The Executing the Program questions on the PgMP^® certification exam, which constitute 14 percent of the exam, or 24 questions, focus on the Executing phase in the life cycle from the Examination Content Outline. During this phase of the program life cycle, component projects of the program are initiated, component interfaces are managed, and the development of program benefits is managed. The various program management plans are executed, and uniform standards, resources, infrastructure, tools, and processes are used for consistency and informed decision making. The program manager’s performance is reviewed to maximize achievement of the program’s goals, and the program manager leads the human resource functions. Questions will cover interpersonal skills and competencies to best manage the team and stakeholder expectations. A communications feedback process is set up to capture lessons learned. A continuing activity is to evaluate the program’s status and to consolidate program data as well as data from the components. During this process, some components will close.

In The Standard for Program Management—Third Edition (2013), executing, along with monitoring and controlling, is in the Program Benefits Delivery phase of the life cycle in this Standard. Therefore emphasis is on information distribution (which is covered in this book in the Stakeholder Management section); program execution management; component cost estimating and program cost budgeting (covered in this book in Planning); program procurement; program quality assurance; resource prioritization (covered in this section); and risk identification, risk analysis, and risk response planning (covered in this book in Planning).

The purpose of Executing is to perform the program’s work and produce the program deliverables and intended benefits. Because resources are typically difficult to obtain, questions may cover trade-offs and adaptations in the use of program resources throughout the program life cycle. The emphasis is on the provision of resources at the program level and focusing on selecting suppliers and issuing contracts.

Please recognize that since stakeholder management is a separate domain on the exam, questions involving information distribution and interactions with stakeholders primarily are covered in this domain in this book. Similarly most benefit delivery questions are covered in the benefit management domain in this book, and relevant governance questions are in the governance domain section.

Following is a list of the major topics covered in Executing the Program. Use this list to focus your study efforts on the areas that are most likely to appear in the exam.

Executing Processes in Program Benefits Delivery

• Program Execution Management or Program Delivery Management
• Change requests
• Component initiation and transition

Program Procurement

• Set component standards
• Qualified seller lists
• Pre-negotiated contracts
• Blanket purchase agreements
• Proposal evaluation criteria
• Procurement documents
• Contracts

Program Quality Assurance

• Compliance with policies and standards
• Quality assurance specifications
• Audits
• Standards reports
• Analysis of quality control results
• Change requests

Program Resource Prioritization

• Resource changes
• Resource priorities

Purpose of Program Benefit Delivery

• Component planning
• Component integration
• Component delivery
• Transition requests

Executing program management plans

• Chartering projects
• Assigning project managers
• Establishing uniform standards
• Aditing results
• Evaluating status
• Enabling informed decision making
• Evaluating status

Program manager performance

• Maximize contribution toward achieving goals
• Leading human resource functions
  • Training
  • Coaching
  • Mentoring
• Team engagement

Leading the team

• Training
• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Recognition
• Performance reviews

Capturing lessons learned

INSTRUCTIONS: Note the most suitable answer for each multiple-choice question in the appropriate space on the answer sheet.

