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PMP Certification Practice Test
Our mock exam is structured around the PMI's three main domains: Process commands half of the layout at 50%, People/Team leadership occupies 42%, and the broader Business Environment rounds it out at 8%. Given that process execution underpins both traditional waterfall and modern Agile methods, you will find Scrum ceremonies and Kanban WIP parameters mixed alongside traditional critical path and risk register exercises.
About this Project Management Professional (PMP) PMP practice test
Earning your Project Management Professional status is a test of strategic leadership, not terminology recall. PMI's exam consists of complex, scenario-based dilemmas featuring realistic conflicts: a key sponsor withdrawing funding, team dynamics fracturing mid-sprint, or critical regulatory changes. Since their modern update, half of these scenarios test agile and hybrid approaches alongside waterfall processes. To prepare successfully, you must learn to think like a PMI-certified servant leader. These model questions dissect the exact situational reasoning PMI expects you to employ on the day of the exam.
PMP Certification Practice Test sample questions
These starter questions help you launch a pmp mock test quickly. Swap them with your own worksheet, notebook, or textbook questions any time.
1. A project manager discovers a team member has been padding activity estimates to create schedule buffer. What should the PM do first?
- A) Report it to the PMO
- B) Have a private conversation with the team member to understand their reasoning
- C) Remove the buffer from all estimates
- D) Escalate to the sponsor
2. During a sprint review, the product owner is dissatisfied with a delivered feature. What is the best next step?
- A) Redo the sprint
- B) Add the feature to the backlog for refinement in the next sprint
- C) Escalate to the project sponsor
- D) Close the project
3. A project is 20% over budget at the halfway point. The project sponsor asks for a revised completion forecast. Which formula does the PM use?
- A) EAC = AC + (BAC - EV)
- B) EAC = BAC / CPI
- C) EAC = EV - AC
- D) EAC = BAC - EV
4. A key stakeholder is consistently absent from project meetings. What is the best approach?
- A) Continue without them
- B) Escalate to senior management
- C) Understand their constraints and find alternative engagement methods
- D) Remove them from the stakeholder register
5. In a Scrum project, who is responsible for prioritising the product backlog?
- A) Scrum Master
- B) Project Manager
- C) Product Owner
- D) Development Team
6. A change request is submitted after the project baseline is set. What should the PM do?
- A) Reject it immediately
- B) Implement it if it seems minor
- C) Evaluate its impact and submit it through the integrated change control process
- D) Ask the sponsor to approve it verbally
7. What is the purpose of a risk register?
- A) To list all project costs
- B) To document identified risks, their probability, impact, and planned responses
- C) To track defects
- D) To record stakeholder complaints
8. A project team in an agile environment is struggling with unclear requirements. What tool would help most?
- A) Gantt chart
- B) Work breakdown structure
- C) User stories with acceptance criteria
- D) Network diagram
9. What does a negative Schedule Variance (SV) indicate?
- A) The project is under budget
- B) The project is ahead of schedule
- C) The project is behind schedule
- D) The project is over budget
10. A project manager is leading a cross-functional team with members from different departments. Two members have a conflict over task ownership. What should the PM do?
- A) Decide for them
- B) Ignore it and let it resolve naturally
- C) Facilitate a discussion to reach mutual agreement
- D) Escalate to their respective managers
11. What is the primary purpose of a lessons learned register?
- A) To document team performance
- B) To capture knowledge gained during the project for use in future projects
- C) To track risks
- D) To log change requests
12. In an agile project, velocity is used to:
- A) Measure team morale
- B) Track defects
- C) Forecast how much work the team can complete in future sprints
- D) Calculate the budget
13. What does RACI stand for?
- A) Resources, Activities, Costs, Issues
- B) Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
- C) Risk, Assumptions, Constraints, Issues
- D) Reviewed, Approved, Communicated, Implemented
14. A project manager notices the team is consistently missing sprint goals due to scope added mid-sprint. What is the best response?
