Unit 2: Cost Estimation and Life Cycle Models - Practice Quiz

1 What is software project management?

2 What is the main purpose of resource allocation in a software project?

3 Which of the following is a human resource in a software project?

4 In project management, what does creating a programme usually involve?

5 What is an individual project?

6 What is the primary focus of program management?

7 Which two factors are commonly considered when evaluating a project risk?

8 What does cost benefit analysis compare?

9 A project costs $40,000 and is expected to provide benefits worth $55,000. What is its net benefit?

10 Which factor is commonly examined when evaluating an individual project?

11 What is the purpose of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)?

12 What does AI-based predictive cost estimation commonly use?

13 What can AI-based resource prediction help a project manager estimate?

14 What does a project approach describe?

15 What does a software life cycle model provide?

16 What is a key feature of the V-Process Model?

17 In the V-Process Model, acceptance testing is mainly associated with which earlier activity?

18 How is software commonly developed in the Agile Model?

19 What is a central goal of DevOps?

20 What does CI commonly stand for in a CI/CD pipeline?

21 A software project is estimated to require 1,200 person-hours. If four developers work full-time for 30 working days at 8 hours per day, which conclusion is most appropriate?

22 Two project activities require the same specialist during the same week. Activity A is on the critical path, while Activity B has five days of float. What should the project manager do first?

23 A programme manager is coordinating three related projects that share a common customer-data platform. Which activity best represents programme-level planning?

24 A project team is developing a payroll application with a fixed deadline and clearly defined requirements. Which management focus is most appropriate for the individual project?

25 A programme contains projects for mobile banking, fraud detection, and customer analytics. The projects are individually successful, but they use incompatible customer identifiers. What should the programme manager prioritize?

26 A risk has a 30% probability of causing a $40,000 loss. Another risk has a 10% probability of causing a $90,000 loss. Based only on expected monetary value, which risk has the higher exposure?

27 A proposed system costs $80,000 and is expected to produce benefits worth $110,000 over its evaluation period. Ignoring discounting and operating costs, what is the net benefit?

28 A project is under budget and ahead of schedule, but its delivered system does not satisfy a mandatory regulatory requirement. How should the project be evaluated?

29 Three vendors are evaluated using weighted criteria: cost 40%, reliability 35%, and support 25%. Vendor X scores 8, 7, and 6 respectively on a 10-point scale. What is Vendor X's weighted score?

30 In an MCDA model, security is assigned a weight of 50%, cost 30%, and usability 20%. What does the security weight indicate?

31 An AI cost-estimation model was trained mostly on small web applications, but it is used to estimate a safety-critical embedded system. What is the main concern?

32 A predictive model estimates that a project will require 10 developers for six months. Historical data shows that similar projects usually experience a 20% staffing shortfall. What is the most reasonable management response?

33 A client expects requirements to change frequently and wants working software demonstrated every two weeks. Which project approach is most suitable?

34 A life cycle model is mainly selected to determine how a project will manage which combination of activities?

35 A project has stable requirements, strict approval gates, and extensive compliance documentation. Which life cycle characteristic is most valuable?

36 In the V-Process Model, which testing activity is most closely associated with system requirements?

37 A team begins coding before completing the required interface specifications in a V-Process project. What is the likely consequence?

38 During a sprint, a stakeholder requests a new feature that is not part of the sprint goal. What is the most appropriate response?

39 A development team frequently delivers code that fails in the operations environment. Which DevOps practice would most directly address this problem?

40 A continuous integration pipeline reports a failed automated test after a developer pushes code. What should normally happen next?

41 A project has a fixed deadline, uncertain requirements, and several interdependent deliverables. Which statement best captures the management problem represented by software project management?

42 Two activities require the same specialist during the same week. Activity A has 3 days of float and lies on the critical path after Activity B, which has no float but can be completed by another qualified engineer at 20% higher cost. What is the most defensible allocation decision?

43 An organization wants to deliver a platform consisting of four related projects whose benefits depend on shared architecture and coordinated releases. What is the strongest reason to establish a programme rather than manage the projects independently?

44 A project is delivering a regulatory reporting component that has a clear scope, a single sponsor, and acceptance criteria independent of three other initiatives. Which governance choice is most appropriate?

45 A programme's projects are individually on schedule, but their interfaces are producing duplicated functionality and delaying organizational adoption. Which action best addresses the programme-level failure?

46 A risk has a 30% probability of causing a $120,000 loss. A mitigation costing $20,000 reduces the probability to 10%. Assuming the mitigation has no other effect, what is the expected monetary value of the mitigation decision?

47 A proposed system requires an initial investment of $180,000 and produces cash benefits of $90,000, $100,000, and $110,000 over the next three years. At a discount rate of 10%, which conclusion is closest to the project's financial attractiveness?

48 A project has a positive NPV but requires a scarce security architect whose allocation would delay another project with a higher strategic score. Which evaluation is most complete?

49 Three alternatives have normalized scores for cost, risk, and strategic fit. Their weights are 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3 respectively. Alternative X scores , Y scores , and Z scores . Which alternative has the highest weighted score?

50 A machine-learning cost model performs well on historical projects but underestimates a new project using an unfamiliar architecture. Which control most directly addresses this failure mode?

51 Requirements are expected to change after users see working increments, while regulatory verification must be evidenced before release. Which project approach best balances these conditions?

52 A team selects a life cycle model primarily because the project has stable requirements, low technical uncertainty, and contractual acceptance milestones. Which rationale is strongest?

53 In a V-Process Model project, system integration testing reveals that a performance requirement cannot be met because of an architectural decision made earlier. What is the most appropriate corrective response?

54 A product owner repeatedly adds urgent work during a sprint, causing committed items to remain incomplete. Which intervention best preserves agility without allowing uncontrolled scope expansion?

55 A team has automated deployment but still experiences frequent production incidents because operations receive changes without observability or rollback readiness. Which DevOps improvement is most relevant?

56 A pipeline runs unit tests and deploys every commit directly to production. A defect can pass unit tests but fail during database migration. Which pipeline change most effectively reduces release risk?

57 A resource-loaded schedule shows 140% utilization for a database specialist over two weeks. The tasks are technically parallel but share the same person. Which adjustment is most valid?

58 A risk register ranks a low-probability catastrophic failure below several frequent minor defects using only probability. What is the key evaluation error?

59 A project produces a large measurable saving but also creates an unpriced increase in regulatory exposure. Which change would most improve its cost-benefit analysis?

60 An AI model predicts 12 developers for a project, but its training data contains mostly small projects and no comparable distributed systems. What is the best management response?