PMI PMP Practice Test 20
Question 190
A credit union has received two proposals for member-onboarding identity scanners. Both comply with the mandatory data-retention and secure-erasure standards. The lower-priced vendor needs additional teller training and has a higher false-rejection rate during a pilot; the other proposal costs more but shows better accessibility and fewer manual exceptions. Selection criteria published before bidding assign weights to lifetime cost, service outcomes and controls. What should the project manager recommend?
- Score the qualified bids against the previously disclosed weighted cost, service and risk criteria, using the pilot evidence before recommending an award
- Award to the lowest-price bidder without considering teller rework or rejected eligible members
- Change the scoring weights after seeing prices so the sponsor’s preferred supplier always wins
- Open a supplier nonperformance claim before any contract is signed or acceptance milestone has been agreed
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Both bids pass mandatory qualification, so the open decision is their relative whole-life value and verified user impact under a fair published scoring method.
Incorrect Answers
B:Unit price ignores costs from rework, access friction and processing delays that the procurement criteria explicitly recognize.
C:Retrofitting bid weights creates procurement unfairness and bypasses the approved evaluation rules.
D:A contract remedy cannot apply before selection and contract execution; the supplier has not yet breached a signed acceptance obligation.
Question 191
In a fire-service equipment upgrade, acceptance tests pass for the new radios, but dispatchers report increasing misheard unit identifiers during noisy incidents. The project dashboard records signal uptime, not the dispatchers' safety experience. What should the project manager do before declaring stakeholders satisfied?
- Treat radio network uptime as conclusive satisfaction evidence because all factory acceptance tests passed
- Gather structured dispatcher feedback and correlate reported misunderstandings with incident playback, ambient conditions and radio configuration
- Order the dispatch center to retrain all staff immediately without reviewing audio evidence or configuration
- Change the emergency response priority policy before evaluating whether radio intelligibility is actually impaired
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Technical uptime is not sufficient evidence of safe real-world communication. Combining frontline feedback with incident measurements identifies whether the new system meets stakeholder needs.
Incorrect Answers
A:Factory performance and uptime can remain green while field audio intelligibility creates an operational safety defect.
C:Training could be appropriate later, but the present cause may be device filtering or environmental acoustics.
D:Policy changes would bypass the specific communication-quality evidence needed to address user concerns.
Question 192
A corporate-expense compliance vendor reports its reimbursement engine 90% complete by developer tasks. No end-to-end test of supervisor approval, policy exceptions and payroll posting has passed, and monthly processing capacity forecasts assume the engine works. The sponsor asks for a truthful completion outlook. What should the project manager do first?
- Compare the claimed percentage against passed integrated acceptance evidence, revise the forecast and disclose the unproven process steps
- Report 90% complete as certified because the supplier has invested the planned engineer hours
- Replace the integration test with a slide deck listing the modules individually implemented
- Ask finance to sign off the final contract before the end-to-end reimbursement workflow is demonstrated
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Completion claims require objectively accepted integrated outcomes; the missing test evidence changes the delivery forecast.
Incorrect Answers
B:Effort spent is not verification that the combined approval and posting process works.
C:Module lists conceal interface failures that may prevent any usable reimbursement service.
D:Financial closure before agreed acceptance evidence would surrender control over an incomplete deliverable.
Question 193
A warehouse autonomous-vehicle pilot has three stated benefits: faster picking, fewer pedestrian near misses, and lower power use. Safety rules set a nonnegotiable pedestrian separation threshold, but the sponsor's backlog treats all three as adjustable preferences. What should the project manager establish before a priority workshop?
- Rank pick speed first by sponsor preference and leave pedestrian separation verification until the next release
- Have the autonomous-vehicle supplier set the allowable near-miss rate without involving safety owners
- Identify the binding separation control, quantify impacts and name which owners can negotiate pick-speed and energy targets
- Organize a trade-off vote in which each stakeholder may discard one requirement regardless of its regulatory status
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:A safety minimum cannot be traded against business convenience without approved risk authority. The team needs a clear constraint and ownership map before balancing the remaining benefits.
Incorrect Answers
A:A mandatory safety threshold cannot be postponed by a backlog priority vote.