- A) Extend the sprint length
- B) Allow interruptions as business needs change
- C) Protect the sprint and add scope to the next sprint backlog
- D) Reduce the sprint goal each time
15. What is the critical path in a project schedule?
- A) The most expensive sequence of tasks
- B) The longest sequence of dependent tasks determining the earliest project completion
- C) The path with the most resources
- D) The path with the highest risk
16. A new government regulation will affect the project deliverable. What should the PM do first?
- A) Proceed with the original plan
- B) Assess the impact and raise a change request
- C) Escalate to the legal team only
- D) Inform the sponsor and close the project
17. What does a Kanban board primarily visualise?
- A) Project costs
- B) The flow of work and WIP limits across workflow stages
- C) Team velocity
- D) Risk exposure
18. During project execution, a team member reports a quality defect in a deliverable. What should the PM do?
- A) Ignore it if the deliverable is otherwise acceptable
- B) Document it, investigate root cause, and implement corrective action
- C) Assign blame to the responsible team member
- D) Inform the customer immediately without investigating
19. What is the purpose of an issue log?
- A) To document risks
- B) To track and manage problems that have already occurred and need resolution
- C) To log stakeholder communications
- D) To record change requests
20. A project sponsor wants to add a major new feature three weeks before the planned delivery date. What is the PM's best response?
- A) Implement it immediately to satisfy the sponsor
- B) Decline without discussion
- C) Analyse the impact on scope, schedule and cost and present options to the sponsor
- D) Ask the team to work overtime
21. What does the term "servant leadership" mean in an agile context?
- A) The leader does all the work
- B) The leader focuses on removing obstacles and enabling the team rather than directing them
- C) The leader defers all decisions to stakeholders
- D) The leader manages the team through strict process control
22. Which agile ceremony is specifically designed for the team to inspect its process and identify improvements?
- A) Sprint Planning
- B) Daily Scrum
- C) Sprint Review
- D) Sprint Retrospective
23. A project is delivering on time and budget but the customer is dissatisfied. What should the PM investigate first?
- A) Team performance
- B) Whether requirements were properly captured and validated with the customer
- C) The cost baseline
- D) The risk register
24. What is configuration management used for?
- A) Managing team communication
- B) Tracking and controlling changes to project documents and deliverables
- C) Managing vendor contracts
- D) Assigning team roles
25. In earned value management, what does CPI < 1 indicate?
- A) The project is ahead of schedule
- B) The project is spending more than planned for the work completed
- C) The project is under budget
- D) The project has a positive schedule variance
26. What is the primary benefit of co-location in a project team?
- A) Reduced travel costs
- B) Improved communication and collaboration through physical proximity
- C) Easier performance reviews
- D) Simpler procurement
27. A project manager receives a request to violate procurement regulations to expedite a delivery. What should the PM do?
- A) Comply if the sponsor approves
- B) Refuse and escalate through appropriate channels, following the PMI Code of Ethics
- C) Comply if no one will find out
- D) Delay the decision until after delivery
28. What is the purpose of a stakeholder engagement assessment matrix?
- A) To list stakeholder contact details
- B) To compare current versus desired stakeholder engagement levels and plan actions to close the gap
- C) To assign stakeholders to project tasks
- D) To document stakeholder complaints
29. Which estimating technique uses analogy with similar past projects?
- A) Parametric estimating
- B) Three-point estimating
- C) Analogous estimating
- D) Bottom-up estimating
30. What does definition of done (DoD) mean in Scrum?
- A) The criteria the product owner sets for acceptance
- B) A shared agreement of what it means for a backlog item to be considered complete by the team
- C) The project close-out checklist
- D) The sprint goal
Syllabus & Core Topics
A seasoned project manager understands that managing scope is directly tied to managing stakeholder emotions and team morale. Gaining a unified, high-level perspective of how change control, resource allocation, and conflict management overlap will serve you far better than treating them as isolated checklist items.
Why this practice page is useful
Most candidates realize too late that PMP is a test of managerial judgment, not rote recollection. Working through these realistic crisis scenarios trains you to instinctively choose the balanced, PMI-approved course of action: assess the root cause first, act second, and only escalate when all options are exhausted.
Agile frameworks can be highly intimidating if you come from a traditional waterfall background. We integrate Kanban cycle times and Scrum team dynamics right into our practice questions so you master hybrid vocabulary as smoothly as predictive processes.
Tackling stakeholder conflicts under pressure is a guaranteed way to lose easy points. By practicing these ethically complex scenarios, you will develop a sharp nose for stakeholder analysis and conflict resolution principles.
Answer key & quick explanations
Short answers for the sample questions above. Use this to self-check before generating a fresh AI-built mock test.
1. A project manager discovers a team member has been padding activity estimates to create schedule buffer. What should the PM do first?
