Sample PMP Questions - How To Pick The Right Answers

Hi, I'm Karl Pritchard, and we're going to be talking about sample PMP questions. I'm going to try and run through a few of the basic classics on the PMP exam, but I'm also going to try and point you in the direction of some people out there who offer practice tests and where you can find some of the good ones That are in existence because we all know there's plenty of trash out there. If you're looking for one set of good ones, obviously you should stay here at Exams PM. You should be checking out our practice questions. But once you burn them out, or once you get to the point where you're like, I know these, you do want to branch out and look at some other people's practice questions. The reason you want to do that is because frankly, you won't get questions all written by the same Person. In fact, one of my favorite websites that I direct people to in a lot of cases who are practicing for the PMP is Oliver Lehmann dot com. Oliver Lehmann is spelled L E H M A N N dot com. Oliver Lehmann dot com. Now Oliver is German. Yeah, Oliver is German. And the interesting thing is, I've had students complain. Carl, you sent us out to that Oliver Lehmann website. Did you know the guy's German? And it's like, yes, yes, I knew that. Yeah, but he writes like a German. Not all the people who write exam questions are Americans. So, we really do need to get that flavor mixed in with the rest of the stuff we're doing. Now, Oliver's is perhaps the highest quality external free website for gathering up additional questions. That's why I really like to recommend Oliver Lehmann's website. There are plenty of pay-per-view kind of websites out there for the PMP, but I'm only going to talk about just questions that you should be focused on. Well, If you're trying to save a nickel, because we are concerned about that here at Exams PM. Now, one other thing— books. Some of you feel compelled to go out and buy books, and there are authors you can trust. Rita Mulcahy is an author you can trust, God rest her soul. Her team, after her passing, took over writing her books, and her books are great, but there's a problem, quite frankly. What's that? Her questions in her books are too easy. If you take one of Rita's tests, one of her practice tests, you darn well better be getting over 90%. 90%? Yeah. If you're not getting over 90%, you are not ready to sit for the real thing. All of her layman's, by contrast, if you're getting over 80%, you're in pretty good shape. You're actually doing fairly well. Other authors you can trust: Andrew Crowe. And Crowe is spelled with an E on the end, so it's Andy Crowe. His book is good. It's got a lot of good content in it, and again, it has good practice questions. Andy's 80% or better is what you need to be getting on his practice tests. Ditto for Kim Heldman. Kim Heldman. Published by Cybex. Kim's book is also good for practice questions. And again, somebody want to be getting 80% or better on her practice tests. So there are plenty of sources out there for practice tests. And on the ExamSPM stuff, yes, you should be getting better than 80% on our practice tests. That's where you should be going and what you should be shooting for. Now, sample questions and basic strategies for answering questions. Sometimes when answering a question on the PMP exam, it'll show up on their little screen and it will be a sea of text. There'll be just a mountain of text there. Bill and Ted have not been getting along. You've been working with them for years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get down to the very bottom of the question, they'll say, What's the earned value? What? I thought this was a leadership or a teaming question. What do you mean, what's the earned value? Crap. Now I have to go back and reread the entire question. Well, good news. Good to be you. One of the nice things about this is it's one of the tricks for getting through this exam, particularly for those of you who fall into 2 categories. Category 1, the hyper thinkers. Some of you are hyper thinkers. You'll read a question and go, wait, wait, I thought it was B, but now I'm looking at it again. And if I were doing this project in Kuala Lumpur and I were doing it with an all-female team, hmm, then it could be D. And you will hyper think your way out of a right answer. Read the last sentence first. Hyperthinkers, this will keep you from reading all the fluff that's up top. And a lot of times it's just that— it's fluff. It's not beneficial. It's not helping you out. It's not doing you any favors. The beauty of this is you can actually skip the fluff, get to the heart of the question, and look down at the bottom and pick your best answer. Then read the fluff. Because when you go back to read the fluff later, sometimes you're going to go back and read the fluff and go, they were trying to trick me! How could these people do that? That's evil! That's insidious! That's PMI. Yeah, but let's look at the other group that this helps immeasurably. For many of you, English is a second language. English is a second language, and when it comes to reading the questions and the sample PMP questions, you should always read the last sentence first. Because for you, reading through that sea of text is much more work than it is for those of us for whom English is our native tongue. You know, I've been speaking English since the day I was born almost, so You quite frankly are challenged by this language. I'm not. You're at a disadvantage. You can minimize that disadvantage by starting with the last sentence. It speeds you through the exam because you only have 4 hours in which to accomplish 200 questions. Uh, let's see, that's 50 questions an hour. That's about a minute and 10 seconds a question. Yeah. And if you start thinking like that, you're going to make yourself completely crazy because some questions take more than a minute and 10 seconds and Some of them will zip