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About the Planning Process group
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In this process group, various details related to the project scope, objectives, and the actions needed to achieve those are established and documented.

 

Plans pertaining to all knowledge areas (scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risks, procurement, and stakeholders) are developed.

 

What is the benefit of all the planning work?

  • It keeps all the stakeholders (including project team) updated on plans and status and promotes a common understanding of the project.

  • It makes it easier to get buy-in and support from the stakeholders.

  • Another key benefit of the planning process group is the establishment of baselines (scope, schedule, and cost), against which project progress is measured.

 

As we will see later, this is part of earned value analysis (EVA) and performed during the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group.

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QuestionS  for the Planning Process Group

Question 1
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  • You are reviewing documents related to risks for your new project. One of the risk documents contains a section that has all the risks and their sources in a hierarchical order. What is the section referred to as?  

    1. Risk breakdown structure (RBS)

    2. Risk categories

    3. Risk management plan

    4. Risk strategies

 

Question 2

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  • You have developed activities and their sequences with help from the project team. Activity B needs to start 20 days after Activity A has been completed. Which of the following represents this scenario? (F is for finish and S is for start).

    1. FS – 20 days

    2. FS + 20 days

    3. SF - 20 days

    4. SF + 20 days

 

 Question 3

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  • Which of the following is required for the Plan Resource Management process?

    1. A basis of estimates for the project budget

    2. Work performance information and reports

    3. Geographical distribution of your project resources, facilities, and equipment

    4. Contracts and agreements with vendors and suppliers

 

 Question 4

 

  • A project has a 70% chance of a profit of $200,000 and a 30% chance of a loss of $100,000. What is the expected monetary value (EMV) of the project?

    1.  $140,000

    2.  $30,000

    3.  $110,000

    4.   $200,000

 
Question 5

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  • Jerry Jackson has been hired as a project risk analyst. His manager tells him that risks must be identified but more importantly, risks must be tracked and updated in the risk register. Which of these processes is not something that Jerry can use to identify new risks or update existing ones?

    1. Plan Risk Management

    2. Direct and Manage Project Work

    3. Monitor and Control Project Work

    4. Perform Integrated Change Control

 

 

 Question 6

 

  • Julian Jones is conducting a requirements workshop with stakeholders, users and the project team to develop functional and non-functional requirements for the application, which he is managing as a project manager. For each required feature, Julian documents:

    • the role of the stakeholder who benefits from the feature (role),

    • what the stakeholder needs to accomplish (goal) and

    • the benefits that the feature provides to the stakeholder (motivation).

 

    Such a format for recording requirements is referred to as:

  1. User stories

  2. Mind maps

  3. Story points

  4. Micro-deliverables

 

 Question 7 

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  • Which of the following is not true for variability risks?

    1. Variability risks are a type of non-event based risk, borne due to uncertainties related to certain key characteristics of project activities or decisions.

    2. Delay in construction schedule due to unseasonal weather conditions is an example of variability risk.

    3. Variability risks can be addressed using Monte Carlo analysis.

    4. All of the above choices are true for variability risks.

 

Question 8 

 

  • Kris Kelvin is a project manager for a cloud-based backup project. One of the requirements is that any data residing on the in-house disks and not used for 30 consecutive days, should be moved to the cloud. This is an example of:

    1. Project requirement

    2. Non-functional requirement

    3. Transition requirement

    4. Quality requirement

 

 

  

Answers  for the Planning Process Group
 
ANSWER 1

 The correct answer is 1.

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Risk breakdown structure (RBS) is a hierarchical representation of the potential sources of risks. It is part of the risk management plan document.

 

 ANSWER 2

The correct answer is 2.

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This is a Finish-to-start relationship with a lag of 10 days. Remember lags are shown as a positive value. Leads are shown as a negative value.

 

 ANSWER 3

The correct answer is 3.

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The Plan Resource Management process is about defining how you will use estimate, acquire, manage and control the resources that you need for the project. For this, one of the key required information is the distribution and location of the resources (facilities, equipment, etc.).

 

 ANSWER 4

The correct answer is 3.

 

The EMV = (70% of $200,000) – (30% of $100,00)  = = $140,000 - $30,000  = $110,000

 

 ANSWER 5

The correct answer is 1.

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The Plan Risk Management process is not used to identify or update risks. It is used to develop a plan for identifying and managing risks. The other processes are used to identify, track and update risks in the risk register or risk report.

 

ANSWER 6

The correct answer is 1.

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A user story is a short description of the required functionality. This is usually developed during a requirement workshop. There is also an implicit promise that more details will be discussed and documented later. See Page 145 of the PMBOK®.

 

ANSWER 7

The correct answer is 4.

 

All the choices are true for variability risks. These are caused by uncertainties related to project activities or decisions. For example, rainfall will impact the schedule of a construction project. But the amount of rain or schedule delay is not known at the start of the project. The amount of delay will vary. Hence it is a variability risk. See Page 398 of the PMBOK®.

 

ANSWER 8

The correct answer is 3.

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This is a transition requirement because it specifies the criteria for transition of the data from internal disks to cloud storage.

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