Don’t Fall For PMP Exam Trick Questions!

For all aspiring project management professionals (PMPs), it’s well known that the PMP exam includes a lot of “trick questions” where you really have to be careful about the wording and cut through the noise in the question to find what the really important answer is. This is meant to simulate project management in the real-world, where day-to-day you have to cut through the noise and make decisions based on what’s truly important. There is also lots of terminology, acronyms and references to names of theories and principles that you need to know, and sometimes these terms are not even in the PMBOK itself.

​Here’s my cheat sheet of tricks, gotcha’s and pitfalls collected from the classic “trick questions”. These are also good real-world lessons learned!

General Project Management

• Projects are temporary, create unique outputs, and drive change.
• The Project Charter not only gives the Project Manager authority, but also it sets stakeholder expectations and prevents constant change.
• The Sponsor signs the Project Charter, or it could be someone else in senior management, or a committee. The key is that it is a person with access to funding.
• The Project Management Plan includes both PLANS AND BASELINES.
• As part of Project Management planning, you plan 2 lifecycles — the Project Lifecycle (phases, etc.) and Development Lifecycle (waterfall, agile, etc.)
• Having multiple sponsors on the Project Charter means more time communicating and more time in Configuration Management due to competing needs
• For each Phase, you still have to start with the Initiating process including reviewing and updating the Project Charter
• An Assumption Log is started from the time of initiation. Assumptions can later be used to identify risks. Constraints can also be stored in the assumptions log.
• The Project Manager must be constantly re-evaluating whether the project is inline with objectives and fit (e.g. if the organization changes, if new projects start, etc. the Project Manager should question whether their project still makes sense)
• If the previous PM said he had to “constantly push the team to get anything done”, chances are there’s no management strategy
• Multi-criteria decision analysis considers factors with weights to decide on resources or other things. This is different from source selection criteria which are just for procurement.
• Know the differences when you have a controlling PMO, supportive PMO, etc.
• Know who the PM reports to in all scenarios (matrix, functional, etc.). For example, in a balanced matrix organization, the Project Manager reports to a Functional Manager.
• Always be aware of whether you are in Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling or Closing. Sometimes PMP exam questions will mention that you are in “Executing”, then give you a lot of useless information, and the correct answer is simply the only tool that can be used within “Executing”.

Systems

• Project Management System = aggregation of the processes, tools, techniques and methodologies to manage a project
• Project Management Information System (PMIS) = coherent organization of information used to manage a project, typically implemented with software
• Project Control System is set up during planning and used for monitoring and controlling.
• A Work Authorization System is used to manage WHEN and in WHAT sequence work is done, but WHO does each activity is managed with the RAM (resource assignment matrix)
• Records Management Systems (RMS) — specific to Control Procurements includes storing contract and other documents in the RMS
• Knowledge Management System — requires understanding lessons learned on what worked before, current project team’s assignments, and the resource breakdown structure.
• Configuration Management System — Configuration Management is about as confusing as it gets in the PMBOK, but cutting through all the jargon, it is really just talking about a Sharepoint or Confluence-like system where you store and version plans like the Scope Management Plan, Schedule Management Plan, etc. So for example, the Configuration Management System will tell you that the current Project Management Plan comprises Scope Management Plan v2.1 from August, Schedule Management Plan v3.5 from June, and so forth.

PLANNING — WHAT TO DO STEP-BY-STEP
According to the Rita Mulcahy’s popular PMP Exam prep, there is a specific order of planning activities that you must learn:

1. Review the project charter
2. Determine development approach, lifecycle, and how you will plan for each knowledge area (plan for a plan)
3. Define and prioritize requirements
4. Create project scope statement
5. Assess what to purchase and create procurement documents
6. Determine planning team
7. Create WBS and WBS dictionary
8. Create activity list
9. Create network diagram
10. Estimate resource requirements
11. Estimate activity durations and costs
12. Determine critical path
13. Develop schedule
14. Develop budget
15. Determine quality standards, processes, and metrics
16. Determine team charter and all roles and responsibilities
17. Plan communications and stakeholder engagement
18. Perform risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, and risk response planning
19. Go back — iterations
20. Finalize procurement strategy and documents
21. Create change and configuration management plans
22. Finalize all management plans
23. Develop realistic and sufficient project management plan and baselines
24. Gain formal approval of the plan
25. Hold kickoff meeting
26. Request changes

For a comprehensive guide on every trick question and what exactly to learn to prepare, see my full article PMP Exam: Trick Questions Cheat Sheet .