Communication Management Test!

D. Face-to-face communication is the most effective means of resolving conflict. This fits an overall theme that direct, clear, and personal communication is favored for project managers. If you guessed 'A', go find a place to hide in shame, or at least go sit in time out for a few minutes. 'B' and 'C' might seem like appropriate choices in some situations, but face-to-face is still more effective.

D. Good communication skills are the most important skills a project manager can have! Project managers spend more time communicating than anything else.

In the communication model, it is the sender that encodes, and the receiver decodes the message.

B. Noise is anything that interferes with the transmission and understanding of a message. If you guessed 'D', then you were, indeed, guessing.

A. Communication on schedule slippage, cost overruns, and other major project statuses should be formal and in writing. That doesn't mean you can't pick up the phone to soften the blow, but the formal and written aspects of the communication are what count here.

B. Plan Communications Management is the process of determining how the overall communication process will be carried out. It is the general plan for communications. None of the other three answers were terms used in this book, but the real giveaway was that only one answer 'B' was even the name of a process.

B. Did you get tricked by this one? Manage Communications doesn't always end when acceptance has occurred, so this is the answer that doesn't fit. Some stakeholders will need information distributed on the closure of the contracts and projects. 'A' is true because Manage Communications is an executing process. 'C' is true because Manage Communications carries out predetermined communication, but also will be used to respond to unplanned requests from stakeholders. 'D' is true because Manage Communications is the process that executes the communications management plan.

A. Marie is practicing good listening skills to make sure she communicates well with her customer.

B. Push communication is communication that is pushed out (think bulk email), but the drawback is that there is no reliable confirmation by the receiver that it was received or understood.

A. Within the communication model, acknowledgment only indicates confirmation of receipt. It does not mean that the receiver understood the message or agreed with the message.

A. Your communications skills are used as a tool in Manage Communications. 'B' and 'D' should have been easy to eliminate since they are not real processes. 'C' is a real process but it is not the correct answer.

C. This information would be contained in the communications management plan.

C. One of the key, deciding factors when selecting the right communication technology is how sensitive or confidential the information is. 'A' might look like a good answer at first, but not all government projects are particularly confidential or sensitive.

13. B. This is a hard scenario, but be prepared for questions like this on the exam. The reasoning behind answer 'B' is this: a project manager should always communicate accurate information and should always report the truth. 'A' is wrong because it isn't about getting your team member to sign off. Accurate information is more important than accountability. 'C' is incorrect because it is not the team's job to go to these meetings. They should be executing the work on the project. 'D' is incorrect because waiting only postpones the situation and delays getting accurate information to the stakeholders. Choice 'B' is best in this case because it is the only one that gets accurate information to the stakeholders as quickly as possible.

B. Earned value analysis is a communication tool, and it's all about how the project is doing against the plan. 'A' is incorrect because "success" involves more than good earned value.

D. Even if you didn't memorize all of the inputs, tools, and outputs, it may have been intuitive to you that the issue log was tied to the monitoring and controlling process here. It is one of the documents used as an input into Monitor Communications.

B. Most of a person's communication takes place non verbally. It is body language that carries much of the message. 'A' is the opposite of the correct answer. 'C' is incorrect since most of the communication is nonverbal, but not written (documented). 'D' may well be true for some people, but it is not the correct answer here.

A. The expected response you will receive is not part of the communications management plan. The communications management plan focuses on how you will communicate to stakeholders and not how they will communicate to you. 'B', 'C', and 'D' are all typically part of the communications management plan.

D. If you tried to take a shortcut here, chances are you missed this one and guessed 'C'. If there were 4 people, there would have been 6 communication channels. 9 more would create 13, which translates to 78 communications channels. The question is asking how many additional channels were created, so the answer is 78 - 6 = 72.

B. The WPI is the main output of Monitor Communications. It provides information on how communication is performing compared to the plan.

C. Each issue should be assigned to an owner and be assigned a target completion date. 'A' is incorrect since a project could be closed (successfully) and still have outstanding issues. Sometimes the issues are out of the project manager's control. 'B' is incorrect since the issue log is not for the stakeholders — it is for the project manager to use to manage issues. 'D` is incorrect because issues are managed within the context of a project. If you were even considering creating a separate project to manage issues, your project is probably beyond hope.

B. Project reporting is a tool of the Manage Communications process. 'C' would have been a good choice years ago when such a process existed, but it is not a process for this edition of the exam.

D. This is important. Lessons learned focus on variances from the plan and what would be done differently in the future in order to avoid those variances.

B. Many people incorrectly guess 'A' for this question, but meetings are classified as informal verbal - even when the subject matter is important!

C. Project communications are the main output of the Manage Communications process. This is the place for updated earned value information such as the estimate at complete. 'A' was the only other answer that contained a term that is used in this book, and it is not an appropriate match for this question.