PMI PMP Practice Test 9
Question 80
An offshore wind maintenance scheduling project forecasts completion of its vessel-tracking integration three days after the last certified calm-weather transfer window. Other document and training activities are also late but have eight days of float. Before selecting a schedule remedy, what should the project manager analyze?
- Treat all late activities as equally critical and require identical recovery spending
- Seek a new schedule baseline without identifying the integration's dependency on the vessel window
- Resequence only the training paperwork and assume the integration milestone will recover itself
- Trace the launch critical path, integration-to-vessel dependencies and available float, then compare feasible recovery choices
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:A weather-bound integration dependency now determines the real completion exposure; path analysis reveals where recovery effort can affect launch.
Incorrect Answers
A:Late activities have different effects; spending on training tasks with float may not protect the weather-constrained integration.
B:A rebaseline without diagnosing the constraint can conceal rather than resolve the forecast miss.
C:Training is not the controlling link in the described schedule and does not restore the lost vessel window.
Question 81
During a data-center cooling pilot, operators reject a completed control dashboard because 'manual override' takes seven screen taps during an overheating alarm, although the acceptance target promised an emergency override within ten seconds. The team has valid timing recordings. The client requests an immediate response. What should the project manager do NEXT?
- Declare acceptance on the grounds that every dashboard control is present and operable in normal conditions
- Transfer the complaint to routine operations support without committing a product correction or acceptance retest
- Change the accepted emergency override threshold to sixty seconds without obtaining the customer's authorization
- Acknowledge the measured acceptance failure, agree a time-bound override correction and retest plan with operators, and communicate accountable follow-up
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:The pilot's objection has objective contractual evidence. Prompt collaborative remediation with a retest threshold restores a credible acceptance path instead of arguing that the display technically works.
Incorrect Answers
A:Functional presence does not meet the emergency response-time acceptance condition shown to fail in the pilot.
B:The unaccepted deliverable remains a project responsibility and violates a documented acceptance target.
C:Unilateral relaxation of the contract would disguise the failure rather than resolve it through controlled approval.
Question 82
A catastrophe-claims insurer plans a single release of document intake, triage scoring and full settlement processing. The independent disaster-intake and priority-routing slice has passed privacy and adjuster acceptance tests and could help field teams direct urgent housing claims before the full settlement system is ready. What should the project manager recommend?
- Release the independently accepted intake-and-priority slice through controlled deployment and use real field results to refine the later settlement release
- Wait for the settlement engine to finish and withhold the proven priority routing service from active disaster cases
- Change the reporting dashboard's benefit labels without deciding whether an already accepted service can be delivered
- Reorder cosmetic backlog items by executive preference while keeping the full claims release as the only deployment
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:A safe incremental release provides adjusters usable prioritization and evidence of value without exposing untested settlement functionality.
Incorrect Answers
B:A monolithic release unnecessarily defers an accepted aid to urgent disaster-claims operations.
C:Benefit definitions matter but cannot substitute for the immediate decision about deployable claim triage capability.
D:Presentation priorities do not address a ready, independently testable slice that would reduce harm and learning delay.
Question 83
A telehealth device enrollment pilot cannot activate a required external patient identity-verification API. The API provider controls the production credential and has declined to repair its certificate chain without a contract amendment. The delivery team has recorded logs and exhausted its authorized technical remedies; only the steering committee can authorize the commercial option. What is the BEST next step?
- Ask engineers to create a parallel unapproved identity database to bypass the contractual API
- Close the issue since the team has documented the provider's refusal and cannot fix it locally
- Escalate the current blockage with the provider evidence, clinical exposure and contractual response alternatives to the authorized steering committee
- Record it solely as a potential risk for the next quarter and continue reporting the pilot as ready
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:The team has evidence and has reached its authority boundary, so an actionable governed escalation is appropriate.
Incorrect Answers
A:An unauthorized identity workaround could breach clinical and security duties.
B:Lack of local authority is not evidence of resolution; the blockage remains present.
D:The API has actually failed; treating a current issue as merely possible conceals the delivery gate.
