Project Integration Management #

The process that will play a crucial role in the project management groups gets handled by the Project Integration management. The process helps identify, define, combine, unify and coordinate various other processes and activities for a better outcome. The action that gets taken within the project integration management gets applied from the starting phase of the project to its completion time. Project Integration Management or PIM takes care of the allocation of resources, analysis of different or alternative approaches, bending the process to meet the objectives, and managing competing demands.

Here is the process of project integration management:

• Developing a document that establishes the project and allows the project manager with the authority to use organizational resources to maintain project activities.
• The process of creating and coordinating the plans and components that get integrated into the project management plan.
• Handling the work defined in the project management changes to achieve the objective of the project.
• Creating new knowledge to maintain the objectives of the project.
• Tracking and reviewing the overall progress of the objects for better security.
• Handles the requirements, changes, assets, documents of the project, and all of its communicating decisions.

PIM has always been specified to the project managers. The knowledge area gets managed by specialists so they can look into cost analysis, scheduling specialists, and risk management experts. The accountability of PIM can never be delegated to other departments. Only the project manager has the right to combine results and has an overall view of the main project. PIM takes care of delivery due dates, planning to meet project objectives, maintaining activities, making changes to the plans, monitoring the progress behind the project, collecting data on finished results, analyzing the data, and communicating with the stakeholders.

It all depends on the difficulty of the project, a project with a more complex nature will have its fair share of expectations from the stakeholders. And here the basic integration method will bring no good to its system. To handle a more complex project, the PIM has to follow a more sophisticated route to achieve success.

Over the years we saw new trends rising and helping PIM in the knowledge areas. The rise of automated tools has helped the PIM to handle a large volume of data and information to benefit the project. The technology in the visual management department has helped the industry to pick up a new way to see the core functionalities of the project. The hidden project element that was once considered a problem is now can be seen with accurate 3d model software.

This has also led to the expansion of responsibility for the project managers. Project magner are now initial and finalizing the project. These responsibilities once fell in the hands of the management are now part of the project manager schedule. Newer practices are also getting applied to see a better vision that can help transition the project outputs to the organization.

PMI implements are always going to be done in a different order because each project carries its own unique challenges. It is important to take a look at the past to draw some solution to the problem and change it to fit more accurately to the problems of today. Factors such as the life cycle of the project, development cycle, management approaches, knowledge management, changes, governance, lessons learned, and benefits will be different on each project, here the integration of the project manager has to follow a different order.

Developing project charter #

Project charter refers to the document that authorizes the existence of the project. This piece of the document also allows the project magner to have authority to use organizational resources for the project. Project charters act as a link that connects the line of project and strategic objectives of the organization. A project charter also creates a partnership between performing and requesting organizations.  The project manager gets identified and assigned to the project during the development of the project charter. The inclusion of project managers in the development phase of project charters helps them to better understand the process, purpose, objectives, and benefits of the project.

The development project chatter takes in plenty of factors. On the business side of the project charter business cases such as market demand, organizational need, customer request, technical advance, legal requirement, ecological impacts, and social needs get incorporated into the project. A project manager is not allowed or never makes changes to these documents. Business documents should never receive any sort of update in the future. Project charter also tackles agreement that gets used in describing the intentions of the project. The agreement comes in the form of contracts, MOU memorandums of understanding, SLA service level agreements, letters of agreement, letters of intent, verbal agreement, email, and other forms of written agreements.

Project Charter Skills and tools #

Various Techniques make the project charter to be practical, these are the skills that will play a role in the effectiveness of the project charter.

• Expert Judgement- THey provide expertise in an application, knowledge, disciple, and industrial area. Training in organizational strategy, benefits of management, technical knowledge, budget resources understanding, and identification risk will make the problem-solving skill better so solid steps can be taken in time of difficult challenges.
• Data gathering – this gets done through various processes but largely, it is about finding information about the project. Information such as risk, success ratio, resource allocation, cost, and many more topics will be very useful late on.
• Team Skills – The ability to direct group events to make successful decisions and solutions that are effective on the challenges.

The tools and techniques will play a role in a similar fashion in all the steps following develop project charter.

Development of project management plan #

Here the process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all plan components gets integrated into the project management plan. A project management plan creates a comprehensive document that goes through all the key elements of a project management work. The document also covers the execution, monitoring, control, and closure of the plan. The complexity of the project will have an effect on the plan gets made. The ever-changing environment of the project manager requires the plan to be robust in all the steps.

• The project team uses a project charter to create the initial planning of the project. The complexity of the project will impact the amount of information provided by the project charter.
• Output from other processes gets integrated into the project management plan. Changes to documents may happen to update the project management plan.
• Enterprise environmental factors will affect the development project management plan.
• Organizational process assets will influence the direction of development or Project management plan by setting standard policies, processes, and procedures.

The project management plan also goes through scope management, requirements, schedule, cost, quality, resource, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholder engagement plan to make the plan more stable for the future.  The project management plan is the primary document that will get used to create the baseline for the entire project. There are other documents that will also get incorporated to manage the project more effectively.

Direct and Manage project work #

Here approved changes are made to the project management plan to achieve the primary objective of the project. The direct and managed project work provides overall management of the project work and deliverables. Twitch raises the success bar on project delivery. Thi system executes the planned project activities that are required to finish the project deliverables and accomplish the established objective of the object in time.

Resources will get allocated and changes will be made to the project plan from analyzed performance data and information. Direct and managed project work demands a review of the project changes and implementation of approved changes to the document. During the phase of project execution the work performance data will get collected and used to increase the overall project performance.

