PMP Guide — Empowering Project Managers

Practice Questions

PMP Practice Questions

Scenario-based questions aligned with the 2026 PMP Exam Content Outline. All questions reviewed by a certified PMP before publishing.

175 questions found · page 1 of 7

1
ProcessAgileHard

Your agile team is building a healthcare platform that must comply with HIPAA regulations. The compliance officer insists on reviewing and approving all designs before development begins and all code before deployment, which creates a bottleneck taking 5-7 days per review. The team's sprint cycle is two weeks, and this delay means most stories cannot be completed within a sprint. The compliance officer is unwilling to attend daily standups or sprint ceremonies, stating they are too busy. Team morale is declining as they cannot meet sprint goals. What is the MOST effective approach to resolve this situation?

August 24, 2026

2
ProcessAgileHard

Your agile team has been working on a financial services application for three sprints. During the sprint review, the product owner asks the team to demonstrate a complex regulatory reporting feature that was not part of the sprint backlog. The team lead explains they focused on the agreed sprint goal instead. The product owner becomes frustrated, stating this feature is critical for an upcoming audit and should have been obvious to include. Stakeholders at the meeting appear concerned about the team's ability to deliver. What should the Scrum Master do to address this situation?

August 24, 2026

3
ProcessAgileHard

You are leading a distributed agile team working on an IoT platform across three time zones. The team uses Kanban with WIP limits, and throughput has been consistent at 12 items per week. Recently, a major enterprise client requested a committed delivery date for a specific feature set, which your sales team communicated would take four weeks. The product owner asks you to guarantee this timeline and wants daily status reports to track progress. Your team has historically avoided commitments because of the variability in item complexity. How should you respond to this request while maintaining agile principles?

August 24, 2026

4
ProcessAgileHard

An agile team is delivering a customer-facing mobile application using two-week sprints. After six sprints, velocity has been stable at 40 story points per sprint, but customer satisfaction scores are declining. Analysis shows that while features are being delivered on schedule, they often require significant rework in subsequent sprints after user feedback. The product owner has been accepting all stories that meet the acceptance criteria at sprint reviews. Technical debt is accumulating, and the team's Definition of Done includes unit testing and code review but no user validation. What is the BEST approach to improve customer satisfaction?

August 24, 2026

5
ProcessAgileHard

An agile team working on a cloud migration project has been using story points for estimation with planning poker. After 10 sprints, a new senior developer joins who strongly advocates for switching to ideal hours instead of story points, arguing that hours are more precise and easier for stakeholders to understand. The team is divided—some members agree with the new developer, while others want to keep story points because their historical velocity data would become irrelevant. The upcoming sprint planning is in two days, and the product owner is concerned about any changes that might impact the team's predictability during a critical release cycle. What should you do?

August 24, 2026

6
ProcessAgileMedium

During a sprint review, stakeholders see the completed user stories demonstrated but express concern that the features don't align with current market conditions, which have shifted significantly in the past month. The product owner acknowledges the market has changed but states that the product backlog was carefully prioritized at the project start and changing it now would be disruptive. The stakeholders request immediate changes to the roadmap. How should the team respond?

August 24, 2026

7
ProcessAgileMedium

An agile project team has been using story points and velocity for sprint planning. After six sprints, a new team member joins who is much more experienced than the rest of the team and significantly increases productivity. The team's velocity jumps from an average of 32 points per sprint to 48 points. The product owner sees this increase and immediately adds more items to the upcoming sprint based on the new velocity. However, two weeks later, the experienced team member accepts a position at another company. What should the team have done differently?

August 24, 2026

8
ProcessAgileMedium

A cross-functional agile team is developing a customer portal. After four sprints, the cumulative flow diagram shows that items are moving from 'In Development' to 'In Testing' quickly, but there is a growing bottleneck in the testing column, with an average of 12 items waiting for test completion while only 3-4 items are in development at any time. The testers report they are working at full capacity. What should the team do?

August 24, 2026

9
ProcessAgileMedium

Your agile team has completed three sprints of a mobile application project. During the sprint retrospective, team members report that they consistently cannot complete all planned story points because unexpected production support issues from a legacy system consume 30-40% of their capacity each sprint. The product owner is frustrated with the reduced velocity and wants the team to commit to more story points. What should the scrum master do first?

August 24, 2026

10
ProcessAgileMedium

Your Scrum team has a definition of done that includes code review, unit testing, and deployment to the staging environment. During sprint planning, the team realizes that one of the high-priority user stories will require changes to the production database schema, which according to organizational policy requires a change control board (CCB) approval that typically takes 5-7 business days. The sprint is only 10 business days long. What is the best approach?

August 24, 2026

11
ProcessHybridMedium

You are leading a pharmaceutical project using a hybrid model where clinical trial protocols follow FDA-mandated predictive processes, while patient recruitment and engagement strategies use adaptive methods with two-week iterations. During a retrospective, the adaptive team identifies that current recruitment messaging isn't resonating with target demographics and wants to pivot their approach. However, any changes to patient-facing materials require review under the predictive compliance process, which takes four weeks. The trial needs to meet enrollment targets within three months. What is the most appropriate action?