Question 84
The retailer’s ethical-supplier screening project is checking factory declarations for a new point-of-sale packaging supplier. A candidate packaging material contains a restricted chemical identified in the procurement specifications, but neither the quality-control plan nor the acceptance checklist verifies the supplier’s handling evidence. Buyer and factory representatives need to approve eligibility next week. What should the project manager add before acceptance?
- Use cause analysis and adjust the process, then verify the corrective effect
- Translate customer and regulatory expectations into testable acceptance measures
- Investigate prevention and root causes rather than relying exclusively on end-stage appraisal
- Add applicable safety and sustainability criteria to quality assurance and acceptance
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:Quality includes binding compliance and lifecycle obligations. The missing hazard and lifecycle acceptance criterion must be specified before quality testing can mean anything. That is the missing step before supplier eligibility decision can be responsibly authorized.
Incorrect Answers
A:Continuous improvement addresses systemic defect recurrence. That action would address a different decision: identify the recurring causal pathway before selecting another short-lived patch. In this case, the missing hazard and lifecycle acceptance criterion must be specified before quality testing can mean anything.
B:Measurable quality requirements enable objective validation. That action would address a different decision: vague adjectives must be translated into objective measurements and expected results before accepting tests. In this case, the missing hazard and lifecycle acceptance criterion must be specified before quality testing can mean anything.
C:Preventive controls remove causes while appraisal detects existing defects. That action would address a different decision: find the defect-generation mechanism before selecting preventive controls; more end-stage inspection alone cannot fix it. In this case, the missing hazard and lifecycle acceptance criterion must be specified before quality testing can mean anything.
Question 85
In a developer-experience initiative, design reviews repeatedly end with a senior architect speaking over accessibility and test engineers. The team charter explicitly requires uninterrupted issue presentation and equal review time. The technical evidence has already been gathered, but quieter specialists now avoid the meeting. What should the project manager do at the next review?
- Send the accessibility engineer to an external leadership class before allowing that engineer back into the review
- Apply the existing participation rules consistently, interrupt repeated dominance and provide protected speaking time so every specialist can present evidence
- Ask the architect to make a final design choice alone because the architect has the highest technical title
- Schedule a separate technical meeting for the test staff without changing the original review's interruption behavior
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:The immediate obstruction is breached meeting conduct, not uncertainty about the design facts. Consistent, respectful enforcement restores psychological safety and the evidence needed for a legitimate design decision.
Incorrect Answers
A:This blames the excluded contributor and leaves the architect's known charter violations and unsafe participation pattern intact.
C:Seniority does not cancel the project team's agreed review controls or substitute for accessible-design and test evidence.
D:A parallel meeting may surface concerns but does not repair the governance and participation failure at the decision forum.
Question 86
A scholarship portal's sponsor wants the next funding report to omit an evidenced 25% rise in eligibility-appeals processing costs until after committee approval. Finance confirms the forecast and the committee controls changes to program funding. What should the project manager do?
- Record the overrun only in a private team notebook and keep the committee's estimate unchanged
- Tell the vendor to invoice the extra work to another scholarship program without approval
- Wait until the reserve is exhausted before documenting the cost exposure
- Report the forecast and uncertainty transparently with realistic funding and scope options to the authorized committee
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:Ethical stewardship requires factual reporting to the body responsible for deciding the funding response.
Incorrect Answers
A:A private record does not meet the committee's need for material cost information before an investment decision.
B:Unapproved reclassification would misrepresent program finance and create accountability problems.
C:A corroborated forecast is relevant before cash is fully spent, not only when the overrun becomes irreversible.
Question 87
A municipal waste-route optimization project has an approved schedule baseline. New bridge-weight restrictions force refuse trucks onto longer routes, and the forecast launch date is now ten days late. The manager has no delegated authority to change the contractual launch milestone. What should happen before requesting a revised date?
- Choose a new route at random and claim the schedule has recovered without updated traffic evidence
- Create a new dependency map as if no approved schedule or route assumptions had existed
- Analyze the bridge constraint, critical route impacts and recovery options, then submit any required date or scope decision to the authorized authority
- Quietly shift the project baseline by ten days so current progress reports remain on track
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:The new bridge limitation is the likely variance driver. Governed impact and recovery analysis supports a defensible decision about schedule commitments.
