This practice test is designed to simulate PMI^®’s 170-question PgMP^® certification exam. You have four hours to answer all questions.

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

1. Assume you are working to change the culture of your organization to one that views its programs and projects as strategic assets and critical to overall success. You have been working on a team to define the long-term objectives of the organization and to set forth vision and mission statements for employees that are meaningful and informative. In your efforts you recognize and your team has agreed that one of the indicators of the organization’s risk tolerance is found in its—
   1. Program management office (PMO)
   2. Portfolio
   3. Strategic plan
   4. Program charter
2. Your team is located on three continents. Many team members are struggling to use the new project and portfolio management (PPM) system, and training is required. You have a PPM expert on your staff, and the PPM vendor also offers training courses. Team members work six days a week. In this circumstance, the most appropriate training approach is to—
   1. Dispatch your PPM expert to each site for individualized training
   2. Conduct synchronous webinar training so that everyone receives information at the same time
   3. Have your vendor prepare eLearning modules that team members can access at their convenience
   4. Provide audio recordings of training sessions that team members can download to their MP3 players
3. You are managing a program to develop a new source of energy in the extreme northern latitudes when solar power is not available. You have a core team and a Program Management Office to support you and the nine projects that are under way. However, your power company, DCE, is resource constrained. You are finding it difficult to obtain the key subject matter experts you need for this important program. You have been working diligently with your stakeholders to gain their support as you know stakeholder engagement is critical to program management. Your approach is to have effective and ongoing communications with your stakeholders. You have prepared a communications management plan for your program, and it has been approved by your sponsor and Governance Board. To complement this plan, you should prepare a(n)—
   1. Stakeholder register
   2. Information distribution plan
   3. Communications log
   4. Knowledge management plan
4. Assume your organization submitted its proposal to government agency ABS. One requirement was that the program manager be certified as a PgMP^®. You were listed in the proposal as the program manager and plan to take the exam in three weeks; there is plenty of time as it is June 1, and the contract is not to be awarded until July 1. Your company is convinced it will win this opportunity, and you are working on the charter. You passed the exam, and the company won the contract. But, you just learned you did not pass the MRA. You should—
   1. Complete the charter so the program can commence
   2. Hold a kick-off meeting with your team
   3. Inform your sponsor about the MRA issue
   4. Inform the ABS point of contact about the MRA issue
5. You are preparing for a meeting of the Governance Board for your program. Board Member A told you in a pre-meeting that she believes some recent issues were not in line with your benefits realization plan. She also says that the level of risk in your program is unacceptable. She plans to request a change during the Board meeting. Your best course of action is to—
   1. Review your benefits register and resolve any issues
   2. Update your benefits realization plan and present the revised version at the Governance Board meeting
   3. Proceed as planned with your meeting, as other Board members have not expressed any concerns
   4. Consider her proposed change may be an opportunity to respond adaptively
6. Assume you are on a selection committee to determine which programs and projects your organization should undertake in the next year. Resources in terms of both people and funding are major constraints. One program is for an organizational change program in which for one project in this program, its output is a new personnel information system, with an outcome a new resource management and compensation policy, which is documented in the—
   1. Benefits realization plan
   2. Business case
   3. Program goals and objectives
   4. Program management plan
7. You are excited because upon achieving your PgMP^®, you have been assigned to manage a program in your motorcycle company, BCD, to design the 2025 program of vehicles to be produced. Each motorcycle is to be able to be used without helmets. Also, the motorcycles must have other safety features to make sure even in heavy traffic or inclement weather that the rider is protected, and the motorcycle must be able to travel for at least 500 miles without the need to refuel. You just prepared your benefits realization plan for this program. It will be helpful because—
   1. Your performance plan is tied to the benefits realization plan through the balanced scorecard approach
   2. The benefits realization plan will involve all the key stakeholders in the program to get their buy in to each specific project
   3. You and your team can monitor the agreed-upon benefits until the program is completed
   4. It will define how and when benefits will be delivered
8. On your motorcycle program, you and your team are actively tracking the benefits identified in your plan. Your Governance Board asked you to revise your plan after they saw that there were so many intangible benefits and asked you to also include more tangible ones that were easier to track and then report to your stakeholders. You made a strong case for retaining your intangible benefits as you also felt the plan was useful as it—
   1. Served as a baseline for the program with the existing metrics in it
   2. Was prepared through a brainstorming session with some of the key stakeholders who then would question why some of the intangible benefits were omitted
   3. Helped to better define the specific project deliverables
   4. Was set up in a fashion that all the benefits would be realized at the end of the program
9. You are the program manager for your city’s initiative to put all electrical, cable, and telephone lines underground to prevent outages during tornadoes and hurricanes. As program manager, you will select subcontractors to support your program. You prepare criteria for the make-or-buy decisions, as well as the criteria to select the subcontractors to—
   1. See how much cheaper it is to buy rather than to make
   2. See how much cheaper it is to make rather than to buy
   3. Outsource as much as possible in accordance with company policy
   4. Determine the optimal supply chain strategy based on a wide variety of factors
10. Because your program has the highest priority in the organization’s portfolio, your Governance Board meets each month, and each member receives a weekly status report. The executive sponsor requests these reports to enable him to stay current on program activities and assist you with any issues that need resolution. Your customer also requests monthly meetings and a weekly teleconference. To ensure that your list of these meetings and communications is up-to-date, you should develop a(n)—
    1. Communications log
    2. Information distribution plan
    3. Communications capability matrix
    4. Communications strategy
11. Assume your executive management team has requested that a standard process be put in place for a business case for new programs and projects to pursue in the organization. You are the leader of a cross-functional team that is designing this process. Your executives have stressed they wish to analyze each proposal from multiple business perspectives and want a balanced view of the business opportunity to be realized as well as the business risk to do so. The first step in this generic process should be to—
    1. Determine the key milestones in the program
    2. Define the high-level requirements
    3. Establish authority, intent, and philosophy
    4. Analyze program complexity and strategic alignment
12. You are managing a program with a long duration for the water management district in your county. At this time, it is scheduled to last nine years, but you believe the timeline could even be longer. You have seven projects in your program at this time, and you are only in year two. You and your program management team need to analyze any environmental or legislative changes during execution that may affect your program. This is a key activity to perform during the—
    1. Benefits Identification phase
    2. Program Financial Monitoring and Control
    3. Program Setup phase
    4. Program Risk Monitoring and Control
13. You are a program manager for a software services company. This new software will bring your company into Cloud computing. It also will replace your company’s legacy finance and accounting systems. You are to complete your program in two years. Your sponsor has asked you to develop metrics for program success. This is done as part of the development of the—
    1. Program charter
    2. Program roadmap
    3. Program plan
    4. Program management plan
14. You are a program manager for a software services company. This new software will bring your company into Cloud computing. It also will replace your company’s legacy finance and accounting systems. To formalize scope, you should use the—
    1. PWBS
    2. Program charter
    3. Business case
    4. Financial framework
15. As executive sponsor of a major program to restore coral reefs off the coast of the Maldives, you have observed conflict between the program manager and her project managers, stakeholders, and peers. Although the conflict is manageable, you are concerned about her long-term future with the organization. She is a very bright and talented individual, and you want to keep her in the organization. Therefore, you—
    1. Tell her to take a well-deserved vacation to reduce her stress level
    2. Send her to a training class on conflict management
    3. Have her go through a 360-degree feedback analysis
    4. Assign her a personal coach to uncover the causes of conflict
16. On your motorcycle program, you and your team are actively tracking the benefits identified in your benefit realization plan. You found, though, that employee satisfaction, which was in the first plan, was not really useful so you decided to delete this benefit and not track it. Now, you have a new plan in place. Your next step is to—
    1. Begin a process to revise your benefit report and benefit register
    2. Update the roadmap
    3. Discuss the new plan at your upcoming, regularly planned program status meeting with your Governance Board in two weeks
    4. Distribute your plan to your key stakeholders
17. Assume your company has fully embraced program management. It has recognized its value and has changed its Project Management Office into an Enterprise Program Management Office. You are the Director of this Enterprise Program Management Office and report directly to the CEO. You have a program life cycle, which is followed, and you and your team developed a standard but scalable program management methodology. You also have set up a process where each program has a Governance Board with stage-gate reviews. Such an approach—
    1. Is focused on control
    2. Ensues the program sponsor makes all final decisions
    3. Enables a focus on changing strategies
    4. It requires monthly meetings for increased effectiveness
18. Assume you are the sponsor for a program for helping your government become a member of the Asian Union, which will be set up like the European Union. You know this will take some time to achieve so you have—
    1. Prepared a funding framework
    2. Prepared a roadmap
    3. Assessed costs and benefits
    4. Focused on business value
19. Working as the program manager for the Asia Union program has proved to be a challenging assignment to say the least. Not only do you have a number of stakeholders located in many different countries, you now have seven projects in your program and fortunately a PMO for support. You find it is necessary to—
    1. Differentiate between the resources assigned to the program and those at the project level
    2. Implement a team-based reward and recognition system
    3. Prepare a team charter and present it to the team
    4. Establish one person to be the sole contact with each of the different stakeholders
20. On your program, you are continually spending the majority of your time communicating with stakeholders at all levels and in varying locations and coordinating activities. You also are preparing a number of status reports for different stakeholder groups and also for your Governance Board with its numerous program reviews and more rigorous stage gate reviews. Working as a program manager, you recognize the key distinctions between a project life cycle and a program life cycle. One of these distinctions is—
    1. Some projects may need to be integrated with others to provide program benefits
    2. The life cycle assists in the control and management of the project deliverables
    3. Programs have a distinct life cycle that is not extended
    4. The way the life cycle is set up means that project benefits cannot be realized immediately
21. As one of the industry’s leading program management consultants, you have been asked by the Global Financial Corporation to help establish a program governance structure and then to put in place a management-by-program culture in the organization. You now are establishing your core team and your first step it to—
    1. Negotiate with functional managers for key resources
    2. Identify competency requirements for each role and responsibility
    3. Establish a training program for core team members to address skill gaps
    4. Conduct a 360-degree assessment on each team member to better understand his or her strengths and weaknesses
22. Assume as you continue with this program to put in place a management-by-program culture into the Global Financial Corporation, you realize there are not that many in this worldwide corporation that possess actual experience in program management. But, your first program will be in the area of portable financial transactions by any type of device—a phone, PDA, tablet, eReader, or computer. You recognize that with this program an expert in your corporation will be needed by two of the projects in the program at approximately the same time. Both project managers have included this person in their project management plans, resource assignment matrices, and project schedules. This is an example of—
    1. An assumption
    2. A constraint
    3. Critical chain analysis
    4. An issue to be resolved by the Governance Board
23. One of the projects in your program has reported actuals to date of $1 million against a planned value of $500,000. You suspect that the project will run out of money soon. If it runs out of money, it will place financial constraints on your other projects and also on the entire program. Therefore, as the program manager for this program, you should—
    1. Prepare a program operational cost estimate
    2. Issue a request to terminate this project
    3. Hold a status review
    4. Calculate the schedule performance index (SPI) to see how far behind schedule you are
24. You work as a program manager for a medical device company. Extensive clinical trials are typically managed as individual projects during and after product development. This is done to assess any flaws in the products before they are submitted for regulatory approval. As a program manager, you recognize that—
    1. You must define the life-cycle phases for each of these projects
    2. The major project life-cycle phases and the activities in them will remain similar
    3. The purpose of your program life cycle is to produce deliverables
    4. Each project should have a different life cycle to ensure that there are no problems with the devices that are being manufactured
25. You are managing a business process management program for a large insurance company. After six months of effort, you have noticed that the key stakeholders seem to be losing interest in the effort and that friction has surfaced between your key staff members and key client contacts. You look into the root causes to uncover the reasons for these apparent issues. You advise your deputy program manager to have lunch with her client counterpart at least once a week; likewise, you will start taking the client’s vice president out to dinner every month. This activity can be viewed as—
