Defined as the difference between earned value (EV) and planned value (PV), ______ is used to indicate if work is ahead of or behind the planned schedule.

a. planned value (PV)

b. earned value (EV)

c. schedule variance (SV)

d. cost variance (CV)

In ______, the client may be required to pay a contractor an amount equal to a defined bonus or penalty.

a. cost plus contract with a fixed fee

b. incentive contract

c. fixed price contract

d. cost plus contract with incentives

One way to leverage project audits to ensure that projects deliver on their value proposition is to logically organize a project into a number of sequential phases. At the end of each phase, an evaluation of the project determines whether the project should proceed, should be recycled (i.e., the current stage repeated), or should be terminated. This is known as ______.

a. project auditing

b. taking a stage-gate (also known as toll-gate or phase-gate) approach

c. project reserve analysis

d. conducting performance assessments for project team members

The work in a centralized project is completed entirely by ______.

a. the client organization

b. contractors and subcontractors

c. project managers

d. mid-management

In the ______, a fixed duration and budget is specified, but the scope of the project is only generally

indicated; scope is not required as part of the contract.

a. optional scope contract

b. cost plus contract with a fixed fee

c. fixed price contract

d. unclear scope contract

It is said that to be successful in project management, a project manager must have a number of key competencies, skills, and abilities. Of the following, ______ is the project management competency that relates to a PM's ability to perceive all of the relationships and interconnections in the project content, project team, project organization, and the organization's environment.

a. proactive

b. of high personal integrity

c. tolerant under stress

d. a systems thinker

One of the most important decisions faced by a client organization is to decide which tasks will be outsourced and which tasks will be performed in-house by the client. Of the following factors, ______ is the least influential in deciding upfront whether to subcontract parts of a project to outside parties.

a. cost

b. speed

c. quality

d. relationship to subcontractors

A fixed price contract is typically used for ______.

a. projects in which the scope of the project is well-defined and the resulting quality can be measured objectively

b. projects in which the scope of the project is ill-defied and there is ambiguity in how quality will be measured

c. agile or other adaptive project environments

d. waterfall or other predictive project environments

Some clients automatically eliminate proposals with the highest and lowest costs under an assumption that these bids represent unrealistic outliers. This practice is sometimes criticized on the basis that these bids may reflect a more efficient producer or a higher quality product or process. In general, each proposal should be evaluated ______.

a. against the others from a cost perspective only

b. but the highest and lowest cost proposals should be disqualified

c. against the others on the basis of how quickly the work can get done only

d. on the basis of how well it addresses the requirements and constraints specified in the proposal

When a task exhibits only ______ variation, it's said that the task is in an "in-control" state.

a. common cause

b. short-term

c. long-term

d. special cause