PgMP : Program Management Professional : Part 21
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An infrastructure program has 20 projects. The first half of these projects incurred multiple change orders and failed to be completed on time. The program manager meets with the project managers to discuss lessons learned and to understand the challenges. During the meeting, the project managers complain that key risks and a lack of resources resulted in missing deadlines.
What should the program manager do to ensure that the remaining 10 component projects stay on track?
- Rebaseline the remaining component projects.
- Develop a change management strategy.
- Update the program management plan.
- Schedule weekly meetings with the project managers.
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Status information, including program and component status, cost information, risk analysis and other relevant information, is provided in which of the following?
- Program performance report
- Communications management plan
- Communications log updates
- Information gathering and retrieval system
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A program with objectives that impact a large segment of the population receives negative commentary from organizations representing the public interest.
What action should the program manager take first?
- Rework the stakeholder engagement plan to foster better relationships with the affected stakeholder groups.
- Review the stakeholder register to determine the ability of the affected stakeholder group(s) to affect program outcomes.
- Assess the risk of sustained negative media coverage.
- Discuss the issues with the governance board to determine next steps.
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A program manager is leading a program to transform an organization’s sales and customer service operations by introducing a new customer relationship management (CRM) solution. As the program progresses, the sponsor and other stakeholders are satisfied with the pace of the program’s performance.
A stakeholder from the sales department now requests a new feature to integrate the CRM platform with another application. The program manager advises that this is out of scope, as it will require analysis and development and be a project on its own. The program manager then requests additional funding via the formal change management process and the new scope is approved.
What should the program manager do next?
- Secure additional approvals from senior stakeholders.
- Assign a new project manager to own the delivery of the new project.
- Redefine the priorities of the existing program components to ensure optimal resource allocation and management of interdependencies.
- Discontinue one of the existing program components, and reallocate all of that component’s resources to the newly approved project.
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A program has been established and preparation is complete.
Component projects are planned as a part of which of the following?
- Program definition phase
- Program formulation
- Program planning
- Program delivery phase
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A program manager is appointed to manage a new program. The organization’s leadership has specified a list of benefits that the program should deliver and has requested that the program manager determine when incremental benefits can be realized.
What should the program manager do first?
- Develop the benefits sustainment plan.
- Develop the program management plan.
- Develop the program roadmap.
- Develop the component project schedules.
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A component is scheduled to close at the end of the week.
What should the program manager verify prior to allowing the component to close?
- The component has released resources to meet program objectives
- The component has met the quality requirements to meet program objectives
- The component has met the schedule requirements to meet program objectives
- The component has met the benefits realization criteria to meet program objectives
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The number of emerging risks increases in a component project and the program manager falls behind in reviewing and approving the plans. This impacts the component project manager’s ability to effectively address the risks.
In this situation, what should the program manager change about the risk management plan?
- Allow the component project manager to delegate risk management responsibilities.
- Assign the resolution of project-level risks to the component project manager.
- Include risk escalation policies and procedures in the risk response plan.
- Increase flexibility with risks that require a risk response.
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A municipal agency manages a city’s water and wastewater infrastructure. Its six-year capital improvement program (CIP) is approximately US$4 billion, and is used for such things as improving aging infrastructure, addressing regulatory requirements, and upgrading facilities. The mayor and key stakeholders are concerned because of yearly rate increases for residents. After receiving proposals from program managers for this key program, which is half of the current CIP, a program management team is hired and receives an approved business case.
What should the project manager do next?
- Discuss the program change and its challenges.
- Create a program management plan.
- Conduct a program performance analysis.
- Develop a program charter.
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A program manager assigns project managers to five component projects and continues to develop the program team.
Which of the following represents the program manager’s strategy?
- Rotate the responsibility for risk assessment among the program components
- Coach the project managers to manage project resources
- Cross-train the project managers to share expertise
- Prepare the project managers to assume larger roles with more responsibility
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The program manager completed the program’s benefits analysis and planning activities.
What will this ensure for the program?
- Information necessary to establish key benefit performance indicators
- A transition plan to facilitate the ongoing realization of benefits
- A plan to monitor performance due to operational, financial, and benefits changes
- A benefits management plan to guide the work through the remainder of the program
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A program manager is concerned because several change requests in a component project are causing delays to the program’s work package milestones. There are insufficient skilled resources within the component project to complete both the change requests and the milestone tasks.
What should the program manager do next to address this risk?
- Prioritize which resources are critical to the project based on an impact analysis of the critical change requests and update the program roadmap.
- Prioritize which change requests are critical to the project based on an impact analysis, resource only critical change requests until overdue milestones are achieved, and update the risk register.
- Mandate that no component project change requests will be processed until overdue milestones have been completed and update the risk register to reflect this.
- Add the lack of skilled resources to facilitate the large number of change requests to the issue log.