    1. Positive, because you will be building stronger relationships with your client
    2. Positive, but bordering on being unethical
    3. Negative, because it is a calculated attempt to gain information that could be obtained through more direct means
    4. Ineffective, because clients can see through such actions
26. You are the executive sponsor for a proposed program to be presented in two weeks for approval from your Portfolio Review Board in your automotive company, ABC. Your program is to develop a next generation vehicle that will not require gasoline, ethanol or electricity. In your presentation in your business case, you want to differentiate this product. To do so, you should first—
    1. Demonstrate an understanding of the needs of the customer
    2. Define the program success criteria
    3. Describe the business opportunity
    4. Analyze program risk
27. Assume you are managing a program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) in your country. Scientists in NOAA have been doing extensive research on global warming and have noted that the current warming of the world’s oceans can cause serious diseases in the next three years. You and your team prepared a benefit realization plan. This plan is one of the key documents that now are being used by your Governance Board members in NOAA to—
    1. Determine specific projects to pursue in the program
    2. Present the business case for the program to the Agency Administrator
    3. Determine whether changes are required to components
    4. Determine the Governance Board’s roles and responsibilities
28. Assume a new program to increase the use of social media in your engineering company was approved by the Portfolio Review Board. A number of people have expressed interest in managing this program. The program manager should be—
    1. The person with the knowledge, skills, and competencies best suited for the position
    2. An individual who has attained the PgMP^® and has excellent interpersonal skills in engaging stakeholders
    3. Appointed by the Portfolio Review Board members
    4. Assigned by the program sponsor
29. In your program to manufacture a new series of hybrid vehicles for the 2016 year, you initially thought you would have seven projects. As you worked to develop your program charter, however, you now know you will need instead 15 component projects. You have prepared a business case for each of these projects. However, you have not been successful in recruiting the specific team members you want for your program. People have been assigned to your team by other managers who contend that these people have the necessary skills for the job. Your first step is to—
    1. Complete a skill set inventory
    2. Conduct a kickoff meeting
    3. Have an informal meeting to get to know the team members
    4. Align personnel aspirations to available roles
30. So far, you have three projects identified in your program to manufacture the new series of hybrid vehicles. However, you are only in year one of this program. You recognize that at the program level, your role involves exploiting and embracing change. Also, at the program level, analysis of change requests involves identifying, documenting, and estimating the work that the change would entail. In addition, as program manager, you must—
    1. Document the rationale for the decision
    2. Meet with the program Governance Board for approval, rejection, or deferral of the request
    3. Convene a meeting of the project’s configuration control board
    4. Prepare a status report
31. Finally the hybrid vehicle program is almost complete. As an experienced program manager, you know it is a best practice in program management is to identify and document lessons learned throughout the program as it moves through the various phases of its life cycle. The next step in this process is to—
    1. Formally document these lessons learned in the knowledge management system
    2. Have experts examine each one to determine whether it should be included in the organization’s process asset library
    3. Make them readily accessible for continuous learning
    4. Appoint one of the core program team members as a knowledge broker to pass on these lessons learned
32. You are responsible for developing a new line of printers using advanced laser jets for the consumer market. The customers for your products are large retail outlets and certain online outlets. As program manager, it is critical that you have a good understanding of the needs of the end user. Therefore, you—
    1. Meet with customers to obtain a profile of the buying habits of their shoppers
    2. Meet with customers to understand the wants and needs of their clients with respect to printer capability
    3. Conduct market research to see what your competitors are offering
    4. Meet with as many end users as is feasible to understand what features they would like in a printer
33. Assume you are working as a program manager under contract to the company developing the advanced laser jet printers for the consumer market. Even though you believe you have a good working relationship with the program manager at the printer company, your client has not paid its last invoice of £500,000, and it is now more than 90 days overdue. Your company’s accounting policy states that any invoice that is more than 90 days late becomes bad debt. You now need to—
    1. Rebaseline your budget
    2. Update your cost management plan
    3. Take corrective action
    4. Issue a change request
34. Risk management is continual in program management. It is important in the early stages, even when approval to authorize a program has not yet been obtained. Assume you are the sponsor of a possible new program in which all asphalt on your nation’s highway system would be totally replaced with a new product that would never require any maintenance. However, obviously there are going to be risks with such a new product to be developed, and you need to identify some of them to obtain approval to proceed. Therefore, a key question to be able to answer when you request approval to proceed is—
    1. What are the assumptions that are part of your analysis?
    2. How much do we need to set aside for contingency in our budget should the risks occur?
    3. How will these risks affect the ultimate sustainability of the product?
    4. What is the probability of success for this program?
35. Working to prepare the business case for your proposed program to develop a new product to replace asphalt on your nation’s highways so maintenance will not be required, you realize the members of the Portfolio Review Board will be interested in a cost/benefit analysis, which means, you should—
    1. Identify tangible benefits as they can be easily quantified
    2. Identify direct benefits to your nation that will result from this program
    3. Identify tangible and intangible benefits, expressing the intangible benefits in quantifiable terms
    4. Identifying the tangible and intangible benefits showing the intangible benefits through market analysis techniques
36. As manager of a program for the Federal Trade Commission that involves changes to existing regulations throughout the agency concerning mergers and acquisitions, you have a number of key stakeholders—both internal and external—because these regulations have not been reviewed for more than 20 years. The Commission has established a Governance Board, and you meet with this Board monthly to review progress. Because the Commission practices government in the “sunshine,” each meeting is open to the public to attend. This means that—
    1. Public announcements concerning the program do not need to be prepared
    2. Board meeting minutes can substitute for any notifications to the public concerning the program
    3. Public announcements should be prepared
    4. A member of the core team should interface regularly with every public interest group
37. You are pleased to be appointed as the Program Manager for the development of a new ballpoint pen program. This pen will never need replacement and is to be physically appealing and available in a variety of colors. It also is to be fun to use but practical for those in a business setting. Therefore, you are developing a series of these pens and so far the program is considered to be on track. Your only key issue is that each of the stakeholders on this next-generation ballpoint pen program has different communications needs. To ensure each stakeholder receives the appropriate information he or she need in a useful format and in a timely manner, you ask a core team member to prepare a(n)—
    1. Lessons-learned process
    2. Stakeholder register
    3. Information-retrieval system
    4. Information-gathering system
38. As the program manager for a new line of children’s toys, called The Destroyer, because your requirements tend to be constantly changing and because some key subject matter experts have been reassigned, you realize that you already are in a position in which a portion of your budget may be depleted, and you are not yet to the halfway point of your program. Some of the toys do not pass inspection. You are becoming concerned. You need to therefore consider—
    1. Submitting component transition requests to your Governance Board
    2. Requesting a quality assurance audit
    3. Formalizing a quality policy
    4. Reviewing and updating the financial management plan
39. One of your project managers (Project Manager A) has identified an issue that has implications for three projects (A, B, and C). You met with this project manager and concurred with her estimate of the importance of the issue. You then convened a meeting of your Governance Board to determine the best way to resolve it. The Governance Board decided that proposed Project B is not required and that existing Project C should be terminated. It decided to add Project D. Your next step should be—
    1. Revisit and update your program documentation as required
    2. Inform the client of this issue and its impact
    3. Meet with all the project managers and the core program team to discuss next steps
    4. Officially recognize and reward Project Manager A for bringing this issue to your attention
40. Assume you have a Governance Board overseeing your program in your government agency. It is comprised of the top executives and political appointees as the program is ranked in the top five in the portfolio. You have had to reduce some of the features originally planned for your program deliverables because of funding cuts. The Governance Board must determine—
    1. How corrective actions were applied
    2. Whether the window of opportunity was compromised
    3. Actual resource use versus that projected
    4. The number of issues escalated to you, as the program manager, and their effect on other aspects of the program or other programs in the agency
41. You are the program manager for a sixth-generation cell phone product. A number of component projects are associated with this program. You were on the core program team for the fifth-generation phone, so you can apply the lessons learned from that program. The schedule is the dominant constraint, and there is a chance that you will miss the user-acceptance test milestone even though it is six months away. Your next step is to—
    1. Implement your plan
    2. Inform the executive team that you will miss this critical milestone unless preventive action is taken
    3. Revisit the program master schedule
    4. Ask your program steering committee for additional resources to ensure that you can meet the milestone
42. In your role as program manager for your country’s food safety department to ensure the safety of imported food in your country, you are facing a number of challenges. It seems as if more imported food is arriving rather than producing the food domestically. You lack the needed number of inspectors who have expertise in some of the exotic food that now is being imported, and you are implementing a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Program approach as part of this important program. You are working hard to keep your stakeholders, internal and external, informed of your progress and upcoming milestones in a timely manner, and you distribute a variety of different reports based on the category of stakeholders and their information requirements. However, one type that often is overlooked is—
    1. Needed corrective actions
    2. Notification of change requests
    3. List of preventive actions
    4. Resource prioritization decisions
43. Your company has been the leader in Segway^® production since they were first made available to consumers. However, their popularity has increased tremendously since the product was first made offered, and they are less expensive to manufacture. Therefore, sales have increased dramatically. However, recently your company has been getting a large volume of customer complaints as the battery life is only 20 miles. You have been appointed as the program manager to develop a new line of Segway^® products in which the battery life will be 100 miles, yet the production process still will be one that focuses on lean manufacturing so the products can be offered to customers at a reasonable price. To document the relationship between the program activities and expected benefits, you have prepared a—
    1. Roadmap
    2. Charter
    3. Benefits realization plan
    4. Statement of the program’s goals and objectives
44. Assume your company has fully embraced program management. It has recognized and has set up a process where each program has a Governance Board with phase-gate reviews. Working with program managers, members of the Governance Board can monitor progress to maximize program success. Obviously changes will occur. The most significant requests involve—
    1. Program issues
    2. Resource use
    3. Quality
    4. Program benefits
45. As the program manager for the development of the next-generation catalytic converter, you have several major challenges. First, it is the first program in your company, second, it is highly complex, and third resources are limited. To handle these challenges you plan to—
    1. Assign program roles and responsibilities
    2. Establish an easy to use and comprehensive program management information system
    3. Set up a program control framework
    4. Use enterprise resource planning tools
46. You have had several issues on your next-generation catalytic converter program. But, finally it is in the closing stage. You want to make sure there is operational sustainability from your program that is ongoing. To do so effectively, you should—
    1. Update the program document repository
    2. Document lessons learned
    3. See if residual activities are required
    4. Hold a final meeting with key program stakeholders
47. You manage a program to develop a new e-commerce program for automotive parts distributors. Your organization has established this program to keep up with competitors and to increase market share, but it has recently acquired a competitor that already has a highly regarded e-commerce program in place. Your next step is to—
    1. Convene a meeting of your Governance Board to terminate your program
    2. Meet with each of your project managers to discuss an orderly transition to redeploy resources
    3. Revisit and update your program plans
    4. See if you can learn from the competitor
48. Your professional association in business development is increasing in terms of its membership. You have a core team of people to help you in your program to certify its members, but other team members are volunteers. Recently the Executive Director authorized you to hire some consultants to help on a full-time basis. The stakeholders, who are volunteers and members of the association, knowledge and expertise are vital to the outcome of this program. However, especially since so many volunteers are involved, you have had to reach negotiated compromises with some of these stakeholders to respond to their concerns. They are part of—
    1. The stakeholder engagement strategy
    2. Stakeholder analysis and planning
    3. The communications log
    4. Stakeholder engagement
49. You are sponsoring a program to digitize all of the records in your nation’s archives. Some of these records are extremely important but are difficult to digitize, because they are ones when your country was established, approximately 500 years ago. However, it is essential that they be preserved, and the effort of your undertaking is far larger than originally anticipated. But, now your government is in financial difficulty, and you wonder if your program will be able to be funded. You must—