Incorrect Answers
A:An untested detour does not establish a credible recovered delivery forecast.
B:The project already has a baseline; it now needs change/variance analysis, not first-time planning.
D:An unauthorized baseline shift would conceal a known schedule deviation and bypass contract decision rights.
Question 88
A hotel-service integration team records lessons after every guest check-in pilot. At the start of the next pilot, new desk agents cannot find exception handling guidance, and the same duplicate-room-charge error recurs. A shared repository exists but lacks ownership, search labels or a review routine. What sustained knowledge-management change should the project manager make?
- Request another lessons-learned workshop but leave the unsearchable repository and shift routines unchanged
- Assign owners to keep searchable guest-service exception guidance current, embed lookup in shift handoffs and verify its use at each pilot review
- Tell each new desk agent to independently re-create the previous pilot's fixes from transaction logs
- Limit access to exception guidance to the project manager to prevent divergent versions at hotel branches
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:The missing mechanism is access and everyday application. Ownership, discoverability and a shift-level practice convert lessons from archival documents into reusable operational knowledge.
Incorrect Answers
A:Capturing more lessons will not make existing guidance accessible or usable to the people serving guests.
C:Re-derivation wastes effort and risks repeating guest-billing errors the organization already investigated.
D:Centralizing access in one person recreates a bottleneck instead of enabling consistent frontline learning.
Question 89
After the smart-building energy controller scope baseline was approved, a tenant group requests a new occupancy-tracking dashboard expressly excluded from that scope. No one has assessed its effects on tenant privacy, cost, commissioning acceptance or vendor effort, and the change board has not received a submission. What should the project manager do FIRST?
- Facilitate an explicit scope decision and document stakeholder agreement through governance
- Assess the change impact and route the proposed addition through approved change control
- Define and confirm the delivery boundary, exclusions and assumptions before estimating
- Decompose it into verifiable work packages or backlog slices with acceptance outcomes
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Controlled scope changes protect authorized constraints and transparency. The excluded capability requires an impact assessment and authorized scope-change decision before development. That is the missing step before energy-control commissioning can be responsibly authorized.
Incorrect Answers
A:Agreement resolves ownership of commitments rather than hiding the dispute in status reports. The stated facts require another prerequisite first: the excluded capability requires an impact assessment and authorized scope-change decision before development.
C:Clear boundaries prevent unplanned scope from appearing as an implied commitment. Nothing in the facts makes that the next authorized step; the excluded capability requires an impact assessment and authorized scope-change decision before development.
D:Smaller deliverables make effort, ownership and completion observable. The stated facts require another prerequisite first: the excluded capability requires an impact assessment and authorized scope-change decision before development.
Question 90
The next review of building automation setpoints and occupancy sensors in smart building energy control upgrade is due at energy-control commissioning. A supplier failure scenario affecting building automation setpoints and occupancy sensors has already been identified and assessed, but nobody has a monitoring duty or a trigger for an authorized response. No threshold breach currently requires the board. Which management action should be taken FIRST?
- Facilitate identification of risk events and assumptions with impacted stakeholders
- Assign an accountable risk owner, early indicators and clear escalation triggers
- Evaluate probability, impact, urgency and uncertainty using agreed criteria
- Report exposure, uncertainty, options and the required decision to authorized governance
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:A known threat needs a responsible watcher and observable trigger so the team can act before a breach. Ownership and triggers convert a vague concern into an actionable risk. The team therefore has the decision evidence it needs for energy-control commissioning.
Incorrect Answers
A:Unidentified exposure cannot be prioritized or assigned. That action would address a different decision: identify credible context-specific events and assumptions with affected owners before scoring or assigning them. In this case, a known threat needs a responsible watcher and observable trigger so the team can act before a breach.
C:Meaningful prioritization requires comparable risk assessment. That action would address a different decision: comparable probability, impact, urgency and tolerance criteria distinguish safety-level threats from minor interruptions. In this case, a known threat needs a responsible watcher and observable trigger so the team can act before a breach.
D:Effective risk communication supports accountable choices. That action would address a different decision: a decision-ready exposure summary shows uncertainty, alternatives and which approval exceeds team delegation. In this case, a known threat needs a responsible watcher and observable trigger so the team can act before a breach.