B) Have a private conversation with the team member to understand their reasoningPadding estimates is a symptom, and the PM's first move should be a private, direct conversation to understand why the team member feels the need for buffer — it may point to a deeper issue like unclear requirements or past unrealistic deadlines — rather than jumping straight to escalation or unilaterally stripping the buffer out. Reporting to the PMO or sponsor skips understanding the root cause first, and simply removing padding without a conversation doesn't address why it happened.
2. During a sprint review, the product owner is dissatisfied with a delivered feature. What is the best next step?
B) Add the feature to the backlog for refinement in the next sprintRefining and adding the feature back into the backlog keeps the work visible and prioritized through the normal agile process, rather than disrupting the current sprint or escalating a routine product feedback moment. Redoing the sprint wastes the completed work, escalating to the sponsor is disproportionate for normal iterative feedback, and closing the project is wildly out of scope for this situation.
3. A project is 20% over budget at the halfway point. The project sponsor asks for a revised completion forecast. Which formula does the PM use?
B) EAC = BAC / CPIEAC = BAC / CPI is the standard forecasting formula used when the team assumes future work will continue at the same cost-efficiency (CPI) already observed, which is the typical assumption absent other information — exactly the situation described. EAC = AC + (BAC − EV) assumes future work will occur at the planned rate rather than the current CPI trend, and the other two options aren't valid EAC formulas at all.
4. A key stakeholder is consistently absent from project meetings. What is the best approach?
C) Understand their constraints and find alternative engagement methodsRather than assuming disengagement, a good PM investigates the underlying reason a stakeholder can't attend and adapts the engagement approach (different meeting times, async updates, a different point of contact) to fit their real constraints. Continuing without them risks missing important input, escalating immediately is premature without first understanding the issue, and removing them from the register ignores their legitimate stake in the project.
5. In a Scrum project, who is responsible for prioritising the product backlog?
C) Product OwnerIn Scrum, the Product Owner owns the product backlog and is responsible for ordering it by value and priority, ensuring the team always works on the most important item next. The Scrum Master facilitates the process and removes impediments, and the Development Team executes the work — neither owns backlog prioritization, and there is no 'Project Manager' role defined in Scrum itself.
6. A change request is submitted after the project baseline is set. What should the PM do?
C) Evaluate its impact and submit it through the integrated change control processOnce a baseline is set, any change — no matter how small it seems — should go through integrated change control, where its impact on scope, schedule, cost, and quality is properly evaluated before it's approved or rejected. Rejecting it outright or approving it as 'minor' without evaluation skips that assessment, and verbal sponsor approval bypasses the documented change control process altogether.
7. What is the purpose of a risk register?
B) To document identified risks, their probability, impact, and planned responsesA risk register documents each identified risk along with its probability, potential impact, and the planned response strategy, serving as the central reference for managing risk throughout the project. It isn't used to track costs, log defects, or record stakeholder complaints — those belong in separate project artifacts.
8. A project team in an agile environment is struggling with unclear requirements. What tool would help most?
C) User stories with acceptance criteriaUser stories paired with clear acceptance criteria give the team a shared, testable definition of what 'done' looks like for each piece of work, directly addressing ambiguity in requirements. A Gantt chart and network diagram show schedule and dependencies rather than requirement detail, and a work breakdown structure decomposes deliverables into work packages but doesn't clarify what each requirement actually needs to satisfy.
9. What does a negative Schedule Variance (SV) indicate?
C) The project is behind scheduleSchedule Variance (SV = EV − PV) is negative when earned value is less than planned value, meaning less work has been completed than was scheduled by this point — in other words, the project is behind schedule. SV doesn't measure budget directly (that's Cost Variance), so options about being under budget or over budget describe a different metric entirely.
10. A project manager is leading a cross-functional team with members from different departments. Two members have a conflict over task ownership. What should the PM do?
C) Facilitate a discussion to reach mutual agreementFacilitating a discussion lets both team members air their perspectives and reach a resolution they both buy into, which tends to produce a more durable outcome than a decision imposed from outside. Deciding for them removes their ownership of the resolution, ignoring the conflict risks it festering, and escalating to their managers is usually a heavier-handed step than a PM facilitating directly should need to take first.
11. What is the primary purpose of a lessons learned register?
B) To capture knowledge gained during the project for use in future projectsA lessons learned register captures what went well, what didn't, and what should be done differently, so that knowledge can inform future projects rather than being lost when this one ends. It isn't primarily a performance-tracking, risk-tracking, or change-request-logging tool — those are handled by other dedicated artifacts.