    1. Prepare an impact analysis to show the results if the program does not receive needed funding.
    2. Conduct a benchmarking study to see how other countries have handled this type of project
    3. Estimate the high-level financial and non-financial benefits
    4. Perform a SWOT analysis
50. You have been managing a program to restructure your department within your government agency. The head of the agency informed your sponsor that she wants to change the scope of the program so that you will be working to restructure the entire agency instead. This means you—
    1. Are working on a strategic program
    2. Must resubmit a new business case and receive approval from the Portfolio Review Board
    3. Should terminate work to date following the standard closure process
    4. Submit a formal change request as your next step
51. Assume you are in charge of reorganizing your government agency because its funding has been cut by 50% based on the shortfall of the overall available funds in your government. To cut the funds, a number of projects and programs were terminated, and in doing so, many staff members lost their jobs. In making the decisions as to which programs to terminate, one of the considerations was—
    1. The number of staff members involved
    2. The overall schedule status
    3. The funds already allocated
    4. The benefits report
52. Your company established a Governance Board, and it meets at least monthly to review progress to date on your program, not just at stage-gate reviews. You and your team worked to identify stakeholders who may have an interest in or an influence over your program and to analyze them to see if they are positive or negative. Your next step is to—
    1. Develop a stakeholder engagement strategy
    2. Prepare an interest/power stakeholder map
    3. Prepare a stakeholder register
    4. Develop a project stakeholder engagement plan
53. You are the program manager for the development of a new slot machine for the Sand Dunes casino in Macau. Your organization operates with a balanced matrix organizational structure, and you have resources supporting your program from a variety of functional departments. Some of these people report to you as well as to their respective departmental managers. You should—
    1. Work with the functional managers so you can provide input into the performance of these individuals
    2. Set up a team-based reward and recognition system
    3. Ask the team to develop a team charter to serve as their commitment to the program
    4. Release resources when they are no longer needed
54. Assume you have been appointed as a program manager for an internal restructuring of your government agency. It has not been reorganized for 10 years, and many new programs and projects are under way. Also, some of the existing Divisions do not seem to relate to the new five year strategic plan the agency issued six months ago, and on the surface, without detailed analysis, it is questionable that they remain necessary. As you initiate the program, you want to reveal and explain any gaps; therefore, it is important to—
    1. Prepare a benefits analysis plan
    2. Perform an initial identification of program risks
    3. Develop a financial framework
    4. Develop a program roadmap
55. Assume your organization has approved an internal improvement program and has identified key stakeholders. It is now deciding whether or not it should focus on the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model for Integration (CMMI) to obtain Level 3 and have the opportunity to bid on more U.S. Federal Government projects. The other option is to establish a program to pursue best practices in portfolio, program, and project management using the Project Management Institute’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3)^®. Since the area to be addressed is understood, the next step is to—
    1. Qualify the business benefits
    2. Conduct a feasibility study
    3. Use the voice of the customer (VOC) approach for a market analysis
    4. Prepare a high-level approach
56. Assume your organization selected OPM3^®, and you hired an external consultant to perform the assessment. The consultant prepared an assessment report and an improvement report. As there are 488 Best Practices in OPM3^®, your company is so new to program management and portfolio management, it only achieved 75 of these Best Practices. You are now leading an internal program to address the consultant’s prioritized improvement program. You have seven projects now in your program. As each project manager begins to identify the work to be done on their projects, you want to make sure the program’s scope encompasses all benefits to be delivered so you should—
    1. Follow the PMO’s project management standard
    2. Make sure the context and framework are documented is a scope statement
    3. Use a program work breakdown structure
    4. Prepare a benefits realization plan
57. As the contract program manager to integrate the back office components of your customer’s system into a single system that contains data on accounting, finance, sales, business development, personnel, and portfolio, program, and project management, you have a core team of six people and six project managers. You are working to obtain information from stakeholders to better understand the organizational culture and decide to—
    1. Use questionnaires and surveys
    2. Hold a focus group
    3. Conduct interviews
    4. Use open-ended questions
58. You and your core team have identified within the organization 17 key stakeholders, and there are approximately 33 that have a peripheral interest in your program. You know you will have other stakeholders to add to this list as program progresses. The person, or group, who is responsible for providing project resources on this program is—
    1. Program director
    2. Program manager
    3. Program sponsor
    4. Governance Board
59. Because of extreme droughts in Ferguson, Jordan, water restrictions have been imposed. Your company is awarded a contract to eliminate the need for these restrictions. The program includes a project to formulate and implement policies and procedures that ensure continuity of operations and performance of associated equipment. Another project will oversee improvements and modifications to existing treatment methods and facilities. A third project will design modifications to increase productivity and effectiveness. You expect other projects to be added later. Your company has a Governance Board in place for your program, which conducts phase-gate and other periodic reviews. You meet regularly with this board, and these meetings are necessary because they—
    1. Are program performance reviews
    2. Assess performance against the need to realize and sustain program benefits for the long term
    3. Approve required changes to the program
    4. Assess performance of the program against expected outcomes
60. Finally, after three years of planning, your detailed design for the next-generation missile system of your country is complete. You were appointed the program manager for this program, and you now have also prepared your program management plan and schedule, as well as your subsidiary plans. Last week, your program’s Governance Board approved your program management plan. The next step is to—
    1. Assign project managers and appoint your core team
    2. Prepare charters for component projects
    3. Set up your PMO
    4. Authorize components
61. Assume you are managing a high visibility program that is global with stakeholders located on four continents. You have performed a thorough identification of your program’s benefits with your team and have set up a benefits register. In order to develop appropriate performance measures for these benefits, you should—
    1. Review the business case
    2. Meet with stakeholders
    3. Take the qualified benefits and turn them into ones that can be measured quantitatively
    4. Assign each benefit to an owner and empower the owner to set up metrics and discuss them at the scheduled core team meeting
62. You are pleased to be the first program manager in your company to manage a virtual team. While the company has managed programs for several years, in the past, it tended to hire subject matter experts or ask people from its offices in four other continents to meet in one place in order to work as a collocated team. It also relied extensively on contactor support. Finally, your executives have recognized that it will be cost beneficial to use a virtual team for your new program to develop a new product that combines the capabilities of a smart phone, an eBook reader, and a tablet in a single device that is less expensive with a higher quality of resolution than possible with the existing products on the marketplace. Such an approach is one in which you should consider—
    1. Using focus groups to obtain a picture of the various attitudes of your stakeholders
    2. The cultural backgrounds of the team members
    3. Changing culture
    4. Using market analysis
63. Your company has a career path in program management and has established standard competencies for the various positions. You were a project manager on the company’s virtual team in which your program developed a new product combining the capabilities of the smart phone, eBook reader, and a tablet in a single device. You managed the integration project in your program, and you were commended by the executive team and the program manager for outstanding work. Now, you are transitioning into your first program management position. The guiding rule in your new job is to—
    1. Provide as much support as needed to project managers in their daily activities
    2. Training, coaching, mentoring, and recognizing your team
    3. Actively manage each project until you have confidence in the project manager’s ability to do so without your continual involvement
    4. Mentor project managers in their roles by working with them throughout their projects
64. As the program manager for the new landfill program for your county, you are facing a number of challenges. You have identified a large number of stakeholders, mostly in the county and the residents who have this “not in my backyard” syndrome about the landfill program, along with environmental activists. However, you recognize you need to engage each stakeholder group, even if they are negative, to ensure overall success. Recently, at some key meetings, you and your team realized some of the active stakeholders were missing. You realized some also missed the previous meeting. To identify and assess causes of nonparticipation, as a program manager, one tool to use is—
    1. Root cause analysis
    2. Cause-and-effect diagrams
    3. Variance analysis
    4. Conflict resolution strategies
65. Assume you have decided to sponsor a new program to develop a new way to determine whether or not an organization should bid on any opportunity, and the steps it should follow to predict whether the submitted proposal will be selected. This will be a quantitative model that basically can transform the way business development is handled. It will show areas of strength, areas in need of improvement, and an approach to improve an organization’s chances of winning the opportunity. As the sponsor, you received approval to move to the initiating phase from your Portfolio Review Board. It now is appropriate to—
    1. Define the program’s scope and benefit strategy
    2. Identify the program’s benefits
    3. Quantify business benefits
    4. Prepare a program governance plan
66. Your company has established a program to manage the development of new pet food products, and you have been appointed manager of this program. It is the first program of its kind in your company; its structure was set up because numerous projects in the planning stage have dependencies and require some of the same resources. You realize that there are some commonalities among the benefits in the projects. Your program will be the first in your company to have a Governance Board throughout its life cycle. It has led to the company establishing program governance as a standard process, and it then addresses—
    1. Endorsing or approving recommendations for programs
    2. Aggregate performance of components of the program
    3. Value indicators for program components
    4. Models to ensure that the portfolio makes the best use of resources
67. You are the program manager for the International Air Traffic Association (IATA). The executives, representing all the airlines in the world, want to set up a global program for loyalty to airlines rather than the myriad of separate reward programs that now exist. They have built a business case for this program that shows in doing so benefits will accrue as there will be fewer disruptions to passengers and to the airlines if a flight is canceled, and the passenger could have taken a non-stop flight from his or her home airport rather than needing to travel to another airport just for the loyalty program. You have been asked to document thresholds for evaluating achievement of key performance indicators. This should be in—
    1. The business case
    2. The benefit register
    3. The benefit realization plan
    4. The benefit report
68. Your organization has a defined process that it follows to determine which programs and projects should be in the portfolio, and this process is followed before leadership approval is received officially to authorize a program or project. In the past 10 years, your company, XYZ, has focused on projects. It has set up a project management methodology, which project managers are to follow, and it also has a Project Management Office. However, you recently attended a conference, and you realize since you are a member of the XYZ’s Portfolio Review Board that many of the projects you are considering at your next meeting might be better managed if they were a program. After this conference, you met with other members of the Portfolio Review Board and explained how many of the existing projects in XYZ might be better organized as a program so they could then obtain more benefits than if the projects were managed in a standalone fashion. Now, with the upcoming Portfolio Review Board meeting, of the following possible key initiatives, which one would benefit by being managed as a program?
