The Portfolio Performance Management Plan is an important document that is referenced throughout the portfolio life cycle. Which of the following is correct regarding the Portfolio Performance Management Plan purpose and focus?
One of your team members came to you asking about the risk "Watch List"; he heard this term in a meeting on risk analysis and did not know what it meant. What will your advice to your team member be?
The Portfolio Management Plan is an important document that is referenced throughout the portfolio life cycle. Which of the following is correct regarding the Portfolio Management Plan purpose and focus?
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?
Your State Governor is fiscally conservative and has limited significantly the financial resources to be provided to each University in the eight Universities in the State's system. Recognizing your University is going to have a 55% reduction in its budget, your Chancellor is re-evaluating all the work that is under way to see how much it can do with fewer resources. Every department will have layoffs at all levels. However, the University does have a portfolio management process in place, which people support. This means for effective portfolio management:
In a portfolio, data is an abundant asset, and managing the information aiming for a better decision making is critical. Information is considered to be the link between the portfolio activities and entities. You are currently collecting, analyzing, storing, and delivering portfolio information to stakeholders in accordance with their requirements. What can help you in doing this?
Your probability and impact assessment work is complete, and you are using the results to prepare the portfolio risk management plan. As you do so, it also is useful to:
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:
As the Director of the Portfolio Management Office at your worldwide furniture store, you prepare a series of reports on the status of the portfolio. One report that you use is a bubble diagram. In using it in terms of resource supply and demand, you should structure it to show:
In a portfolio, data is an abundant asset, and managing the information aiming for a a better decision making is critical. For this you use a variety of Quantitative and Qualitative analysis methods. These methods are performed in 4 of the portfolio management processes and serve a slightly different purpose in each and every one of them. When it comes to the optimizing portfolio, what is the purpose of using this analysis?
You have been recently assigned to a critical portfolio in your company and wanted to start right away and decided to begin with aligning the strategic management of the portfolio to the organizational strategy and objectives. For this you will use
Communication is one of the largest activities that the portfolio manager does along the portfolio lifecycle. As an experienced portfolio manager, you know that communication and information needs vary between portfolios, programs and projects. How do you define the difference in those three levels of Project Management?
The portfolio undergoes a lot of changes through the portfolio life cycle, and the state of the portfolio changes on the go. Some components are terminated, other are added and initiated. When it comes to the authorize portfolio process, which of the following represents the state of the portfolio
Assume you are the portfolio manager for a telecommunications company. Your company was about to launch a new and easy to use smart phone with more features than any existing phones on the market at a lower price. However, although the phone was due to market in five days, the Federal Communications Commission issued today a regulation that would make your new phone not available for use in airplanes. Thus additional work must be done, and your executives are wondering whether a new phone should be developed for this new feature. You are ensuring that if a new phone is developed, or if the almost completed product is not to be marketed, there is still alignment to the organization's strategy. As you complete an analysis of alternatives, you also should ensure results of the analysis are reflected in the:
As part of the strategic alignment, you Identify prioritization criteria (e.g., legislative, dependencies, ROI, stakeholder expectations, strategic fit) using information gathering and analysis techniques in order to
Assume your automotive company is new to formal portfolio management. It has had for years a strategic plan and tries to be first to market for new and improved features on its vehicles each model year. You were hired as the portfolio manager to provide a more disciplined approach for determining new products to pursue as well as existing ones that should be terminated. So far, you have set up an approach, established categories for the various components, and determined a method to rank and score new proposals for consideration. Now you are working to set up practices to follow to optimize the portfolio. In doing so, it is important to note that:
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 handle this strategic change. Which of the following can serve as input here?
As a portfolio manager you try to use all the information available to you in order to get the best out of the existing information and to better plan and manage the portfolio. The Enterprise Environmental Factors are important and referenced throughout the portfolio life cycle. Which of the following is correct regarding their purpose and focus?
Capability and capacity analysis are useful tools in portfolio performance management. In using this type of analysis a best practice is to:
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. For this you start by developing the strategic plan. What output do you expect from this process?
As you work to determine which of four possible components to optimize the portfolio, assume you are using the internal rate of return as the key crite rion to make your recommendation. Only one new component can be added based on financial constraints. Each of the four potential components has benefits that support the strategic plan. Based on the following data, you recommend:
Assume you are the portfolio manager for your HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) company, one of the largest in the world. Preparing for a meeting with the Portfolio Governance Committee, you have been reviewing the success of components that have been completed as well as the progress of current portfolio components. In many cases people who only purchased heating units in the northern part of the country, and people who purchased only air conditioners in the south, now are buying state-of the art products to easily switch as needed. You found the risks of climate change led to the need for these new energy efficient products and did so by:
It is rare for organizational leaders to have an in-depth knowledge of all the work under way in the portfolio, but it is needed for portfolio decision making. If you were asked to prepare such an inventory, it would:
Moving from project management to program management and now being appointed as the first portfolio manager in your cyber warfare company, you know you always wondered what happened to the various reports you had to prepare, and the metrics you had to collect. You are working now to determine critical metrics for portfolio management and decided to involve as many people as possible through questionnaires and surveys. You also held some focus groups. The purpose is to:
Before any information in your web-based technology company is communicated externally, it must be submitted to the company's Public Relations Department to ensure sensitive information is not disclosed inadvertently to competitors. The Public Relations Director must sign off on all external information. You need to, as the portfolio manager:
You are approaching a major checkpoint and right before the review meeting, one of the key stakeholders asked you to add a small component which is of high interest to her and requires minimal effort and spans a short duration. What should you, as a portfolio manager do?
