Signal Words for the PMP Exam

Please also see the Free PMP Practice Questions.

The PMP exam questions refer to contents related to

• Traditional methods, including
  - long-term predictive (= “Waterfall”)
  - iterative-incremental (= “Rolling Wave”).
• Adaptive/agile methods.
• Hybrid (= mixed methods)

Particularly in situational questions, it may at times be difficult to understand in which of the method environments an exam item (question and answer options) is located, if it is not explicitly stated in the question. This may make it difficult to select the right answer.

The use of certain keywords in the question may signal to you in which method world a question is located: 

Black term: Strong signal - Grey term: Weak signal

If you find words from different method worlds mixed, assume the question is meant for a hybrid approach.