    1. Expanding a ski area
    2. Setting up a career path for people in the project management profession
    3. Upgrading the nation’s airspace system
    4. Introducing a new project planning tool in a large organization
69. You are managing a program under contract with a major motion picture studio. Your contract is for three years with annual renewal possible if the program is completed on schedule. Payment terms in your contract are 60 days. You need to hire several subcontractors to assist with the program. To protect your financial position and cash flow on the program, you should set the payment terms for your subcontractors at—
    1. 30 days
    2. 45 days
    3. 60 days
    4. 90 days
70. On your program, two key members of your Governance Board are not attending any meetings. The three other members are pleased with your progress, but you are concerned because these Board members are not participating, sending substitutes, or communicating with you when you send status updates. To avoid incorrect assumptions about their lack of participation, you should—
    1. Request a face-to-face meeting
    2. Ask a core team member to meet with some of their staff members
    3. Talk with the other Board members about their lack of participation
    4. Conduct a thorough analysis of the situation
71. Although each program has its own Governance Board, there are times when issues arise that a program manager may need to interface with executive management and external stakeholders. If this needs to be done—
    1. Escalate the issue first to the Governance Board before going elsewhere
    2. Obtain needed information to inform the Governance Board
    3. Follow the issue escalation process explicitly
    4. Ensure the issue is one that has major implications outside of the program
72. As your government agency moves toward performance-based management, the senior executives issue a five-year plan with a number of initiatives. Each program and project will have key performance indicators (KPIs). Programs and projects will not be pursued without a detailed business case that is approved by a Governance Board composed of senior managers from each of the functional units. You are appointed as program manager to develop processes for these initiatives and are working on your charter. But, the agency now has undergone a 50% reduction in its budget, and no changes are expected in the near future. As the program manager, you should—
    1. Seek guidance from your sponsor
    2. Complete the charter
    3. Update the business case
    4. Expand your roadmap so initial milestones will not be met for at least two years
73. Your program to develop a 7G phone is being terminated early because your competition already has a 7G phone model on the market. This early closing has resulted because of—
    1. Poor performance
    2. Inability to deliver benefits
    3. A technology change
    4. Realignment of strategic goals
74. Your company is a worldwide leader in Six Sigma and the ISO 9001. Because of the importance of quality management, you appoint a member of your core program team to be responsible for quality planning on your program. At Governance Board meetings, he will often describe whether quality standards for the program are being met. The Governance Board is interested because—
    1. It approved the quality plan
    2. Quality issues are covered in reporting and control processes
    3. It ensures consistency in program management
    4. These standards must be met before approving component transition
75. You are the program manager for an updated enterprise resource planning system that also will include business development and knowledge management modules. Time to market is critical, and as the program manager you know other competitors’ products tend to take an extremely long time to implement so with your new products you also are emphasizing ease of implementation and training end users. You will be using external contractors for part of the work. As you administer procurements, your company’s program management methodology requires you to follow which of the following—
    1. Contract management plan
    2. Contract administration plan
    3. Procurement management plan
    4. Contract procurement plan
76. You are Company A’s program manager for the development of an online banking system for your community bank, for which your company will realize $20 million in US dollars. To track the various stakeholders, you and your team set up a stakeholder register and prepared a stakeholder engagement plan. The individual or organization responsible to ensure program goals are achieved is—
    1. Executive sponsor
    2. Governance Board
    3. Program sponsor
    4. Program manager
77. You are the program manager for a water-alleviation program in Ward, Florida, that requires extensive equipment. Some of this equipment represents new technology. As the program manager, you are preparing regular program performance reports, and each one discusses this equipment. In these reports, they should include—
    1. Risk analysis
    2. Resource use
    3. Approved change requests
    4. Audit recommendations
78. Your water alleviation program in Ward, Florida, is progressing. You have a core team of six people, and you have seven project managers. You were fortunate this year in that while Ward got a lot of heavy rain during the rainy season, it did not get any hurricanes. However, the Lake levels are still low, and residents cannot water more than two hours once a week until your program is complete. The City also is limited to watering only once a week as well but for four hours. You have a number of key stakeholders in the City government as well as the residents plus your own company. Therefore, you realize the importance of influencing throughout the program but especially as you work to—
    1. Manage program resources
    2. Negotiate with stakeholders
    3. Lead with stakeholders
    4. Maintain program strategic alignment
79. As a program manager for the 888 series of aircraft being produced by your company, you are preparing for an important meeting of your Governance Board to assess progress in coordinating deliverables. Because of an acquisition by your company, the Board includes two new executives. This will be their first Board meeting. The other organization did not follow governance processes. To explain the governance approach, you need to—
    1. Aggregate performance information about your program for these new members
    2. Personally provide a copy of the governance plan to these new members
    3. Ask your sponsor to meet with these new members to discuss their roles and responsibilities
    4. Meet with these two new Board members to discuss your program prior to the Board meeting
80. You are a member of your company’s Program Selection Committee, which is trying to decide which one of four programs to launch. Your company prides itself on superior quality in the automobile parts field. Each program has prepared its business case. Proposed Program A will overlap and combine its phases, milestones, and activities. Proposed Program B will delay its schedule if necessary in a trade-off situation to ensure that quality is achieved. Proposed Program C will have a flexible structure to ensure innovative features at a minimal cost. Proposed Program D will focus on the technical features, cost, and schedule in its metrics. You select—
    1. Program A
    2. Program B
    3. Program C
    4. Program D
81. When your program is complete, it will generate more than 80 percent of the revenue earned by the company. Thus, it will have a major impact on the balance sheet. To assist you in your work, you prepared a program financial plan and established a budget baseline. Now you are tracking, monitoring, and controlling funds and expenses. Not to be overlooked in this process is—
    1. The profit the company earns
    2. The balance between profit and loss
    3. The operational costs
    4. A summary of the revenue, direct cost, indirect cost, operating profit, and net profit of a company at a given point in time
82. You are the program manager for the International Air Traffic Association (IATA). You also are about to complete a project to determine how many points will be transferred from people in existing programs to the new loyalty program. You have just prepared a request to close this project to present to your Governance Board. The Governance Board members and your sponsor have indicted before approving the transition, they want to review—
    1. Sign offs on completed deliverables
    2. Business case
    3. Delivery and transition of benefits
    4. Project management plan
83. Your company is noted for its maturity and excellence in program management. It has received awards for its successes in program and project delivery. Last year, it received the Project Management Office of the Year Award, even though it really calls its PMO a Program Management Office, which it established about 12 years ago. One reason your company is a leader in the field is the PMO provides support in—
    1. Recognizing the use of environmental enterprise factors
    2. Defining quality standards
    3. Ensuring alignment to organizational strategy
    4. Adhering to standards of professional conduct and responsibility
84. You meet with your Governance Board on the 888 aircraft series program. Your program is on schedule, but the Board wants to accelerate production to beat a competitor’s 480 aircraft to market. The Board provides you with an additional 100 aerospace engineers to perform concurrent engineering in the design phase. This shows the importance of the Governance Board in—
    1. Conducting periodic health checks
    2. Setting program success criteria
    3. Program funding
    4. Program performance support
85. You have been a program manager for three years. You realize that a common understanding of program scope among the stakeholders leads to greater program success. Throughout the past three years, you have communicated extensively with your stakeholders and believe you are meeting most of their expectations, but some still have some doubts as to overall success. Therefore, in your last program review with your Governance Board, you noted this concern and now want to document a common understanding of the overall scope and have the key stakeholders sign off on it. This understanding is best documented as part of the—
    1. Stakeholder management plan
    2. Program scope statement
    3. Program scope management plan
    4. Program charter
86. For your program, you prepared a detailed stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder A thought that the program objectives were to deliver a detailed plan for your city’s growth and development over the next 10 years; Stakeholder B thought that the purpose was to design a water-retention process to ensure that each citizen would have adequate water in the future; Stakeholder C thought that the program was to provide services to the city for its overall management by outsourcing its information technology (IT) services, personnel, and procurement functions; and Stakeholder D thought that the program was to provide a detailed workflow for all the city’s functions. In the face of this lack of common understanding of the requirements, you need to prepare a—
    1. Feasibility study
    2. Stakeholder management plan
    3. Benefits realization plan
    4. Program scope statement
87. In a meeting with your program’s Governance Board, you discussed ongoing and completed risk responses. You have been working to minimize risks, and a member of your core program team is responsible for overall risk management as her primary activity. You recently held a risk review meeting for your program, and many risks have occurred that were not identified and analyzed. This was followed by a meeting with your Governance Board, which directed you to prepare a comprehensive update on all risks. This decision by the Governance Board in its role in—
    1. Establishing an issue escalation process
    2. Program reporting and control
    3. Program performance support
    4. Monitoring progress and determining if changes are needed
88. You are a member of your insurance company’s Program Selection Committee, which is considering a number of potential programs. Program A is estimated to cost $100,000 to implement and will have annual net cash inflows (ANCI) of $25,000. Program B is estimated to cost $250,000 to implement and have ANCI of $75,000. Program C is estimated to cost $600,000 to implement and have ANCI of $125,000. Program D is estimated to cost $125,000 to implement and have ANCI of $50,000. Your selection criteria are based on the shortest payback period. You recommend that your company select—
    1. Program A
    2. Program B
    3. Program C
    4. Program D
89. As an energy company “upstream” program manager, you use your program work breakdown structure (PWBS) to build your schedule. You have seven projects in your program, and it is to be completed in three years. The best approach is to—
    1. Hold an off-site meeting in which project managers and your core program team work together to complete the schedule
    2. Have the project managers build the detail for their projects and then roll it up into the control points and PWBS program packages
    3. Work with your core program team to develop the program schedule and then ask the project managers to use this schedule as they prepare more detailed project schedules
    4. Have the first draft of the program schedule identify the start and end dates of the components