B:Technical supplier expertise does not confer final authority over site safety tolerance or employee protection.
D:Undifferentiated voting risks treating protected minimums as optional scope requests.
Question 194
A museum has installed an accessible exhibit control system under a predictive milestone plan. The commissioning test requires visitor-service staff to demonstrate assisted evacuation and tactile-audio fallback, but these employees are rostered on public-floor shifts and cannot attend the proposed test date. Hardware vendors are available. What should the project manager address FIRST in the resource plan?
- Increase vendor engineering overtime even though the missing competency is visitor-service operation
- Escalate a dispute between two departments before checking whether operational shifts can be released with an approved cover arrangement
- Estimate future-year staffing headcount instead of securing participation in the imminent operational acceptance exercise
- Coordinate visitor-service release cover, named skill ownership and a feasible commissioning slot before approving the test schedule
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:The resource plan must account for named receiving roles, real shifts and acceptance competencies; otherwise a technically ready exhibit can fail operational commissioning.
Incorrect Answers
A:More hardware-engineer time cannot substitute for the people required to demonstrate safe assisted visitor operation.
B:There is no established resource-priority conflict until availability and cover have been explored with the owning manager.
C:Long-range headcount planning is secondary to securing qualified operational participants at the signed acceptance gate.
Question 195
A delivery decision is due for site work orders and backup-power monitors in telecommunications tower maintenance system before tower-maintenance safety handover. The authorized site work orders and backup-power monitors change was installed and the version register updated correctly. A dependent interface then failed its regression test; the immediate gap is verifying effects and correcting the new defect. What should the project manager recommend based on these facts?
- Validate outcomes and take corrective action under the agreed change process
- Evaluate impacts and route the proposal through authorized change assessment
- Reprioritize transparently within delegated product authority and guard fixed obligations
- Update controlled artifacts and verify the delivered configuration against approval
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:A change is not complete solely because a ticket was marked done. Regression evidence and correction of the dependent failure must follow the approved implementation. That is the missing step before tower-maintenance safety handover can be responsibly authorized.
Incorrect Answers
B:Unapproved change cannot be silently inserted into a controlled baseline. That action would address a different decision: analyze downstream cost, time, quality and dependencies before the appropriate board authorizes a proposal. In this case, regression evidence and correction of the dependent failure must follow the approved implementation.
C:Adaptive change can be governed through backlog ownership without inappropriate board approval for every item. That action would address a different decision: the delegated product owner can change item order transparently while safeguarding binding deadlines. In this case, regression evidence and correction of the dependent failure must follow the approved implementation.
D:Traceability connects the authorized decision to actual implementation. That action would address a different decision: update the controlled version and trace the implemented result to the already authorized change. In this case, regression evidence and correction of the dependent failure must follow the approved implementation.
Question 196
An airport baggage-analytics initiative is testing a new model to predict missed interline transfers. Two small tests took four and eleven days because event feeds vary across airlines; no representative estimate for a third trial exists. The fixed baggage scanner acceptance milestone is already known, but the research duration is uncertain. What should the project manager do before scheduling this exploratory activity?
- Use evidence-based duration ranges and an explicit uncertainty buffer for the model trials rather than committing a precise unsupported duration
- Approve one fixed end date from the four-day fastest trial without examining variability
- Treat the variance in a baseline as a realized delay even though the exploratory schedule has not been approved
- Use critical-path recovery actions for missed deadlines even though the uncertainty relates to an activity that has not begun
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:The observed four- and eleven-day trials establish a credible spread; a range with visible contingency reflects the actual uncertainty without changing the fixed scanner gate.
Incorrect Answers
B:Selecting the single fastest trial creates false precision and discounts the known variable event-feed effort.
C:There is no approved exploratory baseline that the activity has missed.
D:Schedule recovery is a response to actual deviation, not a substitute for estimating future research uncertainty.
Question 197
A cooling-plant modernization has an approved vision of 'continuous service.' Facilities interprets that as uninterrupted chiller operation; cybersecurity interprets it as no interruption to building-temperature evidence. The parties are planning incompatible backups despite agreeing the vision text. What should the project manager do FIRST?