right by in 10 or 15 seconds flat. So read the last sentence first. Now, just an example of a PMP exam question. The customer has been asking for a favor. You recognize it as a change to the contract. The change is minimal and your relationships with the customer have been extraordinarily strained. You found them difficult to deal with and And over time, you found the relationship to be downright contentious. In dealing with this customer, they have become progressively more and more pronounced in their efforts to say, if you don't get this contract right, you're never winning another contract with us. The customer has now requested a small, infinitesimally small change in the requirements. They'd like you to just do it as a, a favor. Should you: A, go ahead and make the change. B, follow the Byzantine change control process, forcing the customer to fill out the forms necessary to get the work done. C, kill the project. Or D, go ahead and make the change, And later on, fill in the paperwork for the customer. Now think about that. What would you do? Well, first off, if they just ask you, what should you do about a change, your answer would be clean, simple, and you're thinking about the heart of the question. You go through the Byzantine change control process. Oh, Karl, it sounds like I'm really going to tick this customer off. I really think in the interest of goodwill, I'd want to go ahead and just make the change, or make the change and document it later. No, you're a professional. Do you always follow the process? Of course you do. Every time? Every single time. Without fail? Without fail. This is a reference, however, to what's called Gold plating. Gold plating will be on your exam, and gold plating is giving the customer more than what is outlined in the original requirements. Do we ever gold plate? No, not a chance. We wouldn't think of gold plating. Gold plating is evil. It's not something we do as certified professionals. So as a certified professional, do I always follow the process? Uh-huh. And that's part of the philosophy of this exam. When you're dealing with exam questions, ask yourself philosophically, what would a skilled professional do? What would be expected of me as a skilled professional? And by virtue of your answers to those questions, You're going to find yourself in a much better space. So you always want to follow the process. That's one element that's going to be in there. Also, PMI has certain things that they love, and it does go to pragmatic project management. If you've ever dealt with your own legal or contracts department, if you get a legal or contracts question on the exam. Just so you know, there's no thinking like PMI for those questions. There's the law, and then there's unlawful behavior. Do we always follow the law as skilled project professionals? Of course we do. We always follow the law. We wouldn't think about not following the law. So if you get a question that takes you down that road, Do we always follow our contracts? Of course we do. It's what's written in the contract. We would never stray from the contract, ever. Even if the client begged us to, we always stick to what the contract says. We follow it like glue. Now let's talk about legal and let's talk about contracts. Here's a practice question for you. You're trying to deal with getting a new contract in a new city for a new technology that your organization has never worked with before. You're working with new subcontractors and new teams. In order to deal with this intensely new environment, you're going to want to use in your contract: A, standard clauses. B, Custom clauses designed to fit the special need. A blend of standard clauses and custom clauses designed to fit the need. You're going to want a clause-free contract. Well, we all know there is no D. That doesn't exist, so we can get rid of that. Yeah, that one's done. But that leaves us with, do we want standard clauses? A blend, or do we want custom clauses because everything is new, new, new, new, new? Think about it. If you've ever paid a visit to your own legal department, what do they want? Standard. What does your contracts department want? Standard. Why do they all want standard clauses? This is all new. Why do they want standard clauses? Because standard clauses are tested and proven. You don't have to worry about how they'll react in court. No, you don't have to sweat that at all. In fact, you're in really good shape if you're using standard clauses. So even though the question was designed to take you away from standard, look at the heart of the question. What kind of contract do you want to have? What kind of clauses do you want in your contract? Standard, standard, standard. All the rest of that stuff up top, that was fluff. That was fluff, and it was designed to get you away from the correct answer. So one of the keys to actually succeeding on the exam— and it's funny, I've had people in, in my classes over and over again who have said Carl, I think the most valuable thing I learned out of your whole class was simply read the last sentence first. Oh, thanks. I thought I shared a lot more than that, but okay, I'll take that if that's the one that actually rang truest for you. You do want to make sure that you're actually thinking through those aspects of the exam because when it comes to the questions you're given A lot of times the heart of the question gets lost in the rest of it. So read the last sentence first. Practice on practice tests besides ones that were written in the States, and be sure that you get yourself the opportunity to keep hammering away on questions until you're up over 80% on anybody's practice tests. You should not rely on the fact that maybe I'm just going to have a really good day on exam day. Sorry, that's probably not going to be your absolute best day. So you really want to go ahead and push hard to try and make sure you're digging into as many sample questions as you possibly can.