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A program with 10 components is in the planning phase. Project managers who oversee the component projects request detailed schedules. These schedules will be merged into one document to create a master schedule.
What should the program manager do to ensure that the overall program life cycle will meet stakeholder needs and deliver planned benefits?
- Establish a quality review for the project schedules to ensure that resource leveling and baselines are followed and component projects are delivered on time
- Work with the project managers to decompose their schedules to minimize risk and better understand the dependencies and resource needs
- Decompose the component schedules to determine if work can be executed more quickly to deliver value earlier than planned
- Create a work breakdown structure (WBS) to align program execution with stakeholder expectations and the benefits management plan
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Near the end of an ongoing project, the program manager is terminated due to underperformance and a new program manager joins the team. The program’s last component project will go live in one week.
What must the new program manager do before program closure?
- Review the benefits management plan to ensure that the first component project launched met stakeholder expectations.
- Ask the program steering committee to allow program closure to start immediately following the launch of the last component project.
- Begin to collect lessons learned from all stakeholders, and prepare mitigation strategies in advance of the last component project’s launch.
- Work with the program sponsor to identify who is responsible for benefits sustainment, and identify measures from the benefits management plan to measure success.
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A company’s marketing department fails an internal compliance audit. To comply with the auditor’s remediation plan, the legal department mandates that a content management system (CMS) be implemented. After initiating the program for CMS implementation, the program manager discovers that the marketing department has already preselected which CMS technology will be implemented.
What should the program manager do to ensure the success of the program?
- Meet with the vice president of purchasing to discuss the risks associated with preselecting a solution before the requirements have been gathered
- Host a kick-off meeting; request preliminary requirements from the marketing department; conduct a design session; present the steering committee with a solution that meets the requirements; and meet with interested vendors
- Ask a senior marketing executive to act as the program sponsor and participate on the steering committee; require steering committee representation from the IT, legal, and other key departments; validate that the chosen solution meets the requirements
- Initiate the program and begin a formal request for proposal (RFP) to validate the chosen solution and gain the confidence of the legal department
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A software company’s program manager is conducting closing procedures for a program. At the last steering committee meeting, realized benefits were presented to the program governance board.
What should the program manager do next?
- Begin transitioning program resources, and update the resource and program management plans to reflect the change in the program’s status.
- Initiate knowledge transfer with the receiving organization, and establish the program integration management plan.
- Update the financial, stakeholder, and contract management plans, and archive them in the program information repository.
- Obtain sponsoring organization approval to begin closeout procedures to transition benefits sustainment to the supporting organization.
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The program selection committee presents several programs for approval:
Program A is estimated to cost US$250,000, and has an annual cash inflow of US$75,000.
Program B is estimated to cost US$150,000, and has an annual cash inflow of US$55,000.
Program C is estimated to cost US$100,000, and has an annual cash inflow of US$45,000.
Program D is estimated to cost US$200,000, and has an annual cash inflow of US$35,000.Which program was selected based solely on a three-year return on investment?
- Program A
- Program B
- Program C
- Program D
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After meeting with the program sponsor and stakeholders, the program manager is asked by the sponsor to accelerate the program to replace two legacy financial systems. The legacy systems are at risk of premature failure.
What should the program manager do next?
- Accelerate the projects and components of the program that replace the two legacy systems.
- Analyze the impact of accelerating the program, and present the pros and cons to the program sponsor.
- Identify the parts of the program that need to be accelerated and, if it is cost effective and increases benefits realization, implement the change.
- Create several “what-if” scenarios of alternatives to present to the program sponsor.
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The program manager has a global program with five component projects. The program sponsor wants the management plans, processes/procedures, and technology to be uniform across the program. The requirements will create issues and result in increased costs. The program sponsor is new and has imposed these new requirements six months into a three-year program.
What should the program manager do next?
- Accept what the program sponsor requires and implement the changes.
- Discuss the proposed changes with the stakeholders and project managers, and give the program sponsor the best option.
- Respond to the program sponsor if the program sponsor asks about it a second time.
- Present the risks and benefits of the changes to the program sponsor.
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The program manager leads a medical billing system integration program for company A, a health services provider. Company A acquires smaller company X, which delivers health services strategically aligned with company A.
Company X uses a different billing approach than company A. Company A’s chief information officer (CIO) seeks counsel on which solution would be the better option moving forward, requesting the program manager’s assistance.
How should the program manager respond to the CIO’s request?
- Document the resources required to implement the recommended solution and demonstrate how this solution will save the company money.
- Find similar examples of the preferred approach and ask the project teams to document why the preferred approach is better
- Gather the costs and benefits associated with each option and recommend the appropriate solution defining why the selected approach is better.
- Conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis and develop a program management plan to implement the appropriate solution for both companies.
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