Free PMP Certification Practice Questions:


You have been recently hired to be a project manager at a bio-tech company to develop a new drug to treat pancreatic cancer. This project requires significant coordination across multiple departments, from R&D to Manufacturing.

You've attempt to gain the cooperation of the Chief Scientist (who reports to the V.P. of R&D) within the R&D department. You need her assistance to answer some questions regarding the clinical testing process of this new drug.

However, the Chief Scientist is un-interested in your project and provides little or no feedback to your questions. Since your project is NOT one of her priorities, she's been rather unresponsive to your questions.

What should you do in this situation?



A) Inform the VP of R&D of the performance issues. Establish the expectations of the Chief Scientist by communicating your project requirements to the VP of R&D. Cooperation from the VP of R&D is necessary in order to ensure performance from the Chief Scientist.

B) Communicate to the Chief Scientist that you'll be reporting her performance to the VP of R&D at the completion of the project.

C) Clearly define and establish the Chief Scientist duties and communicate to her that you are expecting her to meet expectations. Inform the Chief Scientist of the impact on lost customers and declining company revenues if she misses her deadlines.

D) Negotiate with the VP of R&D to establish expectations of the Chief Scientist and request to participate in the Chief Scientist's annual performance review.


  • [Ans: D]


    • Many projects require team members from various departments in the organization to work together on different aspects of the project. Unfortunately, resources can be scarce when multiple projects are competing for the same resources. In such cases, team members will likely remain loyal to their supervisor / functional manager.

    Since the functional supervisor often writes the performance reviews, team members will often have greater loyalty to the functional supervisor than to the project manager. In order to remedy this, the project manager can negotiate with the functional supervisor in contributing to the employee's performance review.

    To say the least, it takes skillful, diplomatic abilities to navigate through the organizational politics. Although project managers have little authority in functional organizations, with the right knowledge, they can succeed at their projects.





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