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Quiz: IS Project Management

Test your understanding of how IS organizations charter, plan, schedule, monitor, and close projects.

1. A project charter primarily exists to:

  1. Document detailed task assignments for week one
  2. Formally authorize the project, name the sponsor, define the high-level scope and objectives, and grant the project manager authority to apply resources
  3. Replace the need for any further planning
  4. Track defects discovered during testing
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The correct answer is B. The project charter is the foundational document that authorizes the project and defines its high-level objectives, scope, sponsor, and project manager. It is not a detailed plan, a substitute for planning, or a defect tracker — it is the official "go" signal that lets the project manager assemble the team and begin formal planning.

Concept Tested: Project Charter

2. The "project triangle" describes the tension between which three constraints?

  1. Scope, time, and cost
  2. People, process, and technology
  3. Hardware, software, and network
  4. Plan, build, and run
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The correct answer is A. The project triangle (sometimes called the iron triangle) holds that scope, schedule, and budget are interdependent — squeeze any side and at least one of the other two must move. Quality is sometimes added as the fourth dimension. The other groupings are real concepts in IS but are not the triangle.

Concept Tested: Project Triangle

3. A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) decomposes:

  1. The corporate budget into quarterly allocations
  2. The project's deliverables and work into progressively smaller, manageable components
  3. The set of all employees by department
  4. The data warehouse into dimensional tables
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The correct answer is B. A WBS hierarchically decomposes the total scope of work into deliverables and work packages small enough to estimate, assign, and track. It is the foundation for scheduling, costing, and risk analysis. The other options describe unrelated artifacts.

Concept Tested: Work Breakdown Structure

4. The Critical Path Method identifies:

  1. The longest sequence of dependent activities through a project, which determines the shortest possible project duration
  2. The shortest sequence of activities that can be completed in parallel
  3. The set of activities that should be skipped to save time
  4. The activities the sponsor cares about most
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The correct answer is A. The critical path is the longest dependency chain in the project network; any delay on the critical path delays the entire project. Activities off the critical path have float (slack) and can absorb some delay without impacting the end date. Identifying the critical path tells the PM where attention is most leveraged.

Concept Tested: Critical Path Method

5. A risk register captures:

  1. Only risks that have already become problems
  2. Identified risks with their probability, impact, owner, and planned mitigation or response
  3. The list of approved vendors
  4. The set of completed deliverables
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The correct answer is B. A risk register is a living document that catalogs identified risks along with their probability, impact, owner, response strategy, and current status. It is the primary artifact of risk management, and reviewing it should be a regular part of the project rhythm. The other options describe unrelated artifacts.

Concept Tested: Risk Register

6. An agile team uses a burndown chart to track:

  1. The amount of work remaining over the course of a sprint, plotted against the ideal trajectory
  2. The total amount of code written in the project
  3. The number of defects logged in production
  4. The cost of cloud resources per day
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The correct answer is A. A burndown chart plots remaining work (story points or hours) against time within a sprint, comparing actual progress to the ideal straight-line trajectory. It surfaces early whether the team is on track to meet the sprint goal. The other options measure different things (LOC, defects, cost) that may have their own dashboards.

Concept Tested: Burndown Chart

7. Earned Value Management (EVM) primarily helps a project manager answer the question:

  1. Should we use Scrum or Kanban?
  2. Are we ahead of or behind schedule and budget, given how much of the planned work has actually been completed?
  3. Which programming language should the team use?
  4. What is the price of competitor products?
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The correct answer is B. EVM combines planned value, earned value, and actual cost to compute schedule and cost variance and indices, giving an objective answer to "are we on track?" relative to the plan. It is widely used in waterfall and hybrid projects. The other options are unrelated to EVM's purpose.

Concept Tested: Earned Value Management

8. A project manager wants to formally evaluate, compare, and authorize a portfolio of competing project proposals against strategic priorities. This activity is:

  1. Sprint planning
  2. Project closure
  3. Project portfolio management
  4. Resource leveling
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The correct answer is C. Project portfolio management evaluates the entire candidate-and-active project set against strategy, risk, capacity, and benefits, and decides which to start, stop, or continue. Sprint planning is intra-sprint; closure is end-of-project; resource leveling smooths workloads. Portfolio management operates at the organizational level above individual projects.

Concept Tested: Project Portfolio Management

9. A team consistently finishes 35 story points per two-week sprint over the past five sprints. This metric is the team's:

  1. Cycle time
  2. Lead time
  3. Velocity
  4. Throughput cost
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The correct answer is C. Velocity is the average amount of work (typically story points) a team completes per sprint and is used to forecast how much can be planned into upcoming sprints. Cycle time and lead time measure individual item durations; "throughput cost" is not a standard term. Velocity is team-specific and should never be compared across teams.

Concept Tested: Velocity

10. A project formally closes after go-live. The team conducts a structured review of what worked, what did not, and what should change for future projects. This activity is best described as:

  1. A risk register update
  2. A sprint planning session
  3. A change control board meeting
  4. A lessons-learned session feeding into project closure
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The correct answer is D. Lessons-learned sessions during project closure capture institutional knowledge — successes, failures, surprises — for future projects. Done well, they fuel organizational learning. Done badly, they produce a document nobody reads. The other options are valid project activities but do not match the described purpose.

Concept Tested: Lessons Learned