Free Mock Exam Quetions for the PMP and CAPM Exams

Free Mock Exam Quetions for the PMP and CAPM Exams

If you were good at taking tests in school, your pride will get knocked down a few notches when you take an exam for a Project Management Institute (PMI)* exam.

PMI does not make the exams easy. Besides the obvious challenge of thoroughly knowing A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)*, you need real-world experience and knowledge in quite a few areas not mentioned in the PMBOK Guide.

Project Managers (PMs) deal with ambiguity and original problems every day. Frequently:

• Inadequate information exists on which to base a decision.
• Superfluous information challenges the Project Manager to discern between relevant and irrelevant factors.
• One must select the "best" option rather than expecting a "right" option to present itself.
• Subjective factors cause even experienced and knowledgeable people to disagree over the "Best" option.

Accordingly, exam questions (or at least, mock exam questions) often require students to:

• Infer facts not stated.
• Pick the relevant factors out of an excess of information.
• Weigh answers that do not include the "right" answer.
• Read the minds of the test writers.

 

Preparing for the Impossible Exam

No, the exams are not really impossible, but you will gain a lot from taking as many as you can, after studying...

• The PMBOK Guide, 5th Edition
• A good supplemental PMP exam prep text such as one of those by Head First or Rita Mulcahey
• At least 30 Contact Hours of instruction

To get the most out of mock questions, keep your books handy. Look up the answers. Look up the wrong answers, too, because if you incorrectly chose X, you probably do not understand the situation in which X would have been the right answer.

Also, LinkedIn and Google Plus have groups where people love to discuss tough practice questions. Do you remember the essay questions your teachers used to assign? If you just look up an answer, you won't completely understand why it is right and you will probably forget it. When you take part in study forums and explain your answers, your comprehension jumps. The harder the question, the more important it is to do your homework.

Free PMP and CAPM Mock Exam Question Sources

Caution: Many web sources of free exam questions have outdated questions from the Fourth, and even from the Third editions of the PMBOK Guide. Make sure you do not waste your time learning obsolete material. You will get very frustrated with wrong answer keys and outdated terminology if you use the wrong question.

At this time, I only need to list one source: Cornelius Fitchner's PMP Exam Simulator- My Top Recommended Web Sites for Free PMP Exam Sample Questions page. Cornelius, one of the top PMP instructors on the web, lists his seven favorite sources of free mock exam questions. If you are not broke like I am, consider using his online training and exam materials. They are top notch and very reasonably priced.

(I receive no compensation for any endorsements. I'm willing to reconsider, though!)

If you would like to suggest other sources, please let us know in the comment box, below.

* A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), PMI, PMP, and CAPM are all protected registered trademarks or are copyright belonging to the Project Management Institute, Inc. And that is probably copyrighted or trademarked, too.

(c) Copyright 2014, Richard Wheeler

Overview of Business Analysis

This post is part of the series, A Curriculum for Business Analyst Self-Study. The course outline is copied with minor modifications from the catalog of LearningTree International. The purpose of copying this outline was to create a framework for posting links to resources that address the listed topics.

Overview of Business Analysis

Defining Business Analysis

• The business analysis discipline
• Key roles and responsibilities
• Distinguishing between business analysis and related disciplines
• The business analysis framework
• The framework and the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®)
• Industry best practice from the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®)
• The business analysis environment
• Traditional project management (US, PMI)
• Traditional project management (Euro, PRINCE2)
• Frank Turley: PRINCE2 Pre-Course (YouTube)
• Agile project management
• Business Analyst career roadmap
• Bridging the Gap: Free step-by-step planning course and planning guide

Capturing Business Requirements

• Gathering business needs
• Performing needs-analysis
• Choosing the best elicitation technique
• Soliciting enterprise-level contextual analysis
• Elicitation techniques
• Verifying the steps to gather information
• Recording and confirming elicitation results

Conducting Enterprise Analysis

• Analyzing the business landscape
• Categorizing and prioritizing business needs and issues using affinity diagrams
• Assessing business capabilities and gaps
• Detecting problems and finding opportunities
• Exposing root causes of problems
• Finding opportunities for growth
• Identifying elements of the initial solution scope
• Developing action-oriented business initiatives to address business needs and opportunities
• Measuring the feasibility of options
• 2x2 analysis grid
• Prioritization matrices
• Anticipating project benefits and costs
• Documenting critical project parameters
• Building SMART project objectives
• Specifying critical project elements and deliverables

Planning and Monitoring the Business Analysis Process

• Planning for requirements analysis
• Documenting assumptions, ground rules and templates
• Producing a requirements development plan to guide and manage the process
• Building the communication plan
• Performing stakeholder analysis
• Identifying key stakeholders
• Analyzing the impact stakeholders have on a project
• Developing a change management process
• Baselining your plan
• Following the defined change management process
• Managing the change control process

Managing and Communicating Requirements

• Analyzing requirements
• Verifying, prioritizing and organizing requirements
• Specifying the requirements document
• Identifying key relationships using traceability
• Executing the communication plan
• Addressing common pitfalls typically encountered during requirements development
• Validating the requirements document with key stakeholders
• Managing stakeholder agreement and conflict

Assessing and Validating Solutions

• Allocating requirements
• Optimizing business value
• Evaluating dependencies between requirements
• Assessing organizational readiness
• Identifying organizational capability gaps
• Defining business and technical organizational impacts
• Developing Business Analysis Competencies
• Going beyond the mechanics of analysis
• The IIBA® Business Analysis Competency framework

1. Overview of Business Analysis (this page)

2. Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving

3. Business Process Improvement

4. Finance and Accounting for Business Analysts

5. Effective Business Cases

6. Modeling

7. Developing User Requirements

8. User & System Requirements for Software Development

9. Business Analysis for Agile Projects

10. Agile Software Development and Modeling

11. Agile Test-Driven Development

12. IIBA® CBAP® and CCBA® Certifications

A Curriculum for Business Analyst Self-Study

Updates
2 May 2014 - Added link to Overview of Business Analysis

Study Topics for Becoming a Business Analyst or a Better BA

This group of pages may take a long time to develop.

