PfMP Questions and Answers

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you are coaching your team on the same. You are currently developing the Risk Management Plan. What can you use as inputs to this process?

Your company got recently acquired by another company and the strategic directions which your portfolio is based on have been changed. Which document do you, as a portfolio manager, change to reflect the portfolio new vision?

You are currently in the process of allocating resources to develop component proposals, authorizing components to expend resources and to communicate portfolio decisions. What do you expect as outputs of this process?

Your health insurance company has set up its portfolio into five different categories: research and development, IT, Medicare, government health insurance, and non-government health insurance. Funding is allocated yearly to each of these six categories. As the portfolio manager at the enterprise level, you:

When it comes to managing a portfolio, you have a variety of assets, plans and tools and techniques used. It requires a good experience to handle all of these artifacts. One of your portfolio team members came to you asking about the relation between the portfolio performance management plan, the portfolio management plan and portfolio strategic plan. What should your answer be?

In a portfolio, data is an abundant asset, and managing the information aiming for a better decision making is critical. Which of the following help you with managing the portfolio value?

Although you are the Portfolio Manager in your company, you also are the Enterprise Program Office Director, and it consumes most of your time. Your executive team has lost interest in regular portfolio review meetings, the few that are held are routine, and any proposed component receives automatic approval. The Executive Vice President for Human Resources spoke to the CEO as she noticed some people seem to be completely overloaded, they are actively looking for new opportunities, and are then leaving the company. She also pointed out that others seem to have idle time. Her comments got the CEO's attention, and you have been asked in your role as the portfolio manager to create an up-to-date list of qualified components in the portfolio. You are doing so in order to:

A portfolio manager needs to continuously balance the need and requirements with the available resources and needs to maintain a balanced portfolio and portfolio resources in order to optimize delivery. Capability and Capacity analysis is performed in 4 of the portfolio management processes and it serves a slightly different purpose in each and every one of them. When it relates to developing the performance management plan, what is the purpose of using this analysis?

You are managing a large construction portfolio. Recently, and due to budget cuts, you have been having resources issues on multiple initiatives and has been struggling with maintaining a healthy resource allocations. You are currently analyzing the capability and capacity for scarce machinery resources shared across three major programs in the portfolio. What are you currently applying?

Assume you are the portfolio manager for a leading drug store in your country that offers numerous products. In the past four years, nearly every store has had to enlarge its pharmacy unit and hire additional staff members with the aging population. Observing this change, two years ago, stores set up clinics to provide customers with immediate care. As you see the growth in the stores in the health arena, you are looking at trends and realize:

You have been asked to manage a major portfolio in order to salvage the company and and re-align it with the strategic objectives and goals. You decided to develop the strategic documents and are currently developing the charter. As a portfolio manager, which of the following would be your answer when asked of the purpose for the development of portfolio charter?

Portfolios include a lot of work and as a portfolio manager you need to keep an eye on the value realization while maintaining the strategic alignment. You are currently aggregating value delivered by the portfolio components. What outputs do you expect to get out of this?

You are mid-way through your portfolio and you are approaching a major milestone where multiple components will be authorized for execution and implementation. For informed decision making, as a portfolio manager, you will be communicating reports that will be viewed and analyzed, and used as critical information for taking a decision for the authorization of components. After passing through the authorization process, multiple reports are generated and others are updated. What type of reports is generated from this process?

You have been newly appointed as a portfolio manager and found out that your predecessor did not develop a Portfolio Risk Management plan as he thought that it is not necessary in the case where he has a risk register. One of your first activities was to develop the missing plan. To do this, you needed to consult with stakeholders in order to fetch risk information in order to identify risks and plan risk management. Which of the following inputs to this process will help you in identifying which stakeholders to analyze?

Stakeholders are concerned about the purpose of optimizing a portfolio while already having defined the portfolio with its related components, and are worried that this will cause a lot of time to be wasted. What is your advice to the stakeholders?

Throughout the course of the portfolio lifecycle, components are initiated, terminated and updated. In order to be initiated, portfolio components receive go/no-go decisions during governance meetings. During which process the go/no-go decisions are taken?

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you continuously report risks and issues to stakeholders. One of the key stakeholders is furious as he cannot find an issue that has occurred a week ago in the risk register. What should you do in this case?