• Here the project document will need to have a changelog, lessons learned from the register, milestone list, project schedule, the requirement of traceability matrix, risk register, risk report, and project communication.
• Organizational structure, infrastructure, stakeholder risk threshold will influence the direction and management of project work.
• Organization policies, processes, performance, measurement, issue, and defect management will impact the direct and manage project work.
• Work performance data and observation identified during the activities will be carried out in the project work.
• Creation of an issue log that covers the challenges and issues faced by the project manager during the phase of the project.
• When the issue gets discovered, a change request can be served. Which can change the policies and procedures of the project.

The change request must go through the organization’s change control process to make any change to the project management plan. The changes can be made to the activity list, assumption log, lesson learned register, requirement documentation, risk register, and stakeholder register.

Manage Project Knowledge #

This process implements the existing knowledge and new knowledge to meet the project’s objectives within time. The knowledge leveraged helps produce and impact the outcome of the project. The knowledge here will get used to support organizational operation and develop future projects and phases. The knowledge is divided into explicit and tacit.

• Explicit 

It refers to the knowledge that can be read using words, pictures, and numbers

• Tacit

This type of knowledge is much more to do with the personal and difficult to express insight or experience.

The job of knowledge management is to take both sides of the knowledge type to create new knowledge that would help with the completion of the project. Sharing of knowledge and integration will play a key role here. It is important to know, only codified explicit knowledge can get shared. But the problem with Explicit knowledge is that it can be interpreted with different terms and it lacks context.

Knowledge management is much more to do with the skills, the experience of the team and other stakeholders in all phases of the project handling. This requires a friendly atmosphere where people share their vision and knowledge with each other without any restriction. Here is the process behind mange project knowledge:

•  Information from the register, team assignment, resource breakdown structure, and stakeholder register will get analyzed into the project document. 
•  Enterprise environmental factors such as organization, geographical distribution, customer culture, legal and regulatory requirements, or constraints will infect management project knowledge.
•  Organizational process assets will have a role in managing project knowledge.
• Information management tools and techniques will get used to create and connect more people with information.
• Team skills will be heavily implemented such as active listening, facilitation, leadership, networking, and political awareness for better communication.

Manage project knowledge follows all the rules that have been set for a different organization. If any changes get made to the project management plan, then the organizational change control will have to get involved through a change request.

Monitor and control project work #

Monitor and control project work takes care of tracking, reviewing, and reporting progress behind the project. It allows stakeholders and other groups to know about the current progress or state of the project and how it is being handled. Monitoring helps the project to be seen in different lights, as stakeholders will be able to see the cost, schedule, and forecast of the project. This aspect of the project gets performed throughout the project. Monitoring helps collect, measure, assess measurements and trends that improve the project in a long run.

What does it do? #

• Compares the actual project performance against the plan
• Assess the performance on a periodic basis.
• Checks the status of the project risks
• Provide and maintain timely information regarding the project products.
• Informs on reporting, progress measurement, and forecasting.
• Updates the currents cost and schedule information
• Monitor the changes that got approved

This section will cover all the major process that is important to the project management.

Now we are going to take a look at the process that helps the monitoring and control project work:

• Creation of project documentation.
• Gathering of work performance data to see metrics of scope, schedule, budget, and quality from the initial stage of the project in the project management plan.
• Procurement of agreement that contains terms and conditions.
• A decision-making process is done by the concept of voting.
• An informal and formal meeting to include project members and stakeholders.

Change requests can be submitted comparing the planned results to the actual results of the project. It will be a collection of documentation that meets the new requirements. It will have an effect on the project management plan, project documents, and deliverables. The plan of the project documents will get updated spending on the change required from them.

Perform Integrated Change Control #

Here the review of all change requests approved changes, and managing changes to deliverables documents and plans get done. This process takes in all the requests and analyzes them to determine the resolution of submitted change requests. Perform integrated change control leads to making changes to the documented aspect of the object while addressing the risk of the changes to the overall project. If the change happens to the documentation without addressing the overall content then it can damage the project progress.

The project needs to be baselined then the change request will go through its running process. Perform integrated change control will not control the change request before the establishment of baselines.

This process starts from the initial stage and runs it all the way through the completion period. Performing integrated change control is considered to be the ultimate responsibility of the project manager. The change request will impact the scope of the project and product as well. Any stakeholder will have the right to submit a change request. Changes to the system should always be recorded in written form. The changes that get approved will have revised cost estimates, activity sequences, schedule dates, and resource requirements.

Close Project or phase #

This process finalizes the project and all its activities. When the planned work is completed, the project manager reviews the plan and objectives of the object. When a project gets closed, these are the steps taken afterward:

• Closing the project account
• Reassigning the personals involved in the project
• Dealing with excessive material
• Collect phase records
• Manage knowledge sharing and transfer
• Archiving information for later use
• Updating record that reflects the final result
• Reallocation of project facilities, equipment, and other resources
• Measuring stakeholder satisfaction

If the project gets terminated before it reaches its completion state, the document that lists out actions taken during the project time will need to be created. The project manager will also have to engage with the proper stakeholder during the documentation process.

Conclusion #

Every activity or process taht is incorporated in project integration management helps the project management plan to be more effective in action. All the characters of PIM such as unification, consolidation, communication, and interrelationship help the project meet all of its objectives. All the possess mentioned above helps the integration done in a proper fashion that strengthen the core principle of the poejct.