PfMP Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP) Questions and Answers

While your organization maintains a decision register after each meeting of the Portfolio Review Board, this register only notes decisions that are made when a component is added to the portfolio or if the Board terminates a component. If the component is terminated, the reason for the termination is not listed. Also if a proposed component is not approved, the reason is not listed. It is evident this register is lacking in its usefulness, which means it requires updating as it is:

You are managing a complex portfolio with high risk levels due to emerging technological breakthroughs and a short benefit window to market your product. The Portfolio Process Assets are important and referenced throughout the portfolio life cycle. Which of the following is correct regarding the Portfolio Process Assets purpose and focus?

After a strategic change is managed and finalized, you as a portfolio manager, are expected to document changes to the portfolio components attributes. Which of the following is the document in which you document these changes?

You are managing a highly technical portfolio and are already mid-way through the implementation. You know that the communication is key to success as all the involved parties and stakeholders have a high technical exposure and you should maintain their buy-in along the lifecycle. Part of your activities is to collaborate with stakeholders to reach a common ground and to resolve conflicts. Which of the following is considered a collaboration technique?

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:

You have just finished a major checkpoint in your portfolio and the portfolio has to undergo several changes in order to re-align with the strategies. One component of your portfolio has been cancelled and the resources are going to be reallocated to other components. Which process does these activities?

Assume you are the portfolio manager for a company that specializes in software, including portfolio management software. It has many components under way to enhance the existing product line but also to move the company into Cloud computing. You regularly prepare reports on the portfolio status but lately have had a large number of stakeholders request ad hoc reports. You decided to survey your stakeholders to learn about their information needs. You next decided to hold some one-on-one interviews with several interested and influential stakeholders in terms of communications requirements. From these interviews you are concerned that some stakeholder groups may be missing so you decided to:

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?

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

As you prepare a list of possible components for your railroad to consider since most of its programs and projects are large and complex, your management team has suggested in your analysis of which components to pursue that you conduct statistical simulations of budgets, schedules, and resource allocations. You therefore decide to use:

Manage supply and demand comes down to balancing the requirements with what is available. Resource requirements are a major input to the manage supply and demand process. Which of the following inputs to this process contains resource requirements?

While aggregating data from component reports in order to present the portfolio status to the governance board on an upcoming review meeting, which of the following is the most important thing to do?

You are managing a portfolio for your company and are trying to balance the tasks that will be done internally based on the availability and the ones that will be outsourced. Managing supply and demand is a recurring activity in the portfolio life cycle and results in changes in resource utilization and resource efficiency. What is the expected outcome from managing supply and demand?

You have been recently assigned to manage a new portfolio that is supposed to shift the company from silo-based to a projectized one. You are in the process of initiating the portfolio. You are currently developing the strategic plan. Upon finishing it, you are expected to present

When managed correctly, the balanced scorecards can change the way an organization does business. Balanced scorecards keep focus on results. Which of the following are factors that can be targeted by the Balanced Scorecards method?

Managing value is key to success as portfolio are undertaken to ultimately deliver an outcome that is strategically aligned and which delivers value to the organization. While managing value, the portfolio manager invokes the Benefits Realization Analysis activity. Which of the following is part of this activity?

During the portfolio lifecycle, you will be using the roadmap a lot and you be using it to report progress to different stakeholders. When it comes to portfolio roadmap, which of the following options is true?

A key role for portfolio management is to balance the use of resources following the need against the existing skill-set. One of the component managers told you that an important SME on his program is traveling and there is no replacement for her. This will cause a major delay in the program. What is your first step as a portfolio manager?

Recognizing that different components can have different types of risks, you decide to see how each risk affects the components. For example, assume you have identified a structural risk as overly ambitious plans and determine this risk affects three of the top five risks in your portfolio. You also have identified an environmental risk, in terms of whether the component will promote the organization's vision, which affects two components. Each component then has some other types of risks that affect it. From such an analysis you can see:

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. You are currently using it in the development of your charter. What is its purpose in this case?