Following a recent portfolio health check, you noticed that your portfolio is not aligned with the strategic plan and actions should be taken to stop losing money. What should be your next course of action?

A junior Portfolio manager has come to you for advice. She is asking about her main responsibilities as a portfolio manager in order to see if she is on the right track. What should be your advice to her?

Your IT company has been successful as it is able to deliver projects on time without the need for rework and within the allocated budget. Your customers have been astonished with the results and are using your company for additional work, plus they have been recommending your company to others. Your company is experiencing tremendous growth and wants to ensure it can take on the new work with existing resources, both people and systems, or whether it will need to use outsourcing. Given its outstanding reputation, your executives wish to avoid the need to outsource. You have been asked to perform a capacity analysis. A best practice is to:

As a portfolio manager you will use a variety of artifacts and documents that will help you better manage the portfolio and better communicate progress and status with stakeholders. The roadmap is considered the most used document in the portfolio and eases your work being able to present the status on a single graphical representation. Early on during the portfolio lifecycle, you prepare the roadmap. An output of this process is

You are the CIO of a real estate investment trust (REIT) that invests in apartments and condominiums in more than 50% of the states in your country. Your organization has as its goal to respond to any concerns that arise within 24 hours; for example, you want to make sure Wi-Fi sites are operational if there are any power outages, and people have soft phone service available 24/7. You are a member of the REIT's Portfolio Review Board, and as a member of the executive team in terms of portfolio risk management, you want to focus on:

Assume you are the portfolio manager for your pork producing company, the market leader in your country. Over time, the industry has recovered from trichinosis as a risk. Your company has added new components to its portfolio, and many have been to demonstrate to the public that its products are safe. It implemented the Agriculture Department's and Food and Drug Administration's Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) regulations and is enhancing its image as 'the other white meat'. However, now the entire industry is faced with a new epidemic known as porcine epidemic virus, which is affecting pigs in 22 different states, and profits have decreased significantly. New components now must be added to the portfolio. This situation shows:

As part of the periodical strategic management cycle, the portfolio management team is revising the portfolio and re-doing the strategic management part. Currently, they are assuming and evaluating different combinations of components in order to come up with multiple approaches and take a decision on the portfolio structure. What is currently being performed?

Your Portfolio Review Board is scheduled to meet in a week. Resources only are available to support one project, and detailed business cases have been prepared for two of them. Your company has a policy of being risk adverse. Based on the following table, which project would you recommend to the Board, and what else would you mention to them?

One of the stakeholders of one of your components came to you complaining that his manager is not receiving specific information on multiple components progress. What is your best course of action?

Assume you are working in the Joint Forces Command in your country. In this agency, all of the defense agencies are consolidated for better collaboration to support troops working around the world. Each program or project tends to have more than one sponsor, and since each Command is represented in this agency, the same is true for the portfolio. These sponsors are listed in the:

As part of the new strategic direction, the executive management has decided to create a portfolio for the development of a new product. You have been assigned as the portfolio manager. What should you do as a first step?

One of your component managers came to you to tell you about a risk affecting his component that will badly impact the component and might affect the portfolio. After assessment, the risk turned out to be of low probability with high impact. What do you do as a portfolio manager?

Along the course of the portfolio, you will be monitoring and controlling the portfolio a.long with the related stakeholders and governance bodies. This is done as part of your role in portfolio oversight. As a portfolio manager, which of the following, in your opinion, is the objective/purpose of the Provide Portfolio Oversight Process?

You have been assigned as the manager for a major transformation portfolio in your company. You have a new direction in sight and you need to work with the team to attain the end goal and achieve the expected strategy. You are managing the strategic change and using multiple tools and techniques. What are they?

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you are coaching your team on the same. A major risk has recently occurred and the risk owner came to you asking advise on how to report it. what would you advise her?

You are currently creating portfolio scenarios (what-if analysis) by reviewing components against prioritization criteria and using analysis techniques (e.g., options analysis, risk analysis, SWOT analysis, financial analysis). You are doing this in order to

As a portfolio manager, you realize the importance of communication for the success of a portfolio. You are now developing the portfolio management plan and are looking for the portfolio current risks status including high risks. Which of the following contains what you are looking for?

