CAPM Practice Questions (2026): 10 Free Certified Associate in Project Management Questions with Answers

A project is temporary — it has a defined start and end — and produces a unique result. Designing and launching a new website fits both: it ends when the site ships. Payroll (A), the help desk (B), and restocking (D) are repetitive, ongoing operations with no planned end, so they are operations, not projects.

The project manager leads the team day to day and is accountable for meeting objectives and balancing constraints. The sponsor (A) funds and champions the project but does not run it. A functional manager (C) owns a department and its resources. The PMO (D) sets standards and governance across projects, but does not manage the individual project’s delivery.

PMBOK 7 shifted from the old 49 processes and knowledge areas to a principles-based model: 12 principles plus 8 performance domains, emphasizing value and tailoring. It embraces both predictive and adaptive approaches, so B is wrong. It does not add a process group (C), and it never mandates Scrum or any single method (D).

A phase gate (also called a stage gate or kill point) is a go/no-go review at the end of a phase, used to confirm the project should proceed before more money is spent. A milestone chart (A) only displays key dates. A retrospective (C) is an agile improvement meeting. A change request (D) proposes a specific modification — it is not the phase decision itself.

The critical path is the longest-duration path through the network; it sets the shortest time the project can finish, and its activities have zero total float, so delaying any of them delays the whole project. It is not about the number of activities (A) or their cost (C). Paths with positive float (D) are non-critical — they can slip without moving the end date.

The Product Owner owns and orders the Product Backlog and is accountable for maximizing the value the team delivers. The Scrum Master (A) is a servant leader who coaches the team and removes impediments. The Developers (C) build the increment each Sprint. Scrum defines no “sponsor” role (D) — it has exactly three accountabilities.

Velocity is the amount of work (usually story points) a team completes per sprint; averaging recent sprints gives an empirical forecast for planning. CPI (C) is an earned-value cost metric from predictive projects. Cyclomatic complexity (A) measures code structure, and NPS (D) measures customer loyalty — neither forecasts delivery.

A survey/questionnaire collects structured input from many dispersed stakeholders quickly and cheaply. Thirty individual interviews (B) or shadowing everyone (C) do not scale in time or cost. A single-site prototype walkthrough (D) would exclude the remote stakeholders, defeating the purpose.

A requirements traceability matrix links each requirement backward to its origin (a business need or objective) and forward to design, build, and test cases — so nothing is lost and every requirement stays justified. A RACI chart (A) maps roles to activities. A risk register (C) tracks risks. A stakeholder engagement assessment matrix (D) compares current versus desired engagement, not requirements.

Acceptance criteria are the specific, testable conditions a single story must meet for the Product Owner to accept it. The definition of ready (B) says when a story is ready to enter a sprint, not when it is done; and the definition of done applies to the increment broadly, not one story’s acceptance. A change control board (C) governs predictive change requests. A WBS (D) decomposes predictive scope into deliverables.