Stakeholders expectations and requirements change throughout the portfolio life cycle. New stakeholders can be added or removed and requirements need to be continuously solicited in order to keep the portfolio aligned with stakeholders expectations. What is the process for soliciting requirements called?

You are currently defining a hierarchical representation of your portfolio and its components and listing the major and milestone components, including dependencies internal and external to the portfolio with business units. For this you know that you will need multiple inputs. Which of the following are considered inputs in your case?

Your executive management has been recently undergoing a change from a functional organization to a projectized one and is currently assessing the volume of work that the organization can execute. Which of the following tools and techniques will decide the volume of work and components that the organization can execute?

The Scenario Analysis is used twice as a tool and technique, once while developing the charter and another time while managing Supply and Demand (It also exists as part of the quantitative and qualitative analysis as part of the optimize Portfolio process). When it comes to Manage Supply and Demand, which of the following represents a correct description of the Scenario Analysis?

A number of components proposals are on the table as a result of the strategic planning cycle. While defining the portfolio, you wanted to use a method to help you compare portfolio components that address similar needs. Which of the following techniques you use?

Your organization tried implementing portfolio management in the past, but even though it purchased a sophisticated automated software system for scoring and prioritization, it was not successful. After a year of complaints about the system, the executive team disbanded it. Now, resources are scarce, and some executives who were involved in the earlier attempt have left the company. The new CEO asked for a list of ongoing programs, projects, and operational work, and you could not provide one even though you direct the Project Management Office. He wants this inventory so it then can be used as the starting point to implement portfolio management. You and several others stated it did not work previously and do not believe it will work in the company. The CEO then hired a person to be the portfolio manager from outside who reports directly to him. The portfolio manager is emphasizing the importance of resources working on initiatives aligned with organizational strategy as part of the:

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?

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?

The portfolio strategic plan should contain a prioritization model or approach that guides the ongoing decisions as to which portfolio components should be added, terminated, or changed, as well as prioritizes and balances the component mix over time. A simple prioritization model may be provided which contains

Resources allocation and optimization for use is key to a successful portfolio. You have assigned human resources, funds and other required assets to a component that you have initiated recently. What should have been done prior to being able to to that?

Consider you are a veteran portfolio manager and that you are managing the most important portfolio in your company. What are the processes you execute as part of the portfolio governance?

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:

Risk management is an integral part of project, program and portfolio management and is invoked throughout the project, program and portfolio life cycle. Which of the following highlights the difference between portfolio risk and program or project risks?

In your diversified chicken products company, your portfolio of components in progress consists of approximately 175 programs, projects, and other work. Generally, at each Portfolio Review Board meeting, about 35 new proposals are reviewed to see if they should be part of the portfolio. As the portfolio manager, you have set up categories for these components. They are useful to facilitate portfolio optimization because:

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:

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 in the process of monitoring the portfolio to ensure alignment with organizational strategy and objectives and make governance decisions. What do you expect as an outcome to this?

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?

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?

Assume you work in new product development, and you believe you have identified a component that will be a breakthrough for the company. However, you performed a capacity analysis with the help of your EPMO to assess resource availability especially in certain skill sets. You learned that key computer scientists required by this component were in short supply, yet you still believe this component should be in the portfolio. To convince the Portfolio Review Board to consider it, you decide to use:

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?

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?

Your CEO was fired because of a decline in the company's profits by the Board of Directors. They have now hired a new CEO, who plans to re-shape the portfolio and has changed the company's strategic goals and objectives. The new CEO will continue the existing product line of soap products that the company has manufactured for the past 50 years but now will manufacture new products to focus on the baby boomer generation as they retire but desire to maintain a youthful appearance. It also will offer other products to new high school and college graduates who want to appear older. As the portfolio manager you should:

In a portfolio, data is an abundant asset, and managing the information aiming for a better decision making is critical. For this you use a variety of Quantitative and Qualitative analysis methods. Considering that you are currently working to quantitatively measure component values, however a few components have intangible benefits and can not be measured using quantitative analysis. How do you plan to proceed?