- Ask each group to identify the service interruption it is preventing and reconcile these interpretations against approved occupant-safety outcomes
- Unilaterally redefine continuous service as chiller runtime because that is the easiest metric to collect
- Purchase both backup systems immediately without clarifying whether either meets the intended service outcome
- Replace the approved vision with a newly written statement without reviewing how either group interprets the original
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Before replacing an approved vision, the manager must diagnose the conflicting definitions of continuity. This can reveal a compatible, measurable resilience goal and expose missing assumptions.
Incorrect Answers
B:The response would bypass cybersecurity evidence continuity and the formal owner of the original benefit.
C:Parallel procurement risks cost and complexity before the disputed objective has been understood.
D:Rewriting a phrase without understanding the mismatch may perpetuate ambiguity rather than resolve its cause.
Question 198
A cross-border freight document exchange is piloting digital certificates. Customs has issued a binding update requiring a new origin-signature field on export declarations starting in six weeks. The team has already confirmed the mandatory specification, but its current sprint backlog prioritizes optional carrier analytics. What should the project manager do next?
- Continue optional analytics work because the product owner once ranked it above declaration changes
- Treat the mandatory signature as an optional postrelease enhancement and ask agents to manually waive the requirement
- Work with customs, the product owner and delivery leads to assess interface impacts and authorize reprioritizing the signature capability ahead of the deadline
- Purchase a new data warehouse without analyzing the customs interface or signature-verification requirement
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:The known compliance deadline calls for a governed, impact-aware change in implementation order and supporting tests.
Incorrect Answers
A:Past prioritization does not override a binding external export declaration condition.
B:Users cannot unilaterally waive a statutory field; deferral would block customs acceptance.
D:A storage investment is unrelated to meeting the specified signature and interface rules.
Question 199
On telecom network resilience upgrade, the team is assessing traffic failover rules and redundant fiber routes with network operations and enterprise customers before failover acceptance exercise. Three functional teams count the same supplier charge against traffic failover rules and redundant fiber routes differently and report conflicting actual-cost totals, with no agreed invoice-level source of truth. What should the project manager recommend before the next commitment?
- Inspect trend and bottleneck data to understand work in progress and throughput
- Reconcile source data and define a single authoritative reporting rule
- Present status, implications, response options and accountable decisions together
- Reconcile claimed progress with objective evidence and update the forecast
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Conflicting measures require data quality correction before governance decisions. Reconcile the underlying invoices and definitions before giving governance an unreliable aggregate. The failover acceptance exercise decision then rests on evidence rather than an unsupported assumption.
Incorrect Answers
A:Cycle-time, queue and blocked-work trends reveal flow deterioration hidden by stable output counts. But no such decision is currently required; here, reconcile the underlying invoices and definitions before giving governance an unreliable aggregate.
C:State consequence, evidence, response choices and decision authority, not just red/amber numbers. But no such decision is currently required; here, reconcile the underlying invoices and definitions before giving governance an unreliable aggregate.
D:Reconcile optimistic supplier percentages with test results and update the risk-informed forecast. But no such decision is currently required; here, reconcile the underlying invoices and definitions before giving governance an unreliable aggregate.
Question 200
The mobile-banking account recovery pilot failed an already agreed customer acceptance test: call-center agents cannot complete a legitimate account restoration without a second undocumented identity check. The customer has supplied reproducible test evidence, and the baseline remains controlled. What should the project manager do NEXT?
- Commission a fresh broad satisfaction survey before acknowledging the already proven failed acceptance test
- Review the documented acceptance failure with the customer, agree a corrective owner and retest date, and communicate the remediation decision
- Treat the situation solely as a product-benefits reprioritization exercise without addressing the failed contracted workflow
- Reopen the original acceptance definition even though the disputed workflow and failure criteria were already agreed
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:The current decision is a failed agreed acceptance condition: acknowledge the evidence, assign accountable remediation, test against that same criterion and give a realistic customer update.
Incorrect Answers
A:The customer has already provided specific reproducible evidence. General discovery may be useful later, but it would delay addressing the confirmed acceptance defect.
C:The immediate problem is contractual usability failure, not a new request to choose a different project benefit or feature priority.
D:The original criteria are explicit and unchanged; redefining success after a failure would obscure a real defect instead of resolving it.