90. Your molecular biology program is scheduled to last three years. Project A has been under way since the program began and is scheduled to be complete at the end of year 2. Project B is scheduled to begin in year 2. Project C has just begun and requires some domain-specific resources in molecular biology from both Projects A and B. Project Manager A is concerned that Project Managers B and C will require some of her key scientists; if these resources are reassigned, then the end date for Project A will slip. She has been practicing a philosophy of “no secrets” with the client and has informed Project Managers B and C that she is not willing to let any of her molecular biologists leave Project A until it is officially closed. You receive a call from the client requesting a meeting to discuss resource issues and the status of Project A. At this point, you—
    1. Meet with Project Manager A and tell her to first talk with you before she informs the client of any concerns in the future
    2. Tell Project Managers B and C that you support Project Manager A’s decision not to release any of her key scientists
    3. Meet with all three project managers and inform them that you will manage any resource redeployment issues
    4. Meet with all three project managers and empower them to reach consensus on how the resources should be redeployed before you meet with the client
91. You are managing Program BBB for your manufacturing firm. You have one subprogram and seven projects thus far, and the program is just beginning. You need to set up a governance structure for these components. You have your PgMP^® and have managed successfully two other programs for your firm. The best approach to follow is—
    1. Use the same governance structure as that for your program
    2. Ask your PMO to provide the governance function
    3. Manage a component Governance Board
    4. Have your sponsor provide oversight and determine when the program Governance Board should be consulted
92. You are managing a program whose budget at completion (BAC) is €420,000. The program is 10 percent complete and has an earned value of €42,000. The actual costs (AC) are €50,000. This means that—
    1. Although the program is over budget, the overrun is insignificant at this time
    2. The program is over budget by −€8,000, which is a major problem
    3. You need to calculate a new estimate to complete (ETC)
    4. The CV is €378,000, and immediate action is necessary
93. You are managing Program BBB for your manufacturing firm. Program EEE is experiencing severe resource shortfalls. The executive sponsor is the same for both programs. Your Governance Board holds an emergency meeting to decide what you can do to assist Program EEE. The Board asks you to transfer seven of your manufacturing engineers to Program EEE and gives you the authority to contract with an outside firm for the engineering support that you need. With the change in your program BBB to use contractors for much of the manufacturing engineering work, you should—
    1. Notify your stakeholders
    2. Update your roles and responsibilities matrix
    3. Prepare a contracts administration plan
    4. Approve a change to the outsourcing company’s contract
94. Your company is new to program management, but it has practiced a management-by-projects culture for many years. Many people now have their PMPs^® as well as advanced degrees in project management. Recently, you took a seminar at a PMI^® conference on program management and suggested to your manager that the company should consider adopting program management because of its benefits to the organization. Before proceeding to take this idea to the Executive Committee, he asked you to perform an initial assessment as to why a focus on program management would add benefits. You need to therefore—
    1. Define the vision statement
    2. Show the link to organizational program management
    3. Identify integration opportunities
    4. Define the objectives
95. You manage a program in the Ministry of Education. Your seven-year program is designed to ensure mandatory testing requirements for high school students throughout the country. Your program receives funding soon after the start of each fiscal year. Funds that are not spent during a fiscal year cannot be allocated to other programs or agency activities; rather, they revert to the general fund. As a program manager, you ensure that—
    1. Your program focuses on reserve analysis
    2. You spend all the money allocated in each fiscal year
    3. All available financial information and all income and payment schedules are listed in detail as the budget is prepared
    4. You add at least a 10 percent margin to the budget in anticipation of the reductions by the Ministry’s budget office
96. Assume you are a member of a program team that is working to provide a better way to notify citizens in your City about the possibility of tornadoes. Now, the warning allows them only minutes to seek safety, and everyone believes a system such as that available for hurricanes and cyclones is necessary. As a resident of this city, you are pleased to be on the core team. Your program manager has asked you to be responsible for ensuring the program’s stakeholders, of which there are many, receive information in a timely manner. Among other things, you must—
    1. Show “what’s in it for me”
    2. Collect stakeholder feedback on information timeliness
    3. Be proactive in terms of both preventive and corrective actions
    4. Prepare a stakeholder engagement plan
97. Your organization is embarking on a program to establish a culture of knowledge management. You established a lessons-learned register on your last project. The enterprise program management office (EPMO) was impressed and suggested to the CEO that a program focusing on knowledge management is needed. The CEO concurred, and you were appointed program manager. Two people from the EPMO have been assigned to the core program team. This is important because—
    1. The organization lacks available resources
    2. The two members from the EPMO have expertise in this field
    3. The EPMO Director is the program sponsor
    4. The EPMO provides knowledge management support
98. Assume you are managing a program in your country which now allows people to buy in each state a pass to enable them to avoid the need to stop at toll booths on highways and bridges. However, each state in your country has a different type of pass so if you are in a different state, you cannot use it. As the program manager, your program’s goal is to have an identical pass that every state can use on its highways and bridges. Additionally, your program will enable the pass to be used as well in airports at parking lots and garages. As you work on your program, you find there are a number of issues involved as states are reluctant to change to a new system, and various stakeholders have different concerns and issues. You are working to identify, track, and close each issue as it arises. It is important to select a course of action consistent with—
    1. Resource control
    2. Program scope
    3. Risk management
    4. Organizational strategic goals
99. You are an executive with a major recording studio. Four new groups have auditioned for a record contract, but you can select only one. The program to launch any group consists of Web site development, music videos, a nationwide tour, T-shirts, and a fan club. Your head of Marketing has done a net present value (NPV) for each group. Which do you choose?

    Group A NPV at	Group B NPV at	Group C NPV at	Group D NPV at
    5% = 5,243	5% = 2,320	5% = 6,400	5% = 3,000
    10% = 2,841	10% = 1,254	10% = 3,275	10% = 2,755
    15% = 1,563	15% = 688	15% = 1,679	15% = 700

    You recommend that your company select—

    1. Group A
    2. Group B
    3. Group C
    4. Group D
100. You are the program manager for development of a next-generation personal digital assistant (PDA) that can be used on computers, airplanes, trains, and phones. You are in the early stages of your program, but it is ranked number 5 on your company’s portfolio list. You have been asked to determine the organization’s overall financial environment for the program and are doing so as part of—
     1. Developing your charter
     2. Establishing the program’s financial framework
     3. Developing the program’s financial plan
     4. Developing the infrastructure for the program
101. You now have five projects in your next-generation PDA program. So far, you are pleased with your core team and its progress, and you have a Governance Board in place to oversee your progress. They also are responsible for gate reviews. You have just completed the PWBS for this program. Your next step is to—
     1. Generate the program schedule
     2. Develop the issue resolution process for Governance Board Involvement
     3. Negotiate for project team members
     4. Identify key milestones
102. You are the program manager for the International Air Traffic Association (IATA). The executives, representing all the airlines in the world, want to set up a global program for loyalty to airlines rather than the myriad of separate reward programs that now exist. A number of benefits were identified in the business case and then in the benefits realization plan, which was approved by the Governance Board. You have a core team member who is maintaining a benefits register to track the status of each benefit, and you have assigned a person on your team to be the owner of each benefit. In a way, you have set this register up so it resembles the risk register you are using on your program. You found this has been a useful approach because—
     1. You need to regularly review your transition plan
     2. Some corrective actions may be required as a result of risk mitigation activities
     3. The same person who owns the benefit tends to also be a risk owner to minimize the responsibilities of your team members
     4. It is then easier to communicate benefit status to your Governance Board
103. Assume your county government decided to move into program management as it found that a number of projects under way had inter-relationships and interdependencies in terms of the benefits they were to deliver to the citizens in the county. While the county has a project management methodology, it did not have one for program management so it decided to build on the best practices in the Project Management Institute’s Standard for Program Management. As you reviewed the guidelines in The Standard for Program Management, you noted some activities are performed throughout the course of the program; an example is—
     1. Program Schedule Control
     2. Benefits Realization
     3. Program Performance Monitoring and Control
     4. Manage Program Issues
104. As the program manager, you have prepared your stakeholder register. However, you want to have a deeper understanding of the impacts of your program concerning your stakeholders’ attitudes about it so you decide to use—
     1. Interviews
     2. Focus groups
     3. Questionnaires and surveys
     4. Brainstorming
105. You are managing a program that comprises new systems applications development and maintenance activities. These applications are critical to your company, as they involve access to proprietary data. The systems must be available to your clients on a 24/7/365 basis. Much of the work is to be outsourced. From a strategic perspective, your primary concern regarding this program is that—
     1. The contractor has systems capable of accommodating the applications and that all hardware and software has been updated
     2. Your legal team has reviewed all the contract’s terms and conditions to ensure that your company is protected in case of default
     3. Your organization has the necessary levels of skill and expertise to manage and administer a contract of this magnitude
     4. The contractor has the appropriate tools and techniques to safeguard your intellectual property
106. Working as the program manager for a standard toll pass system, since there are about 30 such systems in existence now in your country to avoid the need for toll booths if people elect to buy these passes, you realized you needed to take the best practices of the various pass systems already in existence and incorporate them into your program. You found that one State, Virginia, had a quality plan for its pass program, while most of the other states instead were only focusing on inspection as a quality tool and technique. Your emphasis is to perform quality activities throughout the program. As you focus on quality control, you should ensure—
     1. Checklists are completed
     2. Quality audit recommendations are implemented
     3. Perform health checks are performed
     4. Service level agreements are established
107. The program sponsor for a new customer-focused program in your organization submitted a business case to the Portfolio Review Board, which was approved. Then, your company merged with Company ABC, and it already has a comparable product in its pipeline. No one has done an inventory of Company ABC’s programs and projects to see if there are any overlaps with ones in your company, but you worked for ABC part-time last year before joining Company MNO. You should—
     1. Inform the sponsor in MNO
     2. Work with the sponsor in MNO to revise and resubmit the business case
     3. Introduce the program manager in ABC to the MNO sponsor
     4. Inform the Portfolio Manager in MNO
108. Members of your program Governance Board are complaining about performance information from your program. They claim that your reports are too detailed, are too many in number, and are produced on a shifting schedule. You met with each person on the Board early in the program and thought you were meeting their information requirements. You then asked your organization’s Enterprise PMO for assistance. The Enterprise PMO Director recommends the development and use of—
     1. A program dashboard
     2. Standard metrics used in your industry
     3. A more comprehensive software tool
     4. The organization’s standard financial reports