12. In an agile project, velocity is used to:
C) Forecast how much work the team can complete in future sprintsVelocity measures how much work (typically in story points) a team has completed per sprint historically, and that history is used to forecast how much work they can realistically take on in upcoming sprints. It isn't a measure of morale, a defect-tracking metric, or a budgeting calculation — those are tracked through different means.
13. What does RACI stand for?
B) Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, InformedRACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed — a matrix used to clarify exactly what role each stakeholder plays for a given task or deliverable. The other expansions listed aren't the standard RACI framework.
14. A project manager notices the team is consistently missing sprint goals due to scope added mid-sprint. What is the best response?
C) Protect the sprint and add scope to the next sprint backlogProtecting the sprint from mid-sprint scope changes, and instead routing new work into the next sprint's backlog through normal refinement and planning, preserves the team's ability to reliably meet the goal they committed to. Extending the sprint or allowing ongoing interruptions undermines the whole point of a fixed sprint boundary, and reducing the sprint goal each time treats a process problem as if it were a capacity problem.
15. What is the critical path in a project schedule?
B) The longest sequence of dependent tasks determining the earliest project completionThe critical path is the longest chain of dependent activities through the schedule network, and it determines the earliest possible completion date for the project — any delay on the critical path delays the whole project. It isn't defined by cost, resource count, or risk level; those are separate schedule and risk considerations that can exist on or off the critical path.
16. A new government regulation will affect the project deliverable. What should the PM do first?
B) Assess the impact and raise a change requestA new regulation is effectively a new requirement affecting the deliverable, so its impact should be properly assessed and formally raised as a change request through the standard process, even though the trigger is external rather than internally requested. Proceeding as if nothing changed ignores a real compliance risk, and skipping straight to legal or closing the project are both disproportionate compared to properly assessing impact first.
17. What does a Kanban board primarily visualise?
B) The flow of work and WIP limits across workflow stagesA Kanban board visualizes the flow of work items through defined stages (like To Do, In Progress, Done) and typically enforces work-in-progress (WIP) limits at each stage to prevent overloading the team and expose bottlenecks. It isn't primarily built to show costs, velocity, or risk exposure — those are tracked through other tools.
18. During project execution, a team member reports a quality defect in a deliverable. What should the PM do?
B) Document it, investigate root cause, and implement corrective actionThe right response to a reported quality defect is to document it, investigate its root cause, and put a corrective action in place, following a structured quality management approach rather than reacting emotionally or superficially. Ignoring it risks the issue recurring or growing, assigning blame doesn't fix the underlying process problem, and informing the customer before investigating skips understanding what actually happened and what the real fix should be.
19. What is the purpose of an issue log?
B) To track and manage problems that have already occurred and need resolutionAn issue log tracks problems that have already materialized during the project and need active resolution and ownership, distinct from risks (which haven't happened yet). It isn't used to document risks, log stakeholder communications generally, or record change requests — those live in their own separate registers.
20. A project sponsor wants to add a major new feature three weeks before the planned delivery date. What is the PM's best response?
C) Analyse the impact on scope, schedule and cost and present options to the sponsorGiven a late-stage major scope addition, the responsible move is to analyze its real impact on scope, schedule, and cost, and bring that analysis back to the sponsor as options rather than a unilateral yes or no. Implementing it immediately ignores the real trade-offs, declining without discussion shuts down a legitimate conversation the sponsor deserves to have, and asking the team to simply work overtime treats a planning problem as a workload problem.
21. What does the term "servant leadership" mean in an agile context?
B) The leader focuses on removing obstacles and enabling the team rather than directing themServant leadership in agile means the leader's primary job is removing obstacles, creating the conditions for the team to do its best work, and supporting their decisions rather than directing every action from above. It's the opposite of a leader doing all the work personally, deferring every decision to stakeholders, or managing purely through rigid process control.
22. Which agile ceremony is specifically designed for the team to inspect its process and identify improvements?
D) Sprint RetrospectiveThe Sprint Retrospective is the ceremony specifically dedicated to the team reflecting on how the last sprint went — process, tools, collaboration — and identifying concrete improvements for the next one. Sprint Planning sets up the upcoming sprint's work, the Daily Scrum synchronizes daily progress, and the Sprint Review inspects the product increment with stakeholders, not the team's own process.