Each time the Portfolio Governance Group meets the goal is to review the existing components and any that are proposed to ensure the portfolio has the best mix to attain strategic objectives. As the portfolio manager, you find these meetings, if facilitated accordingly, are effective decision-making sessions. However, you tend to have open issues after every meeting. These open issues:

A new sponsor was appointed by the company in order to push more on the investments underway. The new sponsor wants detailed information on time and money and wants to get things done quickly. Which element of the portfolio management plan will be referred to for managing the sourcing of key resources?

Assume your company is a leading producer of AA and AAA batteries. However, it is a competitive market, and customers desire batteries with a longer life and a smaller size so they will not require replacement. As you set up categories for portfolio components, you will continue to produce your current product line as well as pursue advanced products to meet customer needs. A useful component category, therefore, is:

A recent development in the market gave your competitors a leading edge. Your company's CEO and executive members want to focus on new developments and gain the market leadership once again. You wanted to show the new structure to the Portfolio stakeholders and strategies have changed. As a portfolio manager, your best course of action is to perform a

One of your team members who is particularly interested in becoming a portfolio manager has asked you what is the relation between the Portfolio roadmap and the Programs/Projects roadmaps? What should be your answer to him?

While performing the manage supply and demand process, one of your sub-portfolio managers came to you asking advice on how to analyze intangible assets such as resources knowledge or skills based on the metrics defined. What should be your advice to him?

You are working diligently to ensure people throughout the organization realize the importance of portfolio management. To do so, you are preparing a communications strategy. When you distribute it, you will be able to show you can satisfy information requirements in order to:

You have scored the portfolio components and are analyzing the data in order to prioritize the components. Using the following scoring table, which of the options represents the correct Components Priority?

Larger image

Companies adopt project, program and portfolio management practices to enable the realization of business value and the achievement of strategies and objectives. In order to advance the organizational capability and facilitate the alignment of these practices, the company should (choose the best answer)

A portfolio manager needs to continuously balance the need and requirements with the available resources and needs to maintain a balanced portfolio and portfolio resources in order to optimize delivery. For this, you are always on the lookout to optimize your portfolio. What can you use to start this process?

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risks is key to success, and you are coaching your team on the same. While planning for risk management, multiple investment choice tools are used as part of the quantitative and qualitative analyzes. Which of the following tools determines the effects of portfolio velocity?

Portfolios include a lot of work and as a portfolio manager you need to keep an eye on the value realization while maintaining the strategic alignment. You are currently aggregating value delivered by the portfolio components. Which of the following methods are helpful to you?

You are the portfolio manager for a large and complex portfolio with a low risk appetite. You are currently planning for risk management, multiple investment choice tools are used as part of the quantitative and qualitative analyzes. Which of the following tools focuses on pricing and sales forecast?

All measurements in a Portfolio are done in correspondence to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and defining those KPIs is essential and should be done by highly capable personnel. Which of the following is true regarding who prepares KPIs and which party approves them?

A major strategic change has occurred and you are managing the change at portfolio level. You are currently performing gap analysis and you receive information on a stakeholder that is extremely unhappy with how the change will be handled in your portfolio. What should be your best course of action?

An urgent review meeting was set due to the discovery of multiple risks which can have drastic effects on the portfolio. As a result of the meeting, it was agreed to increase the portfolio budget and add more resources in order to manage the new risks. Which of the following documents needs to be updated as a result of this decision?

Multiple changes have been recommended and approved in your portfolio and the need for continuous optimization seems to never end. This is normal in a portfolio and optimizing the components mix and the use of resources is key to success. As a portfolio manager you will be re-visiting the Optimize Portfolio process countless times. Which of the following are considered outputs to this process?

You have scored the portfolio components and are analyzing the data in order to prioritize the components. Using the following scoring table, which of the options represents the correct Components Priority? Taking into consideration that the costs for each component is Component A: 10 K USD, Component B: 15 K USD, Component C: 16 K USD, Component D: 13 K USD and Component E: 11 K USD; The budget for this portfolio is a fixed one of 40 k USD

Larger image

Your organization conducted an OPM3 assessment focusing on its best practices in portfolio management and also on those that were needed. The OPM3 Certified Professional felt greater attention was needed managing strategic change. This means:

Managing risk is key to the success of any initiative. Risk is considered to be inherent in any activity we do in project management and at any level. As part of managing risks, the portfolio manager applies multiple analyzes and uses tools to help dealing with risks. What does the portfolio manager use to visualize risks impact on portfolio strategic objectives such as profitability?

