Portfolio and Program Management Alignment PMP Practice Questions

Question 1 of 7

A portfolio manager informs you that two projects in the portfolio — yours and another — are competing for the same senior technical resources and are targeting identical customer segments. Your project has a higher NPV but the other project was started six months earlier. What is the BEST course of action?

1. A.Escalate to the portfolio manager to conduct a formal prioritization review, presenting both projects' strategic value metrics for comparison.
2. B.Negotiate directly with the other project manager to informally share the contested resources without escalating the conflict to portfolio or senior leadership.
3. C.Accelerate your project timeline to finish before the conflict becomes critical
4. D.Reduce your project scope to eliminate the resource conflict

Question 2 of 7

You are a project manager within a program that is rolling out a new ERP system across five business units. Two of your deliverables feed directly into another project in the program. The other project manager reports your latest delay will push their go-live date by three weeks. What is the MOST appropriate action?

1. A.Work overtime to eliminate your delay without notifying the program manager
2. B.Inform the program manager now so the interdependency impact can be assessed at the program level and recovery options planned.
3. C.Tell the other project manager to rebuild their schedule to absorb the delay without escalating the interdependency to the program manager.
4. D.Submit a change request to extend both projects' timelines

Question 3 of 7

Your agile team is working on a product that is one component of a larger strategic program. The program office asks your team to freeze the current release to align with a program-wide go-live date that is six weeks away, even though your team has two high-priority backlog items that could deliver significant user value. What should you do?

1. A.Ignore the program freeze and deliver the backlog items on your original schedule — your team's sprint commitment takes priority, and the program office can adjust the go-live alignment accordingly.
2. B.Accept the freeze immediately without raising the trade-off — program governance decisions are not negotiable, and advocating for exceptions risks damaging your team's standing with the program office.
3. C.Present the value at stake from the two backlog items to the program manager and jointly decide whether an exception is warranted or the items should be deferred to the next release cycle.
4. D.Add the backlog items to the next sprint without informing the program office, since team-level backlog decisions are within the product owner's authority and do not require program-level approval.

Question 4 of 7

A portfolio review reveals that three of the eight active projects in your organization are underperforming against strategic objectives. As a senior project manager advising the portfolio committee, which TWO actions are MOST aligned with portfolio management best practices?

Select all that apply.

1. A.Continue all projects to avoid disrupting team morale and stakeholder relationships
2. B.Realign underperforming projects by updating their business cases and adjusting objectives to match current strategy.
3. C.Transfer resources from underperforming projects to higher-priority initiatives
4. D.Increase project budgets to give underperforming projects a better chance of success
5. E.Terminate projects that cannot demonstrate a credible path to strategic value, regardless of sunk costs

Question 5 of 7

A program manager is overseeing four related projects aimed at launching a new product line. One project — the market research initiative — is chronically behind schedule and its findings are needed as inputs by all three other projects. What should the program manager do?

1. A.Let each project manager solve the problem independently
2. B.Terminate the market research project and have the other projects proceed without the research
3. C.Assess the program-level impact of the market research delay, determine whether interim findings can unblock the other projects.
4. D.Request additional resources for the market research project without first assessing downstream impacts on the other three interdependent projects.

Question 6 of 7

An organization has a portfolio of 12 active projects. A portfolio review reveals that four projects are strategically low-priority, three are medium-priority, and five are high-priority. Resources are constrained and can only fully support eight projects simultaneously. What portfolio management action should be taken?

1. A.Reduce all 12 project budgets proportionally to distribute resources equally, regardless of each project's strategic value, urgency, or benefit-to-cost ratio.
2. B.Continue all 12 projects at reduced capacity to keep all commitments
3. C.Prioritize the five high-priority projects for full resourcing, allocate remaining capacity to medium-priority projects based on strategic value.
4. D.Select 8 projects randomly to avoid stakeholder conflict

Question 7 of 7

A PMO director is presenting the quarterly portfolio dashboard to the executive committee. Three projects are green (on track), two are yellow (minor concerns), and one is red (critical issues). The executive committee focuses only on the red project and asks the PMO director to resolve it. What ADDITIONAL information should the PMO director provide to enable effective portfolio decision-making?

1. A.The detailed technical architecture of the red project — the executive committee needs to understand the root cause complexity to make an informed decision about recovery options, additional investment, or termination.
2. B.The project manager's performance history and track record — establishing accountability is essential before committing additional executive attention or budget to recovering a project in critical status.
3. C.A comparison of the red project's timeline against industry benchmarks for similar project types — this contextualizes whether the delays reflect execution failures or are consistent with comparable initiatives.
4. D.Whether the red project's issues will affect any of the other portfolio projects through shared resources, dependencies, or strategic conflicts, and what portfolio-level options exist — recover, reallocate, or terminate.