109. For seven years, you have managed a program that involved breakthrough scientific research. You are now in the closing stage. You have already met with each scientist involved in the program at the time his or her work was finished. You have also met with a member of your enterprise program management office (EPMO) who specializes in knowledge management to ensure that the intellectual property developed in the program is captured and documented for future reuse. You are—
     1. Ensuring legal protection of this valuable asset
     2. Promoting collaboration in the scientific community
     3. Recognizing individual efforts as well as the efforts of the entire project team
     4. Officially releasing each scientist to his or her functional organization
110. Recognizing the importance of benefits realization and management, as a program manager, it has been noted that a best practice to follow is to be able to quantify as many benefits in your benefits realization plan as possible and also to be able to communicate their status as required quickly to stakeholders. You and your core team decided that a best practice to follow in your program to develop a new drug to cure bone cancer with limited if any side effects and to beat your competitors to market even with all the federal regulations was to—
     1. Use tangible benefits in your benefit realization plan
     2. Have each stakeholder sign off on your benefits realization plan indicating his or her concurrence with it
     3. Invite each stakeholder to regularly scheduled benefit reviews, which are included in your program’s roadmap
     4. Maintain a benefits register
111. As the program manager working on the development of an advanced polymer chemical for raincoats, you are in the process of initiating your program. You were selected as the program manager because in past program work, you excelled in some key performance competencies in initiation, one of which is—
     1. Identifying high-level risks
     2. Ensuring alignment of program objectives with organizational strategic goals
     3. Preparing a plan to initiate the program
     4. Engaging stakeholders in ensuring strategic benefits are understood
112. Finally, your program to develop the advanced polymer chemical for raincoats is near to completion. You have had seven projects in your program, and the last one should finish in two months. You have been involving the people in your operations support group to be part of your program team meetings now for the last year and earlier included them on the distribution list for your status reports so they felt they were part of the team for success as you recognize transition planning is the key to benefits sustainment in program management. As a program manager, you also recognize the importance of ensuring that component transition requests are prepared. It is especially important during—
     1. Transition Planning
     2. Direct and Manage Program Execution
     3. Develop Program Management Plan
     4. Program Benefit Delivery
113. As you work on your program to design, develop, and manufacture a class of farm equipment that can be used above the Arctic Circle, you are also maintaining a spare parts inventory and are fulfilling spares requests for clients in addition to the new work in this program. You met today with the spare parts project manager, and he had a change to his project that affected his scope dramatically. When you reviewed this change with him, you realized it also would affect the scope of the manufacturing project manager’s project in your program. As a result of your work in Program Scope Control, this means you should—
     1. Authorize funding for these changes
     2. Issue an approved change request
     3. Convene your CCB
     4. Update the PWBS
114. On your program to design, develop, and manufacture a class of farm equipment for use above the Arctic Circle, you want to make sure that the benefits from the program will be sustainable ones. Your sponsor is interested in having regular status reports about the progress of your program especially since she is located below the Arctic Circle and rarely makes on site visits given the weather conditions to assess progress herself. To provide a clear picture of your program’s performance as a while, you must—
     1. Forecast information on the significant project components
     2. Aggregate information across projects and non-project activity
     3. Provide detailed reports on component projects at regular intervals
     4. Monitor the status of the key deliverables
115. You are sponsoring a new program in your company. You have identified the benefits and objectives and submitted the documentation to the Portfolio Review Board two weeks before its next meeting. You are competing with two other possible programs, so you decide to contact the Board members to see if they have any questions about your program. Board Member A is very supportive; Board Member B has concerns about the competitive attributes of your program versus those of other programs in the pipeline; Board Member C is supportive but not enthusiastic; Board Member D is not available to talk to you; and Board Member E is skeptical about the overall program strategy. To try to increase the support of Board Members B and E, you—
     1. Align the elements of your program more closely with the company’s strategy
     2. Refine your net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) analysis
     3. Meet with the Enterprise Project Management Office director to obtain support
     4. Enlist greater support from the executive sponsor who personally knows the Board members
116. You manage the development of an off-shore liquefied natural gas facility. Several contractors will be used in the component projects, and you are creating specific procurement strategies. After you determine which program work breakdown structure (PWBS) elements can be handled internally and which can be contracted, your next step is to—
     1. Follow the program scope statement
     2. Determine the program requirements
     3. Prepare a procurement management plan
     4. Make sure contractors have comparable acceptance criteria
117. Assume you are leading a program in your gas company to promote more use of natural gas by customers. You have identified a number of benefits to the use of natural gas, and one of them is environmental since it is much cleaner. It also is more cost effective. However, everyone resists change, and people are having trouble understanding the benefits of this program and how to best present these benefits to consumers, especially when the natural gas production facilities in your company are fully operational. This means that as the program manager you need to convince stakeholders that the risks associated with natural gas are low. As you do so, it is important therefore to concentrate on—
     1. Solely financial benefits
     2. Both direct and tangible benefits
     3. Intangible benefits and tangible benefits
     4. Measurable benefits
118. You have set up measurement criteria for each of the benefits you identified in your benefit realization plan. You now want to establish a baseline for the benefits in the plan. As you establish your baseline, you have collected some key organizational, financial, and operational metrics against which you can measure improvements. A key task to consider as you establish the baseline is to—
     1. Devise a strategy to collect baseline data such as using questionnaires and interviews
     2. Review your cost estimates
     3. Assess process interdependencies
     4. Determine the appropriate infrastructure needs
119. Finally after four years of planning, your program management plan to convert customer relationship management software, supplier management software, human resource software, and telecom systems from legacy systems to an integrated platform was approved. At last, you are working to execute your plan, and you have four projects in your program thus far. Approved change requests are being implemented—
     1. Under the supervision of the individual project managers
     2. By the program manager, based on his or her scope of authority
     3. After approval by the program’s Governance Board
     4. As directed by the program management methodology
120. Finally after four years of planning, your program management plan to convert customer relationship management software, supplier management software, human resource software, and telecom systems from legacy systems to an integrated platform was approved. At last, you are working to execute your plan, and you have four projects in your program thus far. As you build individual and group competencies to enhance the performance of your program, you should also—
     1. Conduct performance assessments and place reports in the Human Resources files
     2. Communicate personnel performance to each team member’s line manager
     3. Communicate personnel performance to the Vice President for Human Resources
     4. Rely on the Chief Learning Officer to conduct competency assessments
121. You are preparing for a meeting of your program’s Governance Board. Your program coordinator is using earned value (EV) to track and monitor performance and to forecast future performance. On your program, the planned value (PV) is $30,587, and the EV is $26,365. At this point, your program is 70 percent complete, so you can tell your Governance Board that your schedule performance index (SPI) is 0.86. The Governance Board therefore recognizes—
     1. You are not experiencing any schedule problems
     2. You will have problems meeting your scheduled end date but are able to allocate additional resources
     3. There are problems, but it is easy to recover from this performance
     4. It will be difficult to recover from this performance, and a decision now is needed to terminate the program
122. You are assuming a position in a company that has not had much experience with program management. You will be leading the program team and performing a business function for your program. The business case has already been made, and the program is scheduled to move into the Program Initiation phase. As the program manager, one competency that is embedded in your job is—
     1. Communication
     2. Political skills
     3. Strategic visioning
     4. Leadership
123. Assume you are managing a program at your University to establish a Master of Science degree in Program Management. Already, the University’s Master of Science degree in project management is well recognized, and it has been accredited by leading organizations. Your business case for this program was approved by the University’s trustees, and they asked for a benefits realization plan, which you prepared, and they signed off on and approved. However, they felt for reporting purposes to a Governance Board that it would be helpful to prioritize the benefits you have identified and will report on during meetings of the Governance Board. One approach to consider is to ensure—
     1. The identified benefits support best practices
     2. The benefits are aligned with the University’s strategic objectives
     3. A benefit owner is assigned
     4. Realistic measures of these benefits can be prepared
124. Working on this program to establish a Master of Science degree in Program Management, assume you have a meeting coming up with your Governance Board in two weeks. You need to demonstrate at this stage gate review how you will report and track the benefits from your program. However, in your work in planning, you have identified a number of key factors external to your program that affect the proposed benefits, one of which is that your leading competitor in this field and located in your state also is looking into such a program and plans to offer it in an on-line fashion; your University only operates in a face-to-face mode. You know how important it is to track benefits and learning about this other University’s plans to offer the degree on line is a key benefit that you had not planned for but now feel it is essential. The new benefit actually represents a—
     1. New project
     2. Risk opportunity
     3. Major issue
     4. New program
125. As a program manager, you recognize the importance of effective risk management. You want to maximize any risks that may be opportunities that can benefit your program and the organization. As you prepare your program risk management plan, you define risk profiles, which—
     1. Are collected through surveys
     2. You brainstorm with your team and other stakeholders
     3. Are expressed in policy statements
     4. You determine through interviews
126. As program manager for the development of a new drug, you are pleased that it has finally received regulatory approval, and you can move on to the manufacturing and distribution phase. You have been managing this program now for eight years, and you had six projects in it. As this program has been under way for eight years, it is a best practice to—
     1. Organize program knowledge as a reference
     2. Obtain a license for exclusive distribution
     3. Work to ensure a positive reception for the product from end users and the medical field using skills in customer relationship management
     4. Sign a nondisclosure agreement with the government
127. As the program manager for a new pipeline system that has as its goal no potential incidents of any type, you have a major challenge as your company in the past has had a poor safety record. This program is complex, and this goal will be difficult to achieve. However, after working to plan the program for three years, your Steering Committee met and approved your program management plan. As you move to approve components to be part of your program, you need to review the—
     1. Component charter
     2. Change requests
     3. Business case
