TOPIC: Free PMP® Exam Sample Question of the Week

Hello everyone! Here is this week's free PMP® exam sample question from the PM Exam Simulator.

You have just taken over a project to overhaul the company's telecommunications network. During your first week, you determine that the engineers spend at least 80% of their time responding to unexpected requests for information from different project stakeholders. Because of these interruptions, your engineers cannot focus on their assigned project activities, which is resulting in frequent network outages. What should you do first?

A. Immediately tell the engineers to stop responding to unexpected requests since it is not their responsibility
B. Push the engineers to respond to all the requests faster so that they can perform their assigned project activities
C. Ask the engineers to forward all stakeholder inquiries to you so that they can focus on their originally planned tasks
D. Review the communications management plan to understand how stakeholder requests should be handled

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HINT: What should a project manager do when issues are recognized?

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Answer and Explanation:
The correct answer is D.

Monitor Communications is the process of monitoring and controlling communications throughout the entire project lifecycle to ensure the information needs of the project and its stakeholders are met. In this scenario, the stakeholders are reaching out directly to your project engineers, which is not the most effective use of their time. To determine why this is happening, you need to review the communications management plan to determine how stakeholder inquiries are to be managed. With this information, you can best judge whether the stakeholders are violating that agreement and proceed to make whatever changes are needed to shield the project engineers from the time-consuming requests for information and develop a better communications protocol for stakeholder information requests.

Details for each option:

A. Immediately tell the engineers to stop responding to unexpected requests since it is not their responsibility
Incorrect. The communications plan should first be reviewed to understand how stakeholder requests were planned to be handled. Plus, there is nothing specifically stated in the scenario indicating that engineers should not be responding to stakeholder requests.

B. Push the engineers to respond to all the requests faster so that they can perform their assigned project activities
Incorrect. This is not a feasible plan of action because it can result in team member burnout and a disgruntled team.

C. Ask the engineers to forward all stakeholder inquiries to you so that they can focus on their originally planned tasks
Incorrect. This could be one way to approach the problem. However, you need first to learn how stakeholder requests were planned for in the communications management plan.

D. Review the communications management plan to understand how stakeholder requests should be handled
Correct. The communications management plan contains the documented procedures outlining how to respond to stakeholder requests for information and should be reviewed first. If a change in communication flow is needed, then the Perform Integrated Change Control process should be followed to initiate the change.

Reference: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, Project Management Institute Inc., 2017, Page(s) 359, 388-389