Unit 4: Activity Planning and Risk Management - Practice Quiz

1 What is the main purpose of defining project objectives?

2 What does a project schedule primarily show?

3 Which activity is part of managing a project task?

4 Why should a project manager regularly review the project plan?

5 In a network planning model, what do links between activities usually represent?

6 What does the time dimension add to an activity plan?

7 What is the critical path in a project network?

8 What should normally happen before a proposed project change is approved?

9 When is it appropriate to readjust project milestones?

10 What is a project risk?

11 Which of the following is an example of a technical risk?

12 Which risk response aims to reduce the probability or impact of a threat?

13 What is the main output of risk identification?

14 Which two factors are commonly considered when assessing a risk?

15 What is a contingency plan?

16 Why are risks monitored throughout a project?

17 Which event is most likely to create schedule risk?

18 In PERT, which three estimates are used to calculate expected activity time?

19 What does Risk Adjusted Portfolio Performance (RAPP) consider when evaluating a portfolio?

20 What is a basic purpose of diversification in a project portfolio?

21 A software project has the objective "Improve system performance." Which revised objective is most suitable for activity planning?

22 A project schedule shows that testing must begin on 10 June, but coding is now expected to finish on 14 June. What should the project manager do first?

23 A developer reports that a five-day task is 80% complete after four days, but the remaining work depends on an unresolved technical issue. What is the best management response?

24 During execution, actual effort is consistently 15% higher than planned effort. Which action best supports effective management of the plan?

25 In a project network, tasks B and C can start only after task A finishes. Task D can start only after both B and C finish. Which dependency structure represents this situation?

26 A task has an earliest start of day 6 and an earliest finish of day 10. If project days are counted using finish minus start duration, what is the task duration?

27 A network has three paths with durations of 18, 23, and 20 days. Assuming no scheduling constraints other than the network dependencies, which statement is correct?

28 A customer requests an additional reporting feature halfway through development. What should happen before the feature is added to the project baseline?

29 A mandatory regulatory update makes the original release date impossible, even after reasonable schedule compression. What is the most appropriate response?

30 Which situation is a project risk rather than an issue?

31 A project depends on a new framework that the development team has never used. How should this risk primarily be categorized?

32 A project avoids possible incompatibility by replacing an experimental component with a proven supported component. Which risk response is being used?

33 A project manager wants to identify risks involving interfaces between development, security, operations, and an external supplier. Which technique is most appropriate?

34 Risk A has a 30% probability of causing a $40,000 loss. Risk B has a 60% probability of causing a $15,000 loss. Based only on expected monetary value, which risk has greater exposure?

35 A risk plan states that a backup supplier will be contracted if the primary supplier misses the prototype delivery date. What does the missed delivery date represent?

36 A high-priority risk was mitigated, but a smaller chance of failure remains. How should the project manager handle the remaining exposure?

37 A non-critical task has 3 days of total float and may be delayed by 5 days. If no corrective action is taken, what is the likely schedule effect?

38 A task has an optimistic estimate of 4 days, a most likely estimate of 7 days, and a pessimistic estimate of 16 days. Using PERT, what is its expected duration?

39 Project X and Project Y both have an expected return of 12%, but X has substantially lower uncertainty and downside exposure. Under a risk-adjusted portfolio performance approach, which decision is most reasonable?

40 A software portfolio contains five projects that all depend on the same external cloud platform. Which change would most improve diversification?

41 A project has three stated objectives: deliver by 30 June, keep expenditure below $800,000, and reduce production defects by 40%. Midway through execution, forecasts show that at most two objectives can be fully achieved. Which action best preserves rational project control?

42 A schedule contains activities A (4 days) and B (6 days), both starting immediately; C (3 days) follows A; D (5 days) follows A; E (4 days) follows both B and C; and F (2 days) follows both D and E. What are the project duration and critical path?

43 At a status date, a task package has planned value , earned value , and actual cost , all in thousands. Which diagnosis is correct?

44 A six-month project is replanned monthly. In month three, several future work packages are decomposed in greater detail, but the approved scope and completion date remain unchanged. How should the plan be managed?

45 Testing may start two days after coding starts, but deployment may start only after both coding and testing finish. Which precedence model represents these constraints most accurately?

46 A critical activity has normal duration 10 days at $20,000 and crash duration 6 days at $32,000. Another critical activity has normal duration 8 days at $18,000 and crash duration 6 days at $26,000. Assuming linear crash costs and unchanged criticality, what is the minimum direct cost of shortening the project by 5 days?

47 Two paths in a network have deterministic durations of 24 and 22 days. An activity on the 22-day path is delayed by 3 days, while an activity on the 24-day path is shortened by 1 day. Assuming no other interactions, what is the new critical-path situation?

48 A customer requests a feature that would add business value but consume all schedule reserve. The team can technically implement it without exceeding the current target date. What should the project manager do first?

49 A mandatory regulation advances the compliance deadline by four weeks. Delivering every planned feature by that date is infeasible, but a compliant core product is feasible. Which adjustment is most defensible?

50 A supplier has already missed a contractual delivery date, and the resulting integration delay may cause a release-date breach. How should these conditions be classified?

51 A project uses a mature framework, but a proposed data-protection law may require redesign, and the only privacy architect may resign. Which classification best distinguishes these two risks?

52 A project depends on an unstable third-party API. The team purchases a guaranteed service tier and also builds a local queue that allows 24 hours of disconnected operation. Which response strategies are being combined?

53 Which risk-register statement most clearly follows the cause-event-effect structure needed for actionable identification?

54 Risk A has a 20% probability of a $100,000 loss. Risk B has a 50% probability of a $30,000 loss. They are mutually exclusive: if A occurs, B cannot occur. What is their combined expected monetary loss?

55 A database migration risk has a named owner and a mitigation action. If rehearsal throughput falls below 8,000 records per minute, the project will switch to a staged migration using reserved infrastructure. What does the throughput threshold represent?

56 Encryption is introduced to mitigate data-exposure risk, but it creates a new possibility that transaction latency will exceed the service target. How should the latency risk be managed?

57 A Monte Carlo schedule analysis produces completion dates with August, September, and September. A contractual date of 2 September is proposed. Which interpretation is valid?

58 A critical activity has optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic estimates of 4, 7, and 16 days. Using PERT, what are its expected duration and variance?

59 A project portfolio is evaluated using , where is expected benefit, is cost, is expected loss, and is capital at risk. Portfolio X has million, while Y has million. Which portfolio has the better RAPP?

60 Two equally funded projects each have return variance . With equal portfolio weights, which choice produces the lowest portfolio variance?