As a portfolio manager you visit and re-do the Optimize Portfolio process continuously. Which of the following, in your opinion, is the objective/purpose of the Optimize Portfolio Process?
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?
Due to market technological changes, your company got impacted and was urged to revise its portfolios. You are currently revising your portfolio to determine the required changes in the component mix. Which of the following options helps in assessing the capability of the organization to undertake the portfolio with its new strategic direction, and what is needed to be done?
You are managing a large portfolio and know that you will need to constantly show the progress and status of the portfolio in meeting. For this you have developed a robust roadmap using BI tools. The portfolio roadmap is an important document used throughout the portfolio life cycle; when it comes to developing the portfolio communication management plan, which of the following options is correct
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?
You are the manager of a major portfolio with a variety of stakeholders and stakeholder groups. you know that managing communication is key to success and you stress on maintaining a high communication level. You want to start developing your Communication Management Plan and are planning to use
Along your portfolio lifecycle, you have been conducting multiple review meetings to ensure continuation from one phase to another and to ensure the alignment and value delivery, in addition to communicating decisions and valuable information to the related stakeholders. When it comes to decisions and actions taken by the governance board as a result of these meetings, they are communicated through
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 started with developing the plan that will be used as guideline for the component plans to manage risks at their level. What are the outputs of this plan?
Being a portfolio manager, you realize that defining value differs among organizations based on the type of organization and its strategic goals and objectives. However, you know a value measurement framework is helpful as it:
Roadmaps may be prepared to show different elements, and at the beginning they may not provide details of the various components. As a high-level plan at the portfolio level, the roadmap:
In a portfolio you have a continuous interaction between the portfolio and its components. You have to follow a lot of processes and procedures in order to reach a satisfactory result. In your opinion as a portfolio manager, who guides the portfolio team to follow the processes, metrics, and other procedures in the portfolio?
comes to this type of organizations, which of the following statements is true?
Due to multiple issues, there were changes in the reporting process in your portfolio; the meetings with their frequencies have been changed and this will also affect the reporting cycle times. In order to meet this new change you will update which of the following documents?
Working to manage portfolio value is a continuous task. In doing so, as the portfolio manager, you review the monthly and any ad hoc reports submitted by component managers. This month you saw there was an excellent opportunity for major cost savings in two components in the top five on the portfolio list; however, to realize this cost reduction, these components require resources to be reallocated from other components in progress for six months. These forecasts then:
You have set a series of meetings with your portfolio team members as an answer to the identification and update of the organization near-term budget and plans. As a result you have defined and developed the portfolio strategic goals, near-term budgets, and plans, and you now want to start managing ongoing portfolio activities. What is the focus of what you are doing?
Assume you completed your portfolio performance management plan, and it was approved by the Oversight Committee. This plan, with an overall purpose to maximize portfolio performance, describes resource allocation and resource-related issues among other items. In it a key component is benefits realization. This emphasis on benefits planning provides:
As part of the portfolio communication management, multiple documents are prepared in order to effectively manage communications. The Communication Calendar is one of the prepared documents, what does it include?
Each time a strategic change occurs, it requires a number of updates, and it includes the need to update the portfolio process assets including:
Working as a portfolio manager in the Water Resources Department of the U.S. Geological Survey, you are following a scorecard approach to report progress to your executives on the components in your portfolio. You submit the scorecards monthly, and based on their results, your executives decide if a Portfolio Review Board meeting should be held. Your emphasis in these reports is to:
A new project manager was given an assignment on one of the components in your portfolio. What will you do as a portfolio manager in order to align the project manager with the strategic direction and integrate him/her with the work in progress?
While there are a number of recommended contents of the portfolio strategic plan, a guiding principle is to:
Following an organizational change and restructuring. One of the Portfolio Key Stakeholders got a promotion and became a director. She became less interested in your portfolio and you used to engage her very closely. What is your best course of action in this case?
The portfolio is undergoing and your are now in the monitoring and controlling phase. Two of your team members are arguing about what to use in order to determine decisions to be made with regards to the portfolio and its components. What should be your advice to them?
One of your component managers has submitted his resignation and left the company; a new program manager joins the portfolio replacing him. Which document you use to inform the new program manager about his responsibilities in the portfolio?