August 20, 2026

12
ProcessHybridMedium

Your organization is implementing a new financial system using a hybrid approach. Core system configuration follows a predictive waterfall methodology, while user interface customization uses Scrum. You are in month four of an eight-month project. The predictive stream reports on schedule with 50% completion, but the Scrum team's velocity has been declining for three sprints, and they've completed only 35% of anticipated story points. The product owner is frustrated with the pace. What should you do?

August 20, 2026

13
ProcessHybridMedium

You are managing a construction project using a hybrid approach where procurement and permitting follow predictive methods, while interior design decisions use an adaptive approach with frequent client feedback loops. The permits have been delayed by two weeks, which will impact the construction schedule. The client is eager to continue making design decisions in their regular review sessions. Your project budget has limited contingency remaining. How should you proceed?

August 20, 2026

14
ProcessHybridMedium

Your hybrid project uses waterfall for regulatory compliance activities and Scrum for product feature development. During sprint planning, the development team identifies dependencies on compliance documentation that won't be ready for another three weeks according to the predictive schedule. The product owner wants to prioritize high-value features that require this documentation. Several team members suggest working on lower-priority features first. What is the best approach?

August 20, 2026

15
ProcessHybridMedium

You are managing a hybrid project where the design phase follows a predictive approach while development uses Scrum sprints. The design team has completed 70% of their work according to the project schedule, but stakeholders are now requesting significant design changes based on early market feedback. The development team is ready to start their first sprint but needs finalized designs. The project sponsor is concerned about timeline impacts. What should you do first?

August 20, 2026

16
ProcessAgileEasy

You are the project manager for an agile marketing campaign development team. During sprint planning, the team has identified 15 user stories they believe they can complete based on their average velocity of 40 story points per sprint. However, two team members will be on vacation for one week during this three-week sprint. The total story points for the 15 stories equal 40. What should the team do?

August 16, 2026

17
ProcessAgileEasy

Your organization is transitioning to agile and you are leading your first Scrum project. At the end of the first sprint, the team has completed 80% of the committed user stories, but none of them fully meet the Definition of Done due to incomplete testing. The product owner is pressuring you to accept the stories as done so they can be demonstrated to stakeholders. What should you do?

August 16, 2026

18
ProcessAgileEasy

You are facilitating a daily standup for your agile development team. One team member mentions they are blocked because they are waiting for access to a testing environment that requires approval from the IT security team. This is the third day this issue has been raised. The team member asks what they should work on while waiting. What should you do as the Scrum Master or agile project leader?

August 16, 2026

19
ProcessAgileEasy

Your agile team is planning their next iteration. During the planning session, team members are estimating user stories using story points. A new developer on the team asks why the team uses story points instead of estimating in hours or days. The team lead explains that story points help with relative sizing. What is the primary benefit of using story points for estimation in agile projects?

August 16, 2026

20
ProcessAgileEasy

You are managing a software development project using Scrum. The team has just completed their second sprint and the product owner wants to see what has been developed. Several features have been coded and unit tested, but integration testing is still pending. The product owner asks when they can review the completed work. What should you do?

August 16, 2026

21
ProcessHybridMedium

You are managing a hybrid project to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The system configuration follows a predictive approach with detailed requirements and formal testing phases, while the change management and user adoption activities use an adaptive approach with iterative training sessions and feedback loops. Your project is currently in the user acceptance testing (UAT) phase for the predictive stream. Users participating in UAT are providing feedback that should inform the next iteration of training materials in the adaptive stream, but the training team says they have already locked their next iteration plan and starting new work would disrupt their sprint commitment. How should you proceed?

August 16, 2026

22
ProcessHybridMedium

Your hybrid project is developing a medical device with hardware components managed predictively due to manufacturing lead times and regulatory submissions, while the embedded software uses iterative development with monthly releases. You have just completed the third software iteration when the hardware team discovers a component obsolescence issue that will delay hardware delivery by two months. The software team has three more iterations of features planned that depend on the specific hardware configuration. What should you do?

August 16, 2026

23
ProcessHybridMedium

You are leading a hybrid software development project where infrastructure deployment follows a predictive methodology with formal change control, while application features are developed using Kanban. During a retrospective, the development team expresses frustration that infrastructure changes take 3-4 weeks to implement through the change advisory board (CAB), creating bottlenecks for feature delivery. The infrastructure team is concerned that bypassing the CAB process could create security and stability risks. Several features are now blocked waiting for infrastructure changes. What is the best approach to address this issue?

August 16, 2026

24
ProcessHybridMedium

Your organization is implementing a hybrid project to modernize its payment processing system. The core payment engine follows a waterfall approach with strict regulatory requirements and formal testing gates, while the mobile app interface is developed using Scrum with two-week sprints. You are currently planning the integration testing phase. The payment engine team requests a four-week notice before any integration point, while the Scrum team wants to integrate continuously as features are completed. How should you handle this conflict in integration approaches?

August 16, 2026

25
ProcessHybridMedium

You are managing a hybrid project implementing a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. The infrastructure and data migration components follow a predictive approach with fixed deliverables, while the user interface customization uses iterative sprints. During the third sprint review, stakeholders request significant changes to the reporting dashboard that would require substantial rework to the data warehouse already built in the predictive phase. The data warehouse is 80% complete and on schedule. What should you do first?

August 16, 2026