PMP - Process (50% of the exam) - Section 2.2

Plan and manage quality and assess and manage risks, identifying threats and opportunities, prioritising them, and applying fit-for-purpose responses.

Determine quality standards required for deliverables, build quality into the work rather than inspecting it in, and recommend improvements through continuous-improvement approaches. Identify and analyse risks qualitatively and quantitatively, prioritise by probability and impact, and select appropriate threat responses (avoid, transfer, mitigate, accept, escalate) and opportunity responses (exploit, share, enhance, accept).

Risk responsesProbability and impactQuality managementRisk register

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleProcesshard

A predictive infrastructure project has identified a threat that a legacy database may corrupt records during a planned migration, assessed as moderate probability and high schedule impact. The project manager decides to run several trial migrations on a copy of the data and add automated integrity checks before the live cutover, aiming to reduce both the chance and the severity of corruption. Which risk response does this course of action represent?

AAvoiding the risk, because the trial runs remove the migration from the project scope entirely.
BTransferring the risk, because the integrity checks shift responsibility for any corruption onto the tooling vendor.
CMitigating the risk, because the actions lower the probability and impact while the project still owns the threat. Correct
DAccepting the risk, because the team proceeds with the migration and simply monitors for any corruption.

Reducing a threat's probability or impact while retaining the risk is mitigation, distinct from avoid, transfer, and accept. Mitigation is defined by reducing the probability or impact of a threat to an acceptable level while the project keeps ownership of the risk, which distinguishes it from avoidance, transfer, and acceptance.

Why A is wrong: This is tempting because trial runs feel like eliminating danger, but avoidance removes a threat by changing the plan so it cannot occur; the live migration still goes ahead, so the threat is reduced, not avoided.

Why B is wrong: Transfer is tempting because a tool is involved, but transfer hands the impact and ownership to a third party through a contract or insurance; using a tool internally does not move liability to the vendor.

Why C is correct: Mitigation reduces the probability or impact of a threat to an acceptable level while the project retains the risk, which is exactly what trial migrations and automated integrity checks achieve here.

Why D is wrong: Acceptance takes no proactive action beyond monitoring or holding a reserve; here the team actively changes how the migration is performed, which is more than acceptance.

See more PMP practice questions, answers explained.

Exam traps in Process

Answers that look right on this material and are not. Each one is a distractor from a different question in the PMP bank for this domain.

Perform quantitative risk analysis, modelling the combined effect of the recorded risks on cost and schedule with a simulation.
Why it is wrong: Quantitative analysis is tempting because it produces hard numbers, but it is heavier, is usually reserved for the risks that qualitative analysis has already flagged as high priority, and cannot rank 45 risks quickly.
Exploiting the opportunity, because the training guarantees the library will be adopted on every future feature.
Why it is wrong: Exploit is tempting because both aim to capture the upside, but exploit makes an opportunity certain to occur; training raises the odds rather than guaranteeing adoption, and 'every future feature' overstates the effect.
Perform control quality by inspecting completed deliverables against their measurable acceptance criteria.
Why it is wrong: Control quality is tempting because it also concerns quality, but it inspects the products or deliverables for conformance rather than checking whether the processes themselves are being followed.

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