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CISA—Certified Information Systems Auditor - Part 216

Mary Smith

Sat, 18 Apr 2026

CISA—Certified Information Systems Auditor - Part 216

1. Many IT projects experience problems because the development time and/or resource requirements are underestimated. Which of the following techniques would provide the GREATEST assistance in developing an estimate of project duration?

A) Function point analysis
B) PERT chart
C) Rapid application development
D) Object-oriented system development



2. The reason for establishing a stop or freezing point on the design of a new system is to:

A) prevent further changes to a project in process.
B) indicate the point at which the design is to be completed.
C) require that changes after that point be evaluated for cost-effectiveness.
D) provide the project management team with more control over the project design.



3. Change control for business application systems being developed using prototyping could be complicated by the:

A) iterative nature of prototyping.
B) rapid pace of modifications in requirements and design.
C) emphasis on reports and screens.
D) lack of integrated tools.



4. An IS auditor finds that a system under development has 12 linked modules and each item of data can carry up to 10 definable attribute fields. The system handles several million transactions a year. Which of these techniques could an IS auditor use to estimate the size of the development effort?

A) Program evaluation review technique (PERT)
B) Counting source lines of code (SLOC)
C) Function point analysis
D) White box testing



5. When planning to add personnel to tasks imposing time constraints on the duration of a project, which of the following should be revalidated FIRST?

A) The project budget
B) The critical path for the project
C) The length of the remaining tasks
D) The personnel assigned to other tasks



1. Right Answer: B
Explanation: A PERT chart will help determine project duration once all the activities and the work involved with those activities are known. Function point analysis is a technique for determining the size of a development task based on the number of function points. Function points are factors such as inputs, outputs, inquiries, logical internal files, etc. While this will help determine the size of individual activities, it will not assist in determining project duration since there are many overlapping tasks. Rapid application development is a methodology that enables organizations to develop strategically important systems faster while reducing development costs and maintaining quality, while object-oriented system development is the process of solution specification and modeling.

2. Right Answer: C
Explanation: Projects often have a tendency to expand, especially during the requirements definition phase. This expansion often grows to a point where the originally anticipated cost-benefits are diminished because the cost of the project has increased. When this occurs, it is recommended that the project be stopped or frozen to allow a review of all of the cost- benefits and the payback period.

3. Right Answer: B
Explanation: Changes in requirements and design happen so quickly that they are seldom documented or approved. Choices A, C and D are characteristics of prototyping, but they do not have an adverse effect on change control.

4. Right Answer: C
Explanation: Function point analysis is an indirect method of measuring the size of an application by considering the number and complexity of its inputs, outputs and files. It is useful for evaluating complex applications. PERT is a project management technique that helps with both planning and control. SLOC gives a direct measure of program size, but does not allow for the complexity that may be caused by having multiple, linked modules and a variety of inputs and outputs. White box testing involves a detailed review of the behavior of program code, and is a quality assurance technique suited to simpler applications during the design and build stage of development.

5. Right Answer: B
Explanation: Since adding resources may change the route of the critical path, the critical path must be reevaluated to ensure that additional resources will in fact shorten the project duration. Given that there may be slack time available on some of the other tasks not on the critical path, factors such as the project budget, the length of other tasks and the personnel assigned to them may or may not be affected.

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