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PMP Practice: Estimate Work Effort and Resources

Question 14 of 15 in Develop an Integrated Project Management Plan

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Anouk van der Berg is managing a hybrid project for Wasabi Satellite Co to develop an AI-powered medical diagnostics platform. The regulatory compliance team requires extensive documentation and formal sign-offs at each phase gate to meet FDA approval requirements, while the software development team is using two-week sprints with minimal documentation to maintain velocity. The compliance director insists the project plan mandate comprehensive design specifications before any coding begins, but the development lead argues that user feedback from working prototypes is critical to validate the AI model's accuracy. Both stakeholders have escalated to Anouk, demanding she choose one approach. The CEO has made clear that both FDA approval and timely market entry are essential to the company's survival, and the project charter gives Anouk authority over delivery planning decisions.
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Correct answer: Design the project plan to use iterative development sprints for the AI core functionality while implementing phase gates with formal documentation reviews for regulatory-critical components, creating a governance framework that satisfies both compliance requirements and allows rapid iteration where permissible

Explanation

This scenario requires integrating predictive and adaptive approaches within a single project plan based on the nature of the work. The compliance components genuinely require formal phase gates and documentation to meet regulatory obligations, while the AI development work benefits from iterative experimentation and user feedback. A hybrid approach that tailors the methodology to each work stream allows the project to satisfy both constraints. The project manager creates an integrated plan that governs how the different approaches will interact, defines clear decision points for compliance reviews, and establishes when adaptive work must transition to documented deliverables. This is the essence of hybrid project planning — deliberately choosing and integrating different approaches based on work characteristics rather than applying one methodology uniformly. The project charter explicitly grants Anouk authority over delivery planning, making this her decision to make.

**Why not A:** Adopting the compliance director's approach of requiring complete design specifications upfront delays coding and then relies on adding developers to compress the timeline. Adding developers introduces coordination overhead and does not linearly reduce development time. This approach sacrifices the iterative validation that the AI model's accuracy requires.

**Why not C:** Escalating to the CEO contradicts the closing fact that the project charter gives Anouk authority over delivery planning decisions. The PM should exercise that authority by designing an appropriate approach rather than pushing the decision upward. Both stakeholders have legitimate needs that can be addressed through a well-designed hybrid plan.

**Why not D:** Following a pure agile approach with retroactive compliance documentation creates serious regulatory risk. FDA approval requires documentation created during the process, not after the fact. Retroactively generating compliance documentation may not satisfy audit requirements and could jeopardize the regulatory approval that is essential to the company's survival.

Key Concept

This question covers Estimate Work Effort and Resources under Develop an Integrated Project Management Plan (Process).

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