1. As the program manager for the annual construction program for a large government agency, you prepared the program management plan and scope statement that were approved by all stakeholders. Nine months later, a small group of influential stakeholders wants to increase the program’s scope by including all maintenance and operations of the buildings. You should—
   1. Demonstrate the return on investment to the organization for increasing the scope of the program
   2. Reject the proposal because maintenance and operations typically are outside of the scope of programs
   3. Respond favorably because programs have a wide scope that may need to change to meet and exceed the organization’s benefits expectations
   4. Ask a sponsor to make the business case to approve this new component
2. As program manager for a global payroll application, you have project teams in Bangalore, Singapore, London, and Washington, D.C. Currently, each team is following its own time-reporting process, which seems to be working well. From the perspective of global program management, you should—
   1. Define and apply a mandatory common time-reporting process
   2. Allow each location to use its own process in consideration of its unique cultural norms and local holiday schedule
   3. Define a common time-reporting process that each location has the option to use
   4. Do nothing because the current approach appears to be working well, and there are other more important issues on which to focus
3. An audit of your program has just been completed. The audit report claimed that a new process that had been implemented was receiving strong resistance from the users, thus indicating that a change impact review had not been conducted early enough in the program to detect potential barriers to adoption. Ensuring that such a review is conducted is clearly the responsibility of the—
   1. Program manager
   2. Program sponsor
   3. Program office
   4. Benefits manager
4. You are meeting with the team member who is responsible for the program management information system (PMIS) for your program. Because the data that will be captured are of a scientific and medical nature, the PMIS will generate more than eight terabytes (8,000 gigabytes) of data. Given the critical importance of the PMIS, you and the PMIS team member agree that the first order of business is to—
   1. Consolidate existing data to maximize storage capability
   2. Integrate all financial data
   3. Produce timely and valid inter-project information
   4. Define the program data naming conventions
5. Many organizations that practice portfolio management for programs and projects use enterprise resource planning software. Your large program to implement a culture that focuses first on a standardized approach to portfolio management in which every proposed project or program must be justified with a business case and formally approved by a Portfolio Review Board before it can be initiated is using enterprise resource planning software. It is also beneficial at the individual program and project levels. Since you are using it on your program, your best course of action is to—
   1. Use your program management office (PMO) for support with this software
   2. Handle it through the portfolio management office
   3. Have a core team member work with it throughout the program
   4. Set it up so that a program control framework is also established
6. Your program management plan for your program for new pharmaceutical product to assist people with insomnia without any adverse side effects has been approved. Already, you have three projects in this program, and you have selected the project managers. You also have a core team of four people who report directly to you, and they have been selected and helped in the planning phase. Now, you are ready to assign team members to the various projects in your program. One factor that you should consider in the assignment process is to—
   1. Align pay/compensation to industry norms
   2. Align personnel aspirations to available roles
   3. Assign to the project managers those persons who will be the best performers
   4. Assign team members with similar personalities to the same projects to reduce the risk of team conflict
7. Your company is small and has only 90 people. Its annual sales are about 5 million US and have been at this amount for the last three years. Recently, the CEO and the other two senior executives met and prepared a long-term strategic plan for the next three years. The company provides services primarily in the government market and has a high win rate, but a low capture ratio, which has made it difficult for the company to grow. The executives want to focus on improving the capture ratio. You are the program manager to help lead your organization into one that has annual sales in the 15–20 million range in the next two years. Your program management plan has been approved, and you are now in the executing phase. You must concentrate on—
   1. Managing scope, schedule, and cost
   2. Finding the right fit between the role and the person
   3. Initiating components as planned and indicated on the roadmap
   4. Making make-or-buy decisions
8. With the last Space Shuttle mission completed, you have been selected by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to plan and execute the next new program at its Cape Canaveral campus. This is a highly classified program, which will take the United States into space throughout the galaxy into the 2030s. It is important to therefore—
   1. Ensure that the architecture is consistent across deliverables
   2. Manage and integrate program components
   3. Produce cumulative benefits
   4. Establish the program’s organizational structure with a PMIS that is easy to access and use
9. Your program has seven projects in it. You have a PMO as well, which will support your program, and a core team of five people who also report to you. However, you are working now to manage the resources of your program, and you need to consider as you do so—
   1. Information from status reports
   2. Preparing a human resource plan
   3. The program’s communications management plan
   4. Establishing an adequate compensation plan
10. You are managing a program to develop a new source of energy that can be used in the northern and southern hemispheres when solar power is not available. Working with your core program team and your Governance Board, you have identified a number of component projects. However, your company has several key projects under way, and resources will be difficult to acquire for this new program. In determining whether to use internal or external resources, one key consideration is—
    1. The ability to coordinate use of external resources
    2. Your ability to negotiate with functional managers for the needed staff
    3. The availability of external resources
    4. The impact on the morale if external resources are used