23. A project is delivering on time and budget but the customer is dissatisfied. What should the PM investigate first?
B) Whether requirements were properly captured and validated with the customerWhen delivery hits the schedule and budget targets but the customer still isn't happy, the most likely explanation is a gap between what was built and what the customer actually needed — so the PM should check whether requirements were properly captured and validated with the customer in the first place. Team performance, the cost baseline, and the risk register don't directly explain a satisfaction gap when the project otherwise hit its targets.
24. What is configuration management used for?
B) Tracking and controlling changes to project documents and deliverablesConfiguration management is the discipline of tracking and controlling changes to project documents, deliverables, and their versions, ensuring everyone is working from the correct, current baseline. It isn't primarily about team communication, vendor contracts, or assigning roles — those are managed through other processes.
25. In earned value management, what does CPI < 1 indicate?
B) The project is spending more than planned for the work completedA Cost Performance Index (CPI) below 1 means the project has earned less value than it has spent for the work completed so far — in other words, it's spending more than planned relative to the work actually delivered, which signals a cost overrun trend. CPI below 1 doesn't indicate being ahead of schedule, under budget, or a positive schedule variance — those describe different metrics or the opposite condition.
26. What is the primary benefit of co-location in a project team?
B) Improved communication and collaboration through physical proximityCo-location puts team members physically near each other, which tends to improve informal communication, faster problem-solving, and collaboration compared to distributed teams. It isn't primarily a cost-saving, performance-review, or procurement benefit — those are unrelated or, in the case of travel, often the opposite effect of co-location.
27. A project manager receives a request to violate procurement regulations to expedite a delivery. What should the PM do?
B) Refuse and escalate through appropriate channels, following the PMI Code of EthicsPMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct requires a PM to refuse unethical or non-compliant requests and escalate them through proper channels, regardless of pressure from a sponsor or the convenience of expediting delivery. Complying because a sponsor approves it, because 'no one will find out,' or simply delaying the decision all fail to meet that ethical obligation.
28. What is the purpose of a stakeholder engagement assessment matrix?
B) To compare current versus desired stakeholder engagement levels and plan actions to close the gapA stakeholder engagement assessment matrix compares each stakeholder's current level of engagement against the level the project actually needs from them, highlighting gaps the PM should plan actions to close. It isn't a contact directory, a task-assignment tool, or a place to log complaints — those are different, separate project artifacts.
29. Which estimating technique uses analogy with similar past projects?
C) Analogous estimatingAnalogous estimating uses the actual duration, cost, or effort from similar past projects, scaled or adjusted for known differences, to quickly estimate a current project. Parametric estimating uses a statistical relationship between variables and historical data, three-point estimating combines optimistic/pessimistic/most-likely estimates into a weighted average, and bottom-up estimating builds an estimate from the smallest work packages upward — all distinct techniques from analogy-based estimating.
30. What does definition of done (DoD) mean in Scrum?
B) A shared agreement of what it means for a backlog item to be considered complete by the teamDefinition of Done is a team-wide, shared agreement on the criteria a backlog item must meet before it can be considered truly complete — such as tested, reviewed, and documented — ensuring consistent quality across all completed work. It isn't solely the product owner's personal acceptance criteria for one item, a project close-out checklist, or the sprint goal, which describes the sprint's overall objective rather than a completion standard.
Curriculum Mapping & Learning Guide
Use this breakdown to identify which skills each question tests and guide post-test review.
People & Team Dynamics
Cultivating emotional intelligence, employing servant leadership to motivate cross-functional groups, and managing stakeholder communication.
Process — Predictive
Administering schedule compression, mapping critical paths, tracking earned value margins, and performing integrated change control.
Process — Agile & Hybrid
Refining backlogs, structuring sprint goals, enforcing Kanban WIP limits, and blending waterfall stages with iterative delivery.
Business Environment
Assessing regulatory compliance, measuring benefit-realization plans, and managing cultural shifts across the wider organization.
Project Management Professional (PMP) PMP units covered
- Chapter 1: People: Fostering high-performance teams, resolving interpersonal friction, and setting up collaborative sprint spaces.
- Chapter 2: Process — Predictive: Establishing cost/schedule baselines, analyzing risk registers, and driving formal change control.
- Chapter 3: Process — Agile: Enforcing product backlog refinement, defining story acceptance criteria, and mapping velocity metrics.
- Chapter 4: Process — Hybrid: Scaling process frameworks to fit enterprise complexity and combining predictive milestones with iterative feedback loops.
- Chapter 5: Business Environment: Managing regulatory compliance, tracking benefits realization, and supporting organizational change initiatives.
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