     4. Component initiation requests
128. Your program management plan has been approved. So far, three projects have been chartered and authorized to be part of your program, and others may be added later. You have staffed your program team with a variety of in-house staff members, selected consultants, and several new full-time employees. It is now time to—
     1. Prepare your team development plan
     2. Update your program resource plan
     3. Prepare your resource management plan
     4. Update your staffing management plan
129. Assume you are working for a leading training company. Your leading competitor has just announced that it will launch in one month a new training approach using videos. Your CEO realizes such an approach will be highly beneficial and is superior to the on-line training your company offers, which is only asynchronous with people looking at slides, as the instructor discusses each slide. In fact, the CEO has had complaints about the boring nature of your firm’s on line training. You have been selected as the program manager for this new video approach, and you need to have it available for all of your courses by the end of the year so you are not lagging that much behind the competition. You are working on your communication plan. You have found which of the following to be especially useful to you in this regard—
     1. Communications strategy
     2. Communications requirements analysis
     3. Lessons learned database
     4. Program charter
130. Finally, you Governance Board approved your communications plan for this program, and you now are addressing the best way to handle performance reporting and how to communicate this information to provide stakeholders with needed information. As you work in this area, you should consult the—
     1. Program management plan
     2. Program work breakdown structure (PWBS)
     3. Governance plan
     4. Organizational communications strategy
131. You are a member of your organization’s Program Selection Committee, which is conducting an off-site meeting to review the company’s five major strategic goals, all of which are weighted equally. Goal 1 is to produce the highest possible quality products; goal 2 is to provide outstanding customer relationship management; goal 3 is to reduce reliance on external supply sources and maximize internal resources; goal 4 is to reduce manufacturing costs; and goal 5 is to maximize productivity. You are considering four programs and will recommend one to the CEO. Program A partially supports goal 1, fully supports goals 2, 3, and 4, and does not support goal 5. Program B fully supports goals 1, 3, 4, and 5, but does not support goal 2. Program C fully supports goals 1 and 2, partially supports goals 3 and 4, but does not support goal 5. Program D partially supports goals 1, 2, and 5, and fully supports goals 3 and 4. Considering this information, your recommendation should be to select—
     1. Program A
     2. Program B
     3. Program C
     4. Program D
132. You are preparing for a major Governance Board review of your program. The program sponsor is especially interested in progress on Project A, as it provides the foundation for two other projects, and at the last meeting it was behind schedule. You want to ask the Board to approve the initiation of a new project. However, it is the Board’s responsibility to—
     1. Request an audit of Project A
     2. Focus on overall performance at this meeting and convene another meeting to determine if the new project should be initiated
     3. Ask for data on Project A’s performance to date and especially its use of resources
     4. Determine minimal acceptance criteria
133. As a program manager, you consider the interests and concerns of all your stakeholders for program success. You manage communications to ensure that your stakeholders are informed about what is happening on your program and so that you can resolve any issues of importance to them. This is done as part of your responsibilities in—
     1. Communications Control
     2. Information Distribution
     3. Stakeholder Engagement
     4. Communications Planning
134. Assume you are managing a program so your organization, a Fortune 50 company, has a standard program management system (PMIS) that all programs in all of its 90 business units will use. Such a common PMIS is a major internal program, and as a result, you have a limited budget to work with to make sure it is a success and is adopted by the heads of the business units and its program managers. You are following guidelines in the Project Management Institute’s Standard for Program Management as you prepare this PMIS. You find as you monitor and control the program’s finances you need to be both proactive and reactive. An example of being proactive is—
     1. Identifying impacts to the components from overruns or under-runs
     2. Responding to necessary but unplanned activities that negatively affect the budget
     3. Responding to necessary but unplanned activities that positively affect the budget
     4. Using cost forecasting techniques on a regular basis
135. You are Company A’s program manager for the development of an online banking system for your community bank, for which your company will receive $20 million.. Your management at the highest level is totally committed to this program, and it is the number one program in Company A’s portfolio. Your Governance Board is dedicated to its success. As a result, the chairperson of the Board is—
     1. The program sponsor
     2. The CEO
     3. The Portfolio Manager
     4. The Director of the Enterprise PMO
136. As a program manager in your country’s food safety department, you are managing a program to ensure the safety of imported food in your country. This program resulted from many people becoming sick because of imported shrimp, poultry, and beef. This program is using public money and will last for several years; therefore, as the program manager, you need to—
     1. Have a thorough understanding of the financial environment
     2. Develop a plan for each of the components in your program
     3. Have your project managers use earned value management to track all expenses
     4. Set up a project management information system to track resource plans and use
137. Each of the projects in your program prepares a project risk management plan to describe how risk management is structured. Each project manager also prepares risk response plans for each of the key identified risks. As program manager, you review the risk response plans to—
     1. Establish triggers for the project risks
     2. Determine actions that could affect other components
     3. Identify intra-project risks
     4. Establish a contingency reserve
138. Your organization is ISO 9001 certified. As program manager, you have arranged for a member of your company’s Quality Assurance Program (a Black Belt in Six Sigma) to support your program. This team member reports directly to you and by dotted line to the manager of the Quality Assurance Department. In his first audit, he finds that one of the projects includes several key service management activities that have not met quality requirements. Your next step is to—
     1. Facilitate an off-site meeting of your core program team to determine how best to handle this deficiency
     2. Convene a meeting of your program Governance Board to request that an additional resource be added to serve as a project manager for these activities
     3. Prepare a quality assurance change request
     4. Revisit the program’s quality management plan and update it
139. You are Company A’s program manager for the development of an online banking system for your community bank, for which your company will receive $20 million. One of your first tasks was to work with your sponsor and specify the purpose of the phase-gate reviews and when they will be held on this program. One goal of these reviews is to—
     1. Monitor the business environment for changes
     2. Assess strategic alignment of the program
     3. Ensure the program charter remains viable
     4. Identify the key decision makers and stakeholders associated with this program
140. You manage a program for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to make all the agency’s regulations performance based and applicable to any industry group. You identify 50 external stakeholders who are active participants in this process, and 30 who are interested but not active, along with 75 interested internal stakeholders. Initially, when you and our team identified these stakeholders, you used—
     1. Brainstorming
     2. Documentation reviews
     3. Questionnaires
     4. Interviews
141. As manager of a program for the Federal Trade Commission that involves changes to existing regulations throughout the Commission, you have a major challenge as the majority of the regulations have not been reviewed for more than 20 years. Others of course have been added. Your role is to make sure in your program that all of the regulations are current and also are easily accessible by all stakeholders. You have a total of seven projects in your program, and since your program is a government mandated one, you have a Governance Board for your program that meets at least monthly and at key stage gate reviews. The person who is responsible for ensuring program success is the—
     1. Program director
     2. Commission Chairman
     3. Program sponsor
     4. Director of the Enterprise Program Management Office
142. Assume you are working in a company, CDE, which specializes in new product development. The CDE executives are concerned because its last two products in the on-line music industry were late to market, and by the time they were on the market, competitors had products out with more attractive features to customers. As a result, CDE is in jeopardy of losing its market share in on-line music for mobile phones and tablets and also in games for these phones and tablets. You are now in process of working with your R&D team to determine a new product to propose to CDE’s executives. Given the last two experiences, you believe you should include all of the following items in your business case but you especially need to focus on a—
     1. Existing work under way
     2. High-level net present value analysis
     3. High-level roadmap
     4. Competitive analysis
143. You are managing a program to develop a new source of energy in the extreme northern latitudes when solar power is not available. Working with your core program team and your Governance Board, you have identified a number of component projects. Your company has several key projects under way, and resources will be difficult to acquire for this new program. A key consideration is—
     1. The availability of key staff members
     2. Your ability to negotiate with functional managers for the needed staff
     3. Previous work by the staff as a successful team
     4. The availability of off-shore employees to drive down costs
144. In your role of program manager for this Masters of Science degree in Program Management, your benefit realization plan includes both tangible and intangible benefits. You recognize the demand for the degree, and it in turn will lead to new income to the University. It also will enhance customer satisfaction with the University and will demonstrate to the overall project management community that it is following the trends in the profession. You expect a large number of people to enroll in the program based on the interest now in obtaining the PgMP^® credential. You have seven projects in your program and are fortunate to have a PMO, and it is determining an easy but meaningful way to report on the realization of benefits from your program and then to provide this information to your stakeholders—both internal and external. By tracking the benefits during the program rather than after the degree is in place and students have enrolled offers a number of benefits in itself, one of which is—
     1. Provides an opportunity to publicize the program
     2. Encourages ownership of the solution
     3. Ensures funding limits are not exceeded
     4. Ensures the available information is of the highest quality
145. As you work on your program to improve the economic growth of your country, you are following a program management methodology that your agency’s Center of Excellence in Program Management prepared. Your organization therefore in defining all program management activity as well as that for every deliverable and service realizes the importance of—
     1. Program infrastructure development
     2. Benefit sustainment
     3. Stakeholder engagement
     4. Quality management
146. As the program manager for a multinational program headquartered in Sweden, you have adopted English as the common language for use on the program. However, most of your team members are located in Asia, and many of them do not speak English as their primary language. You have decided, therefore, to adopt the common English vocabulary of 4,000 words to facilitate the communication process. This decision should be stated in the—
     1. Communications requirements
     2. Program management plan
     3. Communications plan
     4. Program scope statement
147. Working on your program to improve the economic growth of your country, you know from the business case there are many risks and issues. However, the business case only presented a high-level view of them. You then held a risk planning meeting with your stakeholders to help prepare a risk management plan, and you have set up a process to track issues. Now, you and your core program team are working to identify risks that could affect your program building on those in the business case. You and your team are clarifying the definition of each risk and grouping them by cause. This means you are using which of the following techniques?