As a portfolio manager, you know that optimizing a portfolio has the focus of maintaining a balanced portfolio. When optimizing a portfolio, what is the state of the portfolio components that will be balanced?

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you are coaching your team on the same. You are currently in the process of developing the risk management plan. Which of the following activities will you be performing?

You are managing a portfolio in a functional organization and resources are shared between operations and projects. You are continuously performing capability and capacity analysis in order to optimize the portfolio. Which of the following capability and capacity analysis is used to just limit the number of components the organization can execute?

Your organization has a defined portfolio management process that it has followed for three years. As the portfolio manager, you keep your various plans up to date, and because of numerous regulatory changes involving the telecom industry, it is time to review and update the risk management plan. You have several key stakeholders working with you as you realize the importance of this plan in maintaining a competitive advantage. One way you and your team are assessing the various risks that may impact the structure of the portfolio is to use:

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you are coaching your team on the same. When it comes to Managing portfolio risks, a risk owner, along with the portfolio manager, should select the strategy or mix of strategies most likely to be effective. Which of the following is not a risk strategy?

Assume you are the portfolio manager for your training company. It decided to implement portfolio management in a major way to ensure it remained competitive in the changing market and could offer a variety of methods to deliver courses rather than only in a face-to-face setting. The company set up a Portfolio Management Group, and you are responsible for providing information on portfolio status and then providing information to those interested stakeholders about the Board's decisions. You want to make sure the reports meet stakeholder requirements. After performing a detailed communications requirements analysis, you found it interesting that stakeholders wanted information about:

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. You know that managing risk is key to success and you are coaching your team on the same. While planning for risk management, multiple investment choice tools are used as part of the quantitative and qualitative analyzes. Which of the following tools determine the effect of changing the portfolio?

A new regulatory mandate has been imposed by the government which highly affected your portfolio. Multiple regulatory components are requested to be added to the portfolio in order to comply with new governmental bank regulations. Initiating these components requires permission from

Managing Strategic Change is an integral part of any portfolio in order to remain aligned with the strategic objectives. Your portfolio has undergone a major strategic change and you are currently determining the volume of work required to do in order to re-align the portfolio. What are you currently using?

The interest, influence, and communication needs of business operational stakeholders who are looking to ensure alignment between portfolio components, while minimizing negative impact and maximizing positive benefits of all portfolio-managed changes to their business operations, relate to which type of stakeholders?

Obviously resources are more than people and include physical resources and those at the organizational level, such as the knowledge management system, helpful in portfolio management in terms of competitive intelligence. However, since most organizations operate with scarce resources, it is necessary to apply these scarce resources to support the highest ranked items in the portfolio and not to fund a proposed component unless resources are available to support it. Therefore, it is useful to determine at a collective level whether or not resources will create value greater than the cost of creating it. A portfolio report can focus on:

You have been managing a complex portfolio for the banking industry and it is sought to be the shifting to the top-notch digital banking era for one of the major international banks. You know you will have changes along the lifecycle and you plan to manage them correctly in order to maintain alignment and correct execution. If you need to reflect changes based on cost, requirements, and schedule. To which of the following section in the portfolio management plan will you refer?

After the second shutdown of the Government, your Agency Administrator realized that some essential programs had to continue even during the shutdown, some existing work along with some programs and projects in the pipeline perhaps were not needed, and resources may require reallocation. This example shows the:

Assume you are preparing the first portfolio risk management plan for your outsourcing company, which typically handles call centers around the world. While the company has implemented portfolio management and has a Portfolio Oversight Group, it did not previously assess risks to the portfolio itself. Instead, it assumed risks would be managed at the project level. However, numerous customer complaints have been received. The root cause is once a new call center is established, limited if any planning is done as the manager rushes to have it ready and operational as soon as possible. This has led to a lack of understanding as to what is required for the call centers to be successful. In preparing this plan, you are reviewing the portfolio management plan because it:

Risks are very important to manage in portfolio management and organizations can choose to embrace risks with the potential of high rewards. As a portfolio manager, planning and managing risks is important. Risks are categorized in order to ease the process. Which of the following are considered as risk categories that a portfolio manager can use?