Your company's water treatment center serves three cities. Tests are conducted each day to see if the water is safe to drink. On Thursday, E coli were found in the water, but the water authority did not notify the citizens in the three cities. Instead, the citizens learned on Friday, the water was now safe to drink. The citizens are in an uproar, and your company is to blame. It is obvious one of the problems is the aging infrastructure and limited resources. To best optimize the portfolio, your CEO asked you to:

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?

Portfolio managers tend to use the efficient frontier analysis as a modeling approach that gives decision makers the analytical tool to optimize portfolios given resource constraints such as risk. Consider that your company is risk-averse, on which side of the efficient frontier curve should the undertaken portfolios lie?

As part of the strategic alignment, you Rank strategic priorities working with key stakeholders and using qualitative and quantitative analyses in order to

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. Risk is incorporated in all process groups as well. As a portfolio manager, how do you map the risk management elements to process groups?

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:

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:

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?

For years, your aerospace company has been a leader in the development of sophisticated avionic hardware systems around the world. The executives want to continue with this well-recognized product line, but also they decided it is time to move into state-of-the art software to complement the hardware products. You have been asked to assess whether there are skill set limitations in the company to assess resource capacity internally. To do so, you decide 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:

The PMO in your company is newly established and one of its first results was allowing the portfolios to use a new communication method to disseminate the information faster. With relation to your portfolio, where should this new communication be stored?

As you prepare your communications management plan you realize that stakeholder requirements may change over time, and these changes then will need to be reflected in updates to the plan. As the plan defines the overall communication process not only for gathering information but also in determining recipients of it, it also:

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 that is referenced throughout the portfolio life cycle. Which of the following is correct regarding the Portfolio Roadmap purpose and focus?

Because of the ongoing and iterative nature of portfolio management, the processes in it are continually repeated as new components are added, and others are completed or terminated. Revisions are constant given complexity, risks, and the rate of change. As you work to optimize the portfolio, it is helpful to:

You are the portfolio management for a big corporate with existence in 3 continents. While planning the performance management and in particular the dashboards and reporting tools, which of the following options is the most important to account for the different geographical locations?

Assume at this point as the portfolio manager in your mattress company, you are activating portfolio components, updating portfolio reports, and documenting the decisions made at the recent Portfolio Governance Committee meeting as the company moves into new markets. You are therefore:

As part of developing the Communication Management Plan, a portfolio manager executes the Communication Requirements Analysis, in addition to Stakeholders Analysis. Which of the following options in your opinion is a result of the Stakeholders Analysis?

Assume you have been asked to prepare the portfolio management plan as you are on the staff of your company's Chief Portfolio Officer. In this plan, you will describe the different methods or approaches that your company will use to manage different types of components in the portfolio as specified in the:

Developing the Portfolio Management Plan is a major step in a Portfolio and for a Portfolio Manager. You are currently developing this plan and having focus groups and brainstorming activities during which you are using mind-maps diagrams to organize the idea into logical groupings. Which of the below are you using?

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:

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 the portfolio manager for a family business company who had an old CEO reluctant to change and to taking risks. The board has decided with the support of the president to change the CEO and assign a new one. The executive directors along with the president have as well advised the new CEO to be more aggressive. Which of the following documents need to be updated in this case?

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 have developed a robust performance management plan. What is the expected result from developing this plan?

A new portfolio manager in your organization is currently preparing his portfolio charter and has come to you asking advice about what should be present in charter

Assume as the portfolio manager you have conducted a stakeholder analysis, gap analysis, and a readiness analysis as your cereal company is now entering the ice cream market. A team was formed and located off site to determine whether this market was one in which your company could compete, and its recommendation to do so was accepted by the Portfolio Review Board. Now you need to:

You are a portfolio manager for a company with volatile market conditions and continuous strategic changes. It is always important for you to use methods such as simu-lation techniques, flowcharts and decision trees to be able to balance the portfolio with the actual needs. Which of the following tools and techniques you are using in this case?

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?

While managing portfolio value, you met with stakeholders and discussed how to address the strengths and weaknesses in order to ensure benefits are comprehensively and holistically taken into consideration. Which of the following tools and techniques are you performing?