PMP 2026 People Domain: What the Exam Tests

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1. You have inherited the responsibility assignment matrix for Halcyon Insurance's claims triage project, which introduces a machine learning model to sort incoming claims. The matrix holds nine rows, one per major activity, and five columns: project manager, data science lead, claims operations manager, model risk reviewer and the external AI vendor. Reviewing it, you find three rows carrying an accountable mark against two different roles at once. Two rows carry no accountable mark at all. One further row, model bias testing, shows the vendor and the data science lead as informed only, with no responsible mark anywhere on the row. The remaining three rows are clean. The model risk reviewer joined four weeks ago and has not yet seen the matrix. How many rows need correcting before the matrix is fit to use?

   1. Three, because duplicated accountability is the only defect that actually stops work from proceeding.
   2. Four, counting the two rows with no accountable role and the two rows on which the external vendor appears.
   3. Five, counting the duplicated and the missing accountabilities but accepting the bias testing row, which the vendor is contracted to perform.
   4. Six, being the three rows with two accountable roles, the two rows with none, and the bias testing row where nobody is responsible.
   Show the answer and explanation

   Answer: D. A responsibility assignment matrix built on RACI obeys two structural rules: exactly one accountable role per row, and at least one responsible role per row. Apply them and the count is arithmetic. Three rows have two accountable marks, which means no single person can be held to the outcome and the two named will each assume the other has it. Two rows have none, so nobody answers for them. One row, model bias testing, has informed marks only, which means the activity has no owner performing it at all. Three plus two plus one is six, leaving the three clean rows. The first option treats duplicated accountability as the only real defect, which understates the danger of a row with nobody accountable. The second option counts vendor involvement as a defect in itself; an external party can legitimately be responsible, and appearing on a row is not an error. The third option is the closest miss and the most instructive: it accepts a row where the vendor is merely informed on the reasoning that the contract covers it, but a contract does not populate a matrix, and on an AI-enabled project bias testing is the last activity you want performed by assumption. ECO Domain II, Process, task 'Plan and manage resources'; PMBOK Guide Eighth Edition, Resources and Governance Performance Domains.

2. A general insurer is restructuring its claims division while a project automates first notification of loss. The head of claims operations, whose team is expected to shrink by about thirty roles, has questioned the business case in the last three governance forums and has stopped sending representatives to design sessions, so two design decisions have been taken with no operational input. He is well regarded internally and has direct access to the chief executive. The sponsor is the chief operating officer. The project manager has met him twice in group settings and never alone. The stakeholder engagement plan records him as resistant, and the vendor's user research report arrived on time last week. What should the project manager do next?

   1. Report the missed design sessions to the sponsor as a stakeholder risk and ask for attendance to be made mandatory across the division.
   2. Change his classification in the stakeholder engagement plan to a target of supportive, and increase the frequency and the detail of the reports sent to him.
   3. Offer him the co-chair of the design authority so that his ownership of the automated process is visible to his own managers.
   4. Meet him privately to understand what he stands to lose and what would make the change workable, then take anything beyond your authority to the sponsor.
   Show the answer and explanation

   Answer: D. Resistance with a reason behind it is not managed by process. The head of claims operations is losing about thirty roles, he is credible inside the company, and he has access to the chief executive, so a project manager who tries to compel him will lose. The one thing not yet tried is a private conversation, and the stem says so explicitly. Meeting him alone to find out what he stands to lose, and what would make the change workable for his people, is the only move that produces information nobody currently has, and it costs an hour. Carrying anything he needs beyond the project manager's authority, such as redeployment commitments, to the sponsor is the honest completion of that move. Reporting the missed sessions and asking for mandated attendance produces attendance rather than engagement, and turns a recoverable relationship into a public defeat for a man who can retaliate. Reclassifying him as a target of supportive and sending more reports mistakes the plan for the work, since nobody was ever argued out of a position by receiving a longer status report. Offering him the co-chair of the design authority is a real technique and may end up being part of the answer, but offered now, before anyone knows what he wants, it hands design veto to someone opposed to the outcome. ECO Domain I, People, task 'Engage stakeholders'; PMBOK Guide Eighth Edition, Stakeholders Performance Domain.

3. Wrenfield Group is consolidating three regional HR systems into one. Two weeks ago the sponsor, the outgoing chief people officer, retired and was replaced by Alison Reyes, promoted from group HR director. At her previous employer Reyes sat on the steering committee of a similar consolidation that was cancelled after eighteen months. She has said nothing publicly about this programme and has accepted a forty-five minute slot with you on Thursday. The stakeholder register dates from the previous sponsor's time and still lists him as primary champion. The programme is in month seven of twenty, on schedule, with a red risk on data quality in the southern region and a payroll cutover decision due at next month's steering committee. What should you do first?

   1. Brief Reyes on Thursday on the business case, the schedule and the data-quality risk.
   2. Refresh the whole stakeholder register, since a sponsorship change usually shifts influence across the group.
   3. Find out where Reyes actually stands on the programme and where she needs to stand for it to succeed.
   4. Get a handover note from the outgoing sponsor covering the commitments he made.
   Show the answer and explanation

   Answer: C. A new sponsor with direct experience of a similar programme being cancelled is not a neutral stakeholder, and you do not yet know whether she is a supporter, a sceptic or undecided. Engagement work starts by establishing where a stakeholder currently sits and where the programme needs them to sit, because that gap determines what you say on Thursday and everything after it. Forty-five minutes spent the wrong way with a sponsor who has cancelled one of these before is expensive. Briefing her on the business case, schedule and risk is the option most candidates choose, and it is the right content in the wrong order. A standard briefing assumes she is supportive and merely uninformed; if her real position is scepticism formed at her previous employer, a confident status briefing confirms it. The same material lands very differently once you know what worries her. Refreshing the whole stakeholder register is genuinely useful and is broad where the situation is narrow: one stakeholder changed, that stakeholder holds the payroll cutover decision next month, and a register-wide refresh delays the conversation that matters. It is the correct first move when a reorganization changes many relationships at once. A handover note from the outgoing sponsor gives you history rather than position, telling you what the previous champion thought instead of what the current decision maker thinks. ECO Domain I, People, tasks 'Engage stakeholders' and 'Align stakeholder expectations'; PMBOK Guide Eighth Edition, Stakeholders Performance Domain.

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