My past as a Systems Engineer overlapped the duties of a Business Analyst (BA) and of a Project Manager (PM). I studied to fill my gaps in project management, but that career path seems blocked. Hiring managers in most industries want industry-specific experience, and Democrat administrations tend to decimate Defense during peacetime. In other words, there's no going home, and new opportunities are blocked.

Another relatively short learning curve for me is business analysis. BA skills might get me into a new industry as well as overlap with those of project management. That gives me an upward career path, once I get my foot in another industry. BA it is!

To secure such a position, I needed a plan for self-study. Obviously, one needs the right skills. One also needs the confidence to apply for positions. My problem: I have no budget for buying expensive books and taking courses.

Just learning what subjects I needed to study was a major task. When I look at that list, it's overwhelming! I needed a plan that would let me attack personal change, one adaptation at a time.

This plan should work for any self-study.

1. Create a list of competencies required for the position.
2. Evaluating how my skills match the qualifications of the desired position.
3. List the subjects I need to master.
4. Prioritize the list. Factors may include frequency of the skill in job descriptions, utility for other lines of work, how much experience I already have in the subject, and whether other topics build upon the subject.
5. Find information resources for each subject.
6. Create tasks that will help me to internalize knowledge and turn it into skills.
7. Assign realistic due dates. I'm using Excel because, compared to Project, it's easier to add checkboxes, notes, and links to resources.

A Business Analyst Curriculum

Of the many sources of BA curricula, I found the course descriptions in LearningTree's catalog most helpful. The following comes thence; I will modify it as I get more information.

On this page, I list only subjects derived from LearningTree's course titles. More detailed information will follow in separate posts because I want to point to information resources in the same space, and that will make things pretty crowded.

• Overview of Business Analysis
• Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving
• Business Process Improvement (BPI)
• Finance and Accounting for Nonfinancial Managers
• Building an Effective Business Case
• Modeling for Business Analysis
• Developing User Requirements
• User & System Requirements for Successful Software Development
• Agile Business Analysis
• Agile Software Development and Modeling
• Agile Test-Driven Development
• IIBA® CBAP® and CCBA® Certification Exam Prep

Depending on the environment where you wish to work, a different order might serve you better. I feel that this order flows from foundational to advanced subjects. However, many software engineering organizations might require placing a higher priority on Agile topics; and sometimes, one needs the higher-level knowledge in order to appreciate "lower-" level knowledge.

What topics would you add?

Notes

Thanks to Shan Suhail Iqbal, IT Business Analyst at Allstate, for mentioning Bridging the Gap in LinkedIn's Business Analyst Professional group. Bridging the Gap provides "virtual courses, books, and work aids to people who want to start careers in business analysis, find more success in their current business analyst position, or find a new business analyst job." Many of the resources are free.

Articles and White Papers for Project Managers, Business Analysts, Requirements Managers, Systems Engineers

Articles and White Papers for Project Managers, Business Analysts, Requirements Managers, Systems Engineers... and a few Others, too

• Project Times - white papers and articles
• Eclipse Project Portfolio Management - Blog entries, white papers, video-on-demand
• Pashun Consulting Ltd. - Free Scrum ebook in several parts; links are emailed
• Your suggestion here

Free Glossaries for Agile PM, BA's, and Teams

Free Glossaries for Agile

• ScrumStudy
• Agile and Scrum Glossary and in App form for Android
• SBOK™ Guide Glossary and in App form
• Your Suggestions Here

Other Resource for Agile

• Next

Thanks to:

• Kenley Williams, who, I guess, works for some business that ScrumStudy hired to create links to their website. I cut "her" some slack. Even though "her" comment was irrelevant in the place where "she" left it, "she" doesn't do it a lot and the comment was useful.
• Your Name Here, hopefully with more sincere thanks

Templates for Project Management, Business Analysis, Requirements Management, Systems Engineering

• Project Times - Templates developed in partnership with Karl Wiegers of Process Impact
• Bright Hub PM - Articles and templates for Project Management

Recorded Webinars for Systems Engineers, Business Analysts, and Project Managers

Free, On-demand Webinars for Systems Engineers, Business Analysts, and Project Managers

• ASPE-SDLC Training, a division of Fortis College - Over 250 webinars; some recordings are no longer available, but supporting material can still be downloaded
• Business Analyst Times - Over 150 webinars
• Eclipse Project Portfolio Management - 11 webinars in project, PMO, program, and portfolio management; for additional resources (some are video), click on Knowledge Base
• Project Times - Over 150 webinars
• Sensible PM Hangouts - Almost 40 presentations by Mark Phillipy