The chief executive officer (CEO) informs the program manager that the delivery date for project A must be compressed by two months to accommodate market needs. Project A relies upon deliverables from projects B and C. Which of the following should the program manager do first?

The CEO's request represents a significant strategic change that impacts multiple, interdependent projects within the program. The program manager's first responsibility is to analyze the feasibility and impact of this change. This involves collaborating with the managers of the affected component projects (A, B, and C) to understand the integrated schedule, critical paths, and resource constraints. By reviewing the program resource and schedule management plans, the program manager can assess how or if the schedule can be compressed, and what the consequences would be for the entire program. This analysis provides the necessary data for subsequent governance and decision-making steps.

A. Directing project managers to crash projects is a premature and prescriptive action. Analysis must be performed first to determine if crashing is the appropriate, feasible, or most cost-effective strategy.
C. Convening the change board is a formal governance step that should occur after an initial impact analysis has been completed. The board requires this analysis to make an informed decision.
D. The request comes from the CEO. The program manager's role is not to question the request's validity with the sponsor, but to first analyze its impact and feasibility to support governance decisions.

1. Project Management Institute. (2017). The Standard for Program Management (4th ed.). Section 5.4, Program Schedule Management, states, "The Program Schedule Management performance domain involves coordinating and managing the timing of component activities and identifying and managing component and program interdependencies to optimize program delivery" (p. 69). This supports the initial step of analyzing interdependencies.

2. Project Management Institute. (2017). The Standard for Program Management (4th ed.). Section 4.5, Program Change Management, emphasizes that the program manager is responsible for "assessing the impact of the change on the program’s business case, benefits, scope, schedule, budget, quality, and risks" (p. 53). This assessment must precede formal change board review or directive actions.

3. Thiry, M. (2015). A Framework for Value Management Practice. In Program Management: A Life Cycle Approach (pp. 137-161). John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This text emphasizes the program manager's role in integrating components to deliver value, which requires a thorough analysis of the impact of any changes on the interdependent parts of the program before taking action. The initial step is always analysis and understanding the "what-if" scenarios.