Knowledge Area Test: Project Quality Management

Question 1

1. During a discussion with the quality department, Dave, a project manager, was told that as applied to projects, the terms “prevention” and “inspection” are synonymous. However, his understanding of the terms is different. What would you comment on this situation?

Answer 1

The project manager is correct. Prevention is about keeping errors out of the process; inspection is about keeping errors out of the customer’s hands.

The project manager is correct. Prevention is about keeping errors out of the process, whereas inspection is about keeping errors out of the hands of the customer. This is an important distinction, which the project management team needs to be aware of. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 274]

Question 2

2. You are auditing a project and find out that the project team is claiming to use a control chart to monitor and control their deliverables. When you reviewed one of these charts it seemed a little odd; although the average sample readings were being plotted against time, the chart didn’t highlight if the production process was under control. The control chart must contain:

Answer 2

Upper and lower control limits

Upper and lower control limits allow the control chart to serve its purpose of indicating when a process is in or out of control. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 304]

Question 3

3. You have recently deployed a business critical application that has crashed in the production environment. You have asked the development team to trace the root cause of this application failure. Which of the following can be used to help determine the cause(s) of the failure?

Answer 3

Ishikawa diagram

Cause-and-effect diagrams, also called Ishikawa diagrams, illustrate how various factors might be linked to potential problems or effects. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 293]

Question 4

4. You are currently discussing the quality management processes on your upcoming project with the team members. After a quick brainstorming session, a number of quality management tools and techniques have been tabled by the project team. A method that could be used during the Manage Quality process to identify the factors that may influence specific characteristics of a product under development is:

Answer 4

Design for X

Design for X is a set of technical guidelines that may be applied during the design of a product for the optimization of a specific aspect of the design. DfX can control or even improve the product’s final characteristics. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 295]

Question 5

5. A project needed to monitor the technical performance of the project and capture data related to how many errors or defects had been identified and how many remained uncorrected. Which of the following techniques should the project use?

Answer 5

Histogram

Histograms are bar charts that are used to graphically show numeric data. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 293]

Question 6

6. You are setting up a PMO in an organization that is new to this concept. Previously all project managers reported to their respective functional managers and enjoyed full authority over the section and application of project management methodology, tools and techniques. With the new PMO, you are now introducing concepts such as standardized project management practices and project audits. An effective quality audit should be:

Answer 6

Structured and independent

To provide the best results, a quality audit should be a structured process performed by an independent entity. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 294]

Question 7

7. Caitlin’s project is behind schedule. She is planning to crash the project by allowing overtime to the project team. This approach can bring additional risks to the project. Which of the following is not a valid risk in this scenario:

Answer 7

The project’s acceptance criteria might get updated.

Meeting customer requirements by overworking the project team may result in decreased profits, increased levels of overall project risks, employee attrition, errors, or rework. The project’s acceptance criteria should not get updated as a result of crashing. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 273]

Question 8

8. Your team has delivered a number of projects for your organizational clients and is known for speedy and reliable delivery of awarded projects. However, on the last few projects, there have been some customer complaints regarding the quality of some deliverables. To create quality products on all new projects, you are now considering investing in training the project team members and purchasing high-end equipment. Such costs are:

Answer 8

Prevention costs

Investments in training and equipment are examples of prevention costs. Appraisal costs include the testing, losses due to destructive testing, and inspections. Collectively, these costs are called Cost of Conformance. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 282]

Question 9

9. A first-time project manager is advised by an experienced project manager to plan for cost of quality. The first-time project manager is not sure which costs are included in the cost of quality. What would your advice be?

Answer 9

Cost of quality includes cost of conformance and cost of nonconformance.

Cost of quality (COQ) includes all costs related to quality management activities and quality issues incurred over the life of a product. It includes cost of conformance (prevention and appraisal costs) as well as cost of nonconformance (internal and external failure costs). [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Pages 282, 283]

Question 10

10. A project involved development of a high-speed, hard disk drive. As part of its testing, the hard disk was subjected to continuous operation at a high speed and an elevated temperature. At the end of the test, the hard disk was destroyed beyond use. The cost of such testing is usually classified as:

Answer 10

Appraisal costs

This type of testing is called destructive testing, and it is classified under appraisal costs. Along with other tests and inspections, it helps in assessing the quality of the product. [PMBOK® Guide 6th edition, Page 282]