Your company's new CEO has set an aggressive target and informed everyone that the target needs to be met by all means in order for the company to be able to realize benefits and avoid bankruptcy. What is the best management approach that the portfolio manager should take in this case?
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:
Assume you are working to prepare the low-level schedule and timelines for portfolio components. You want to make sure, as the portfolio manager, for your country's initiatives to promote an awareness of the importance of climate change, that each component then can be monitored and tracked to assess performance. To do so, you should:
When initiating portfolio components and terminating other, you come up with updates to budget, funding and resources allocations. Where should these updates be recorded?
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?
You are the manager for a governmental portfolio aiming to restructure the roads in your country. Having a tight schedule, a large number of stakeholders including the public, in addition to a strict budgeting framework, you know that you will be managing the performance closely and that the governance board and the stakeholders would want to check on the progress and performance frequently. For this you are developing a robust performance management plan. What can you use to help you start developing this plan?
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?
As you work to determine which stakeholders had the highest degree of influence over the portfolio, you wanted to especially know about the members of the Portfolio Governance Board because:
You want to ensure that the Portfolio Review Board is able to make key decisions at each meeting. As the portfolio manager, you and your staff are responsible for scheduling the meetings, providing the agenda, taking minutes, tracking open issues, and documenting and communicating decisions that are made to key stakeholders. Before each meeting, you feel it is a best practice to:
Stakeholders are an integral part of the portfolio. The portfolio manager will work with the stakeholders to plan, execute and eventually deliver and close the portfolio. While developing the performance management plan, the portfolio manager plans a series of sessions with key stakeholders to define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). What are these sessions collectively referred to in a portfolio?
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?
For governments worldwide, you normally have a lot of people reluctant to change and to using new technology tools especially for communication. You are managing a governmental portfolio and planning for a transformational endeavor. You are currently depicting the various communication media and methods to be used, where is this information normally used?
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. One of your team members came to you asking about the order of the steps used to perform risk management activities. What should be your answer to him?
You have a portfolio component that is using earned value analysis. It is at the 15% point of completion, and it is evident that it cannot be completed as planned. Adding resources will not solve the problem, and at the last Portfolio Review Board meeting, the Board members decided to terminate this component based on its various risks. They then decided the resources allocated to this component could be transferred to other portfolio components enhancing their early completion and avoiding risks from competitors. As the portfolio manager, you:
Your company is currently on the verge of bankruptcy due to the lack of transparency within the organization; this alerted the CEO to take decisive actions and request that new reporting lines be established in order to be fully transparent. Following this, the portfolio structure has changed to cope with the new reporting lines. Where is this change reflected when it comes to portfolio documents?
You are working to optimize your portfolio and determine a priority list of components to pursue. In your product development company, of the triple constraints, quality and scope dominate. This does not imply that schedule and budget are not important, but since the company requires regulatory approval for its products, quality dominates the company. Quality goals that are too low may lead to end-user dissatisfaction; however, goals that are too high may be too costly to the company. Therefore it is important to consider:
You are the portfolio manager for a large county that comprises much of a major city in your country. The city also has a portfolio manager, and often you meet to discuss proposed initiatives to see if there are any dependencies. In your county, you established an approach to evaluate portfolio components to make judgments regarding their alignment and priority. In doing so, which of the following was especially helpful:
Assume you are co-owner of a small consulting firm. Previously, you worked as a managing partner in one of the larger consulting firms in your country that had a defined portfolio management process to determine key opportunities to pursue to focus not solely on proposal win ratio but to aggressively emphasize capture ratio. Now in your new company in terms of portfolio management, the best practice to follow is to:
Stakeholders have complained to you that they are receiving redundant information and they prefer that you fix the issue promptly as it is time consuming for them. What is your best course of action?
With the introduction of new legislation in your company, anyone now is entitled to medical services regardless of whether or not they are employed or have any pre-existing health conditions. Your insurance company's executives have been tracking this legislation as it means significant changes for your company; many employers who obtained insurance through your company may go elsewhere for lower costs. Recognizing this legislation may lead to a loss of revenue, your company decided to merge with another insurance firm to obtain greater market share. This merger, though, means some existing projects may not be needed, and the workforce will be reduced by 20 percent, Such a significant change will impact how components are categorized in your portfolio leading to:
After the stakeholder analysis is complete, a best practice is to put stakeholders into a matrix to develop a communications management strategy. A simple but useful approach is to set it up to show:
While the Governance Board has a variety of significant roles in portfolio management, especially in terms of the recommendations it makes, c they involve:
As the portfolio manager in the third largest automotive manufacturer in your country, you have a large number of components especially new vehicles each year but also support for dealers, advertising, maintaining the brand image, increasing market share plus continuous improvement initiatives. You have contingency reserve to use to prepare to handle any risks that may occur, which is based on:
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?