11. You are supported on your program by a variety of contractors who need to work closely together to deliver program benefits. Two of the contractors are blaming each other for missed deadlines. It appears that a critical milestone was missed by Contractor A, the output of which was needed by Contractor B. However, Contractor A alleges that Contractor B provided the wrong specifications. In this situation, your first step should be to—
    1. Seek liquidated damages from both contractors because of the missed dates
    2. Alert your attorney to the possibility of litigation and its associated expense
    3. Review the termination clause in each contract to see what your options are
    4. Ensure there are unambiguous contract management procedures
12. You are managing a program to develop a new product to protect all workers from germs in the workplace so everyone is assured that the workplace is clean. They will not have to worry in the future if a co-worker has a transmittable disease. However, you have just learned that there was a failure to adhere to a major element in the work breakdown structure (WBS) of one of the key projects. This problem means that—
    1. Interactions and realignment of this project must be managed
    2. Rebaselining may be required
    3. A change request has been approved
    4. New metrics are required
13. You are working on an emergency response program for your city and have realized that you lack the needed resources to support your program. Over the years, your organization’s Procurement and Contracts Department has compiled a qualified seller list. This list will be extremely helpful to you when you—
    1. Prepare your program procurement management plan
    2. Issue requests for proposals (RFPs) or requests for quotations (RFQs)
    3. Plan contract evaluation criteria
    4. Advertise in the local newspaper for your procurement requirements
14. As you work on this emergency response program for your city, you recognize you will need a number of different types of supplies and services to support your program and its component projects. One common approach is to use—
    1. Expert judgment
    2. Formalized proposal evaluation criteria
    3. Screening systems
    4. Weighting systems
15. As a program manager, once your team is in place you need to focus on—
    1. Providing mentoring
    2. Setting up a team-based reward and recognition system
    3. Promoting integrity in all interactions
    4. Striving to be a role model for the team
16. You have identified seven candidate projects to comprise your program. You also have identified seven capable project managers to manage these projects who have the requisite knowledge, skills, and competencies to do the required work against an aggressive schedule and demanding stakeholders. Before each project can officially begin, it is important that—
    1. The program’s business case is updated
    2. The scope of work is formalized
    3. A component initiation request is approved
    4. Each project has a defined charter
17. Assume you are the program manager for your pharmaceutical company for a new product designed to cure sleep apnea. As part of your program potential patients will not need to first go to a hospital to diagnose whether they have this condition and stay the night. You of course must get regulatory approval and conduct numerous clinical trials before your new product is ready so your program will last at least five years. You hope to be the first to market with this product even though your business development manager has said that a competitor is also working in this area. Based on your previous work on long programs, you know it is hard to sustain morale among your team, and many often then volunteer to work on projects that may be in trouble just to see results. Therefore, this time, you are—
    1. Setting up a process where your resources are dedicated to your team and cannot be used on other projects
    2. Setting up a master schedule that has some early milestones, which you know you can meet
    3. Asking each team member to sign a commitment statement to your program as they join your team
    4. Having weekly performance reviews with your project managers, who in turn will have similar performance reviews with their team members
18. You have decided to use standard Key Performance Indicators for your program and have adopted the Balanced Scorecard approach as well. You want to do so in order to—
    1. Minimize the information that is to be reported
    2. Make sure that information is available in a format that has a template so a lot of time is not spent on the reporting process
    3. Set up the reports to be provided on a weekly basis to all stakeholders
    4. Evaluate the program status while maintaining current program information
19. Working on a major program to upgrade the software used in your country’s airspace system to make it far easier for the air traffic controllers to use and also to avoid incidents of their falling asleep at times when there is limited activity or having tremendous stress when there is a lot of activity, you are facing many challenges in your role as a program manager. You have seven projects on your program and expect to add others. One project is about to close. You need to make sure before it does close that—
    1. Deliverables are complete, and scope is compliant with the functional overview
    2. Deliverables have exceeded the original requirements, and there is universal agreement upon all stakeholders about the project’s success
    3. The detailed administrative procedures for program closure have been followed, which are managed by your Program Management Office
    4. The program manager and team have been reassigned to other projects now that this project is complete
20. Program management is new to your company. You are managing the first program as you have taken program management training and have a track record of successfully managing complex and multiple projects. Your team is new to program management, and no one on the team has been exposed to it. Some team members have questioned the new approach, and others have asked why the organization has decided to manage projects as programs rather than as standalone projects. The project managers on your program are concerned they may lack visibility in this concept, limiting their opportunities for advancement and benefits. This shows that you must—
    1. Persuade them that program management is desirable and becoming a program manager then can be the next step in their career
    2. Set up a training session for your project managers and team members to explain the benefits of program management
    3. Establish an open-door policy and invite anyone who has concerns to meet individually with you or to call you without any fears that in doing so their performance may be criticized
    4. Establish a policy of “no surprises” and provide your team with the same status information that the executives receive