APM PMQ 2024 exam questions and answer guidance

Welcome to another episode of Bytesize Project Management, where we dive into everything related to project, program, and IT service management. As always, I’m George, and I work for Training Bytesize, a family-run training provider with a passion for project management. Our podcasts will bring you top tips, such as how to pass your next accredited exam, through to unique industry insights and conversations with industry experts.

Enjoy!

Hi, you’re listening to Bytesize Project Management, a podcast about all things project, program and IT service management. As always, I’m George and I work for training Bytesize, a family-run training provider with a passion for project management. Our podcasts will bring you top tips such as how to pass your next accredited exam through to unique industry insights and conversations with industry experts.

Enjoy! Hi, my name’s Kerem, I work for training Bytesize and today I wanted to talk to you about the PMQ, specifically what the content of the PMQ will be. So if you were to do a self-study or come on a course with myself or whatever, there are 11 learning outcomes that you will be revising, expected to know for the exam at the end of the process.

So the 11 learning outcomes effectively cover the full syllabus and unlike PFQ, it’s a lot more kind of focused, I suppose, in that it’s not about buzzwords so much, it’s not about definitions, it’s more about understanding what and why we’re doing things. So the 11 learning outcomes, I want to go through them today with you. I’m not going to go through all the assessment criteria alongside them, the 67 assessment criteria, but effectively how this works is there are 11 learning outcomes and each one of these learning outcomes has its own set of criteria that will be used to assess whether you’ve got the knowledge.

Those assessment criteria effectively form the basis of the questions that they’re going to ask you in the real exam. So it’s really worth taking the time to have a look through the syllabus to get an understanding of what kind of questions they’re going to ask you on each learning outcome. Now there are different numbers of assessment criteria for each learning outcome, some of them have low, so for example, learning outcome number 6 has 16 assessing criteria, whilst learning outcome number 11 only has two assessment criteria.

So they are variable, but it does give you an idea of where there might be the opportunity to get some knowledge in there. So for example, 11, which is quality management, there are only two assessment criteria, which means it might be a good one to make sure you know because they’re going to ask that in some way, shape or form. Because the 11 learning outcomes will, as I said, form the basis of the exam, which means they’re going to not guarantee you, but I can say with confidence they’re going to cover the 11 learning outcomes in the actual exam.

So I want to talk about what those learning outcomes are. We’ll start with learning outcome number one. So understand how organisations and projects are structured.

So this will be things like the types of organisational structure, the assignment of people to tasks, roles and responsibilities of the project manager, roles and responsibilities of the project team, people around the project team such as the sponsor, users, etc. It’s going to be around those sorts of things, maybe around governance and things like that too. Learning outcome number two, understand project life cycles.

Kind of sounds like what it’s going to talk about on the tin really. It’s going to ask you about the differences between linear and iterative life cycles and hybrid life cycles, the benefits of structuring projects in a linear life cycle, what an extended life cycle is and the differences with a traditional project life cycle, reviews, it’ll be looking at things like that. Some of these learning outcomes, they sound like what they are.

So if it’s understand project life cycles, then it’s about the life cycles we can use in a project. They’re not trying to catch you out with these. And just as an aside as well, just as a heads up, in the real exam itself, it will above each question have the learning outcome that that question relates to.

OK, so there’s 16 questions in the exam. There’s 11 learning outcomes, which means they’re probably going to ask you a couple of these learning outcomes more than once as well. So again, look out for those ones where there’s loads of assessment criteria, there’s lots of opportunities for them to ask multiple questions on those.

But the third learning outcome, then understand the situational context of projects. So this is looking at things like how does a project differentiate to business as usual, projects, programs, portfolio management, what those are, why would we run a program, why would we run a portfolio, Pestle, SWOT and VUCA will be in here, so why we use those tools. Again, emphasis on why.

So the PMQ will traditionally never really ask you like PFQ will probably ask you what an acronym stands for, might say which of the following is a part of Pestle. PMQ will not do that. PMQ will generally be wanting to know how and why we use those tools.

OK, so it’s an essay style exam. You’ll need to elaborate on that. The fourth learning outcome, understand communication within project management.

This is going to be looking at sources of conflict, negotiation, the importance of developing a communications plan, so the benefits of a comms plan, barriers that can or barriers or things that can positively affect, sorry, barriers that can negatively affect communications or positively affect communications, things that can enhance communications or want to be discussed here. Learning outcome number five, understand the principles of leadership and teamwork. So something I’ve always liked about the APM is their attitude towards the importance of leadership and teamwork and putting that into their syllabus.

So this will be things like the importance of motivation, what makes a team effective, working within a virtual environment, leading a virtual team. It will ask you for models as well. So if you look at these assessment criteria in this learning outcome, you’ll often see little brackets saying using a model.

And that is expecting you to use a model in your answer. Now, that will be expressed very clearly in the exam itself, whether they want you to use a model for that particular question or not. But if it says in brackets in the assessment criteria using a model, then likely it’s going to be in the real exam, they want you to use a model and they will give you a list of suggested models as well in the assessment criteria.

Learning outcome six, which is the big one with 16 learning assessment criteria in it, is understand planning for success. So this is kind of a broad thing. So this will look at business cases, budgeting, investment appraisal techniques and value management will all sit under here, as well as stakeholder engagement will also be under here.

So there’s a mix of different things in this one. I would recommend this is one of the trickier learning outcomes. I said indicate this is one of the trickier ones simply because of the breadth it can cover.

Learning outcome number six, project scope management. So this is going to be about the importance of breakdown structures, what requirements processes involve, the importance of change, control and configuration management in managing the scope throughout the deployment phase. The eighth learning outcome, understand scheduling and resource optimization.

So how do we create and maintain a schedule? So that’s your critical path, your Gantt charts. What is a critical path versus what is a critical chain?

What’s smoothing, leveling, the differences between those what they’ll want to know. Assessment criteria number nine, understand procurement. So this is going to be about what is procurement, why we do it, what’s the supplier selection process and what involves what are the differences between types of contracts, differences between types of payment mechanisms will all be under this learning outcome.

Learning outcome number 10, understand risk and issue management in the context of project management. Risk process of benefits of managing risk, benefits of what the advantages of risk management, what is the risk process, what are the responses to risk management and why we do them, as well as what is an issue and how we manage issues. It’s going to be in this learning outcome.

And then the last one, learning outcome number 11, understand quality in the context of a project. So what is meant by quality planning? So what’s the components of the benefits of having a quality plan in a project?

And then the other one will be the differences between quality assurance and quality control. So it will likely be a differences question. So what is assurance and why we do that?

What is control and why we do that? And then you compare them against each other. So that’s going to be the content of the PMQ.

Definitely worth having a read of those before you come on the course. And certainly I will be, if you come on a course with me, I will be pushing you towards the syllabus as revision because it’s a great way to kind of checklist to see if you’re understanding things because you can work through the assessment criteria and say to yourself, do I know this? Yes or no.

And if you don’t, that’s where you need to revise. Thank you very much. See you soon.

So that’s it for this episode of Bytesize Project Management. We hope you’ll tune in again soon for another edition. Until then, you can find out more about the certifications and training packages we offer on our website, trainingbytesize.com.

Thanks very much for listening and we’ll see you again soon.