     1. Flowcharts
     2. Influence diagrams
     3. Root cause identification
     4. SWOT analysis
148. However, as you work on this program to improve the economic growth of your country, now you have another problem. A key member of your program staff has been complaining lately of the company’s vacation policies. He would like to take more time off but has not yet accrued enough time to do so. You are concerned that he is going to leave the company, so you monitor his e-mail, in accordance with company policy, to see whether he is sending his resume to other companies. The act of sending out his resume would be called a—
     1. Risk trigger
     2. Risk event
     3. Misuse of the company’s e-mail policy
     4. Violation of the company’s code of ethics
149. You have a total of seven projects in your program, and since your program is a government mandated one, you have a Governance Board for your program that meets at least monthly and at key stage gate reviews. You and your core team have prepared a governance plan that you will present at the Board’s next meeting in two weeks. As you prepared this plan, it was beneficial to review the—
     1. Governance structure and composition
     2. Gate review requirements
     3. Commission’s quality standards
     4. Program charter
150. As part of your stakeholder engagement activities, your core program team meets with each of the stakeholders you have identified as critical to program success. During these meetings, the team members assigned to work with specific stakeholders try to gauge their attitudes toward risk, identify their perceptions, and better understand how they might respond. This approach is especially useful to you as you—
     1. Analyze risks
     2. Prepare the program’s risk management plan
     3. Determine stakeholder issues that may lead to risks
     4. Prepare the stakeholder engagement plan
151. You are sponsoring a new program that will focus on a new product in which educators can immediately determine whether or not a student is plagiarizing, whether the student has cited the reference correctly, or whether it is an entirely new idea. The program will have a number of components, and the planned components have interdependencies between them. In this program you want to evaluate its program objectives, and you realize you need to address a number of concerns to satisfy all the involved and committed stakeholders. One of these considerations in this situation is—
     1. Cultural considerations
     2. Ethical concerns
     3. Sustainability issues
     4. Technological changes
152. Your government program to review and update existing regulations is to be completed in a year and a half, and you are now at the half-way point. You have three projects in your program plus a Governance Board for oversight. As you have been managing this program, it has been extremely helpful to you to—
     1. Have a program management information system
     2. Use your benefit delivery plan
     3. Have a change management specialist as a member of your core team
     4. Use benchmarking with other government agencies who have already conducted similar programs to update regulations
153. You have completed five of the seven projects in your program so far to establish a Master’s Degree in Program Management. In the last meeting with the Governance Board, when it was time to transition one of the projects, this meant it was then time to hire the program director and a couple of people for supporting roles. This project had outlined all the support tasks that needed to be done and included items such as the job descriptions for the program director and his or her staff members, the criteria to use to select the program director and staff, and methods to evaluate their performance. Now the director has been hired. You therefore should as a best practice—
     1. Involve the new director in all meetings with all stakeholders
     2. Ensure the new director understands the benefits of this program and how they will be sustained
     3. Ask the director to serve as the project manager for the two remaining projects on the program
     4. Ask the Governance Board to add the new director to be a member to oversee the remaining projects on the program
154. Finally, your program to rebuild the water desalinization plant for Ferguson, Saudi Arabia is complete. This program has been under way for more than five years. You had a number of leasing agreements on the program, and you are confident all of them have been closed successfully. You also had several subcontractors, and you have had reviews with each of them. You are meeting with your Governance Board, to obtain approval for the final phase of the program. You have made a recommendation to the Board to close the program. The person who will make the official decision is—
     1. Executive director
     2. Program sponsor
     3. Governance Board
     4. Head of the PMO
155. Your organization has just announced that funds will be cut by 10 percent. Even though you are still in the planning phase of your program life cycle, and your program is considered a high priority in your company’s portfolio, unfortunately, your program is not exempt from these budget cuts. But, you do have an advantage because your executive team is interested in your program because it is required for your company’s continued viability in its product line of sport utility vehicles. Your executive team has mandated certain delivery dates, which you felt were feasible until these budget cuts were announced. Still, you must meet them so you have prepared a new program roadmap and a new master schedule. You now must communicate these changes to your stakeholders. As the program manager, you—
     1. Are the champion for change
     2. Should meet individually with your key stakeholders
     3. Must provide consistent messages to all stakeholders
     4. Empower the person listed in the stakeholder register to contact his or her stakeholders
156. You have been working on a new product development program for your company, which specializes in farm equipment. Your product is to combine an easy-to-use tractor with a more complex crawler so the customer does not have to purchase two separate items and can use the combination product to meet a number of unique needs. You just found out from your portfolio manager that the company plans to acquire a competitor that specializes in riding lawn mowers. You have now suggested to your Governance Board that you add a project to your program to also combine a mower into the new product of your program. You believe such an improvement will—
     1. Increase the benefits to be realized by the product
     2. Result in a longer timeline but will be one that customers should find of use
     3. Can position your company well in the marketplace
     4. Will lead to improved customer relationship management
157. You are ready to close a contract for a program-level contract that was set up to cover the requirements for any procurements by the components in you program. Before closing this contract, you should—
     1. Meet with each component manager
     2. Hold a meeting with this contractor for a performance review
     3. Document results according to the program plan
     4. Prepare a contract closeout report
158. Your program communications management plan shows the various items to be distributed to your stakeholders; their purpose, frequency, and format; and the person responsible for each. As you work on your program, you follow this plan for formal communication of program information. You now have your process in place to distribute information to your stakeholders at the time and frequency they require. It is important not to overlook the need to—
     1. Update the communications requirements analysis
     2. Update the lessons learned data base
     3. Prepare standard information requests
     4. Update the communications log
159. You are a program manager under contract to a government agency that is responsible for issuing visas and passports. You have been working on this program for eight years and are responsible for all the information and telecommunications functions for the agency. Your company realizes this program is essential to its success, and this is the first time it has worked for this agency. Therefore, it established a governance structure to oversee the process. A best practice to follow as approvals for program changes are made is to—
     1. Update the governance plan based on decisions made
     2. Record the outcome in the knowledge management repository
     3. Meet with your core team and project managers and inform them of the results of the Governance Board meeting
     4. Meet with your program sponsor to discuss your next steps
160. Assume you have been maintaining a benefit register once your program’s benefit realization plan was prepared. Because of the importance of benefits management on programs, you are fortunate that a member of your core team has expertise in this area and have appointed her to serve as the business benefits manager of your program, working closely with the PMO in your company. She will work closely with you and the other core team members as she will be maintaining the register, preparing the benefit reports, and also conducting benefit reviews. One of the key purposes of the benefit reviews is to—
     1. Create benefit ownership
     2. Address the risk of operational areas that fail to commit to the benefits
     3. Establish an approach to prioritize benefits that are in the realization plan
     4. Review the benefits realization plan and implement improvements based on lessons learned to date
161. Your company, a member of the Fortune 500, is well known around the world as it is the leading producer of the top selling cereal. The cereal is nutritious, is one that both adults and children both enjoy, and has been on the market for over 40 years. Your company, though, is interested now in moving into the ice cream market. This will be a major change, and you have been asked to be the program manager for a new line of 12 different ice cream types. The development of this product is in your company’s strategic plan, but it is so radically different from the cereal products for which you company is well known. Before going further and finalizing your charter, you feel it is important to talk with organizational leaders to address the program’s—
     1. Attractiveness
     2. Readiness
     3. Vision
     4. Funding methods
162. Assume that your ice cream product line has been officially approved, and you are the program manager for this new program in your company. Because it is considered to be such a breakthrough program, it is ranked number three in your company. It has the support and visibility of the executive team. You are now helping to guide the initiating activities and are working on the financial framework. You have determined there will be a larger negative cash flow in the beginning than originally anticipated. This financial framework is useful for a number of reasons including—
     1. Preparing program funding schedules
     2. Serving as a cost baseline
     3. Determining constraints
     4. Describing management of risk reserves
163. You are working to plan your ice cream program for your Fortune 500 company, which is so well known around the world for its cereal products. Because it is venturing into ice cream, all resources are being provided internally, and everyone on the team is signing a confidentiality agreement so competitors are not aware of this new program. However, already resources are scarce although when you prepared your schedule you assumed the needed resources would be available. Now you realize you will need to do a lot of negotiating for resources. You decided since this program is ranked number three on the priority list that you should use—
     1. Market analysis
     2. Critical chain
     3. Resource leveling
     4. Resource optimization
164. You are enjoying your work as the program manager for the new ice cream program for your Fortune 500 company, which is so well known around the world for its cereal products. All resources are being provided internally, and everyone on the team is signing a confidentiality agreement so competitors are not aware of this new program. However, already resources are scarce in the organization working on cereal products. You have prepared your schedule and in doing so assumed the needed resources would be available. However, in a meeting with your Governance Board, you now realize you will need to do a lot of negotiating for resources. Fortunately, you have been successful and have three experienced project managers so far assigned who are supporting the three projects thus far in the program. It is important now since these project managers have been assigned that you evaluate their performance according to the—
     1. Project plan
     2. Program management plan
     3. Benefits realization plan
     4. Resource plan
165. You are working to plan your ice cream program for your Fortune 500 company, which is so well known around the world for its cereal products. Because it is venturing into ice cream, all resources are being provided internally, and everyone on the team is signing a confidentiality agreement so competitors are not aware of this new program. However, already resources are scarce in the organization working on cereal products. You have prepared your schedule and in doing so assumed the needed resources would be available. Because of your work in program management, you recognize changes occur on programs, especially given that programs represent a change of some type. Therefore, you and your core team prepared a change management plan. You find it is especially helpful in terms of which of the following types of changes—
     1. Benefits
     2. Stakeholder expectations
     3. Market conditions
     4. Rewards
166. You are working to plan your ice cream program for your Fortune 500 company. All resources are being provided internally, and everyone on the team is signing a confidentiality agreement so competitors are not aware of this new program. However, already resources are scarce in the organization. You have prepared your schedule and in doing so assumed the needed resources would be available. However, in a meeting with your Governance Board, you now realize you will need to do a lot of negotiating for resources. Now you are in year two of your program, and you have four projects. However, now, you have some new members of your Governance Board, and they have been working in different business units of the company. New member E believes the program is too risky, and new member F is also a risk avoidance person. You realize the next meeting of your Board could be quite contentious, and you decided to evaluate the risks of your stakeholders. It is especially important as you perform this evaluation to consider the views of your—
     1. Sponsor
     2. Head of the Governance Board
     3. Enterprise PMO Director
     4. Portfolio Manager
167. You are responsible as the program manager for the development of a new gas transmission pipeline that will span three countries. You are in the early phases, and one of the countries involved has major concerns that the pipeline will impact areas detrimental to the environment. It wants additional information about the program before it will provide the needed permits and approval. Your managers recognize that such approval is paramount for the program to proceed and have asked you to prepare a—
     1. Feasibility study
     2. Roadmap
     3. Mission statement
     4. Vision statement
168. Although your company has been active in project management for many years, it is relatively new to program management. You became certified as a PgMP^® and suggested to your supervisor that two of your current projects would be better managed as a program and discussed why program management was more appropriate. One of the executives knew about the usefulness of governance and stage-gate reviews from his previous work in new product development, and he recommended all programs have a governance structure. Such a process now has been implemented. The effectiveness of the governance process is best handled through—
     1. Regularly scheduled reviews
     2. Program performance reports
     3. Formal gate review decision requests
     4. Use of your program management plan
169. You are a program manager in your agency. Your enterprise program management office (EPMO) has a program management information system (PMIS) and a methodology for projects that are undertaken in your agency programs. You will be contributing to the PMIS as you—
     1. Distribute information
     2. Monitor and control risks
     3. Use the lessons learned data base
     4. Perform financial monitoring and control
170. Finally your program to establish the Masters of Science degree in Program Management is complete. You have completed the transition plan to the program director and his staff, and people at the University are pleased with how you managed this program and achieved the benefits in your benefit realization plan. To help future programs at the University, they asked you to identify what you believe is the value of benefits management. As a first step you suggest that—
     1. Each program has an individual on the core team that is responsible for the program’s business benefits
     2. Involving as many stakeholders as possible, both internal and external to the program, in the benefits identification process to help secure their buy-in to its goals and objectives
     3. The program be set up with a viable business case that has a list of initial benefits to be achieved
     4. Establish from the start of the program methods to use to measure each identified benefit and ways to track its achievement