessons learned register is created as an output of this process early in the project. It is updated in all other processes. The lessons learned register can include the category and description of the situation. The lessons learned register may also include the impact, recommendations, and proposed actions associated with the situation. The lessons learned register may record challenges, problems, realized risks and opportunities, or other content as appropriate.

42. C - “Quality Audits” is a tool and technique of Manage Quality. Verifying changes & deliverables is not a part of a quality audit but is an output of Control Quality. Any changed or repaired items are inspected and will be either accepted or rejected before notification of the decision is provided. Objectives of a quality audit are to identify good/best practices being implemented, identify gaps/shortcomings and identify ineffective and inefficient processes. It also adds to the lesson learned database, and confirms implementation of approved change requests, corrective actions, defect repairs, and preventive actions.

43. A - On-demand scheduling - This approach, typically used in a Kanban system, is based on the theory-of-constraints and pull-based scheduling concepts from lean manufacturing to limit a team’s work in progress in order to balance demand against the team’s delivery throughput. On-demand scheduling does not rely on a schedule that was developed previously for the development of the product or product increments, but rather pulls work from a backlog or intermediate queue of work to be done immediately as resources become available. On-demand scheduling is often used for projects that evolve the product incrementally in operational or sustainment environments, and where tasks may be made relatively similar in size and scope or can be bundled by size and scope.

44. C - A constraint is a limiting factor such as a limited budget or an imposed deadline. Dependency attributes include internal or external; mandatory or discretionary. This dependency is mandatory. The word “only” should alert you to this. The only answer with mandatory is C.

45. A - O = 2, M = 4, P = 6 (3 times optimistic). Calculate PERT estimate using the formula (O+4M+P)/6 = (2+16+6)/6 = 4 weeks.

46. D - Applying the Risk Score equation for each of the projects, we get:
RS (Delay) = 3 x (3+5+2+0) = 30
RS (Vendors) = 2 x (2+3+0+4) = 18
RS (Bugs) = 5 x (0+2+2+4) = 40
RS (Interfaces) = 1 x (4+0+2+3) = 9
So, the risk of “Unknown Bugs” has the greatest impact on the project

47. B - Change requests occur only after there are baselines and after the entire project management is baselined. Since work gets done during the executing phases and is tracked, orchestrated, and reviewed in monitoring and controlling processes, change requests, corrective actions, preventive actions, and defect repairs - all of which are now called change requests - occur predominantly during these two process groups, primarily in M & C processes.

48. B - This is the definition of the critical path. While adding 0 days of free float is not part of the definition, all activities on the critical path have 0 days of free float because they cannot be delayed without delaying a successor activity. Answer D might be something to consider for a specific situation, such as a resource availability problem, as the purpose of an activity buffer is to protect the project from an identified risk.

49. B - Negative EMV represents a threat and positive EMV represents an opportunity

50. C - The question is listing the inputs and tools and techniques of Monitor Risks process. The output is risk register updates. The risk register is updated with information on individual project risks generated during the Monitor Risks process. This may include adding new risks, updating outdated risks or risks that were realized, updating risk responses, and so forth.

PMP Examination Process

Once your application has been approved & you’ve paid the PMP certification exam fee, you can schedule your exam with Pearson VUE. You’ll have 1 year to take the exam from the time your application has been approved and you may take the exam up to 3 times during this eligibility period. You may take an online proctored exam at your home or schedule one at a Pearson VUE test center. You’ll find the complete list of test locations on the Pearson VUE website. Or you can find the Pearson VUE test center in your city at 4PMTI’s PMP course pages.

Take The PMP Exam

The PMP certification exam can be taken at your nearest Pearson VUE test center. The computer-based exam will have 200 questions with a 4-hour time limit.

Pro-tip: The questions will be broken down into 5 process groups: Initiation (13%), Planning (24%), Executing (30%), Monitoring & Controlling (25%), and Closing (8%). You’ll receive your score immediately after you completed the test. PMI will be updating to new domains and breakdown starting January 2021. Find out all the details about the PMP exam change coming in January 2021.

If your test results show that you’ve received an overall target or above target score in the PMP exam, then congratulations! You are now a Project Management Professional! You may use your PMP credential immediately for the next 3 years. And during this time, you must earn 60 additional Professional Development Units (PDUs) to maintain your certification for another 3 years. Learn more about earning & reporting PDUs at PMI’s Continuing Certification Requirements Program documentation.

Maintain Your PMP Certification

I Passed my PMP Exam, Now What?

Congratulations! You have successfully achieved one of the most difficult certifications in the project management industry and become one step closer to reaching your career goals.

Your PMP certification is valid for 3 years. And within those 3 years, you need to acquire 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) to maintain your PMP credential for the next 3 years. You can claim a maximum of 8 PDUs for being a project management practitioner as a part of your job, 17 PDUs by means of “Other Giving Back”, and a minimum of 35 PDUs as a part of the continuing education. You must earn a minimum of 8 PDUs in each of the categories of Technical Project Management, leadership, Strategic and Business Management.

That sounds very complicated. So, we made it easy! If you’re a 4PMTI student, we offer you FREE online courses that meet the above requirements and are qualified to provide you with the remaining 52 PDUs when you enroll in our PMP training courses*.

If you’re not a 4PMTI student, you can enroll in our other certification courses that are qualified to provide the PDUs, such as: PMI-ACP certification (24 PDUs), Risk Management Course (24 PDUs), Critical Chain Management (24 PDUs), Earned Value Management (24 PDUs). Click here for our PDU courses.

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Top 10 PMP Frequently Asked Questions

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