Project Integration Management

Project Integration Management

Project integration management means coordinating all the other processes and activities of project management, so as to ensure that the aim of the project is achieved as efficiently as is practicably possible. In terms of the project management process groups and knowledge areas, then integration is the means by which the project manager uses the right part of the process groups and knowledge areas, at the right time, in the right way to achieve the aim. The PMI’s PMBOK says that integration includes…unification, consolidation, articulation and integrative actions that are crucial to meeting customer and stakeholder requirements and managing expectations.

Project integration management à project integration management is about deciding where to focus project management effort, and deciding in a systematic way that draws on experience and best practice.

Integration as the term is used in project management, is also about:

     1.      Making and managing changes in the project

     2.      Making decision

     3.      Knowing where to focus resources and effort

     4.      Identifying risk and issues

     5.      Reducing or eliminating the impact of risks, issues and changes.

All of this work must be controlled, managed and integration in order to prove beneficial to the overall project.

Project Integration Management (by PMI): Project integration management includes the process and activities needed to identify, define, combine, unify and coordinate the various processes and project management activities within the project management process groups. In the project management context, integration includes characteristics of unification, consolidation, articulation and integrative actions that are crucial to project completion, successfully meeting customer and stakeholder requirements and managing expectations.

Process Group
Initiating	Planning	Executing	Monitoring & controlling	Closing
Develop project charter	Develop project management plan	Direct & manage project execution	Monitoring & control project work	Close project
Develop preliminary scope statement			Integrated change control

Integration is about the right thing at the right time to make the project happen. Project integration management is about linking and coordinating project and product processes and knowledge areas to ensure the best possible planning and execution of the project. This can be a difficult task. It requires a trade-off between competing requirements and objectives. In real life, being able to do integration requires a certain level of knowledge and experience on the part of the project manager. Integration management is an exception to the general rule in project management that most of project management is applied common sense, that is, it can be worked out just by thinking about the task. While it is common sense that in a large or complex project, there is a discrete task that is integration, even if it called by some other term, the processes involved in such integration are not so easily deduced from first principles in the way that much of planning and HR management.

There are many different project management methodologies, but the key to all of them is integration. Integration is important because in order to satisfy the sponsor and stakeholder requirements, a project manager needs to manage the interaction across all organizational and process boundaries. This requires making trade-offs. As the performance trade-offs will be different for each project, experience and history are only partial guides. The larger and more complex the project, the more iterations will be necessary to ensure stakeholder requirements are met, as well as getting agreement on the process outcomes.

The project manager’s main responsibility is to make sure the objectives and agreed deliverables are met, on time and within budget. This is what integration is about. The most important tools for project integration are planning, communication and leadership. Other skills are influencing, negotiating and problem solving.

Understanding how the project will interact with the organization

The first step in project integration management is to understand how the project’s deliverables will interact with the current or future operations of the organization.

If the structure of the organization will alter during life of the project, the interactions initially established between the project and stakeholders will needs to change and adapt according to the reorganization, and there needs to be a plan, and before that a vision in the mind of the project manager, for realizing and managing that change. So, as a project manager, consider all likely organizational changes, so that their impact is reflected in your project management work, especially in planning. One of the greatest impacts on projects from organizational changes is changes in stakeholders. New organizational structures mean new stakeholders. New stakeholders should be involved in project planning activity as soon as they are identified, in order to minimize the risk that they might refuse to accept the project’s deliverables.

  

Integrating external inputs to the project

We have seen that integration means pulling together and prioritizing and coordinating all project management activities. The project manager, helped where necessary by the project sponsor, will have authority over resources allocated to the project and over processes that fall within the jurisdiction of the project. However, such is the nature of project management that many of the resources and processes critical to the success of the project are not under the command of the project manager.

At best, the sponsor and project manager have some degree of influence over many of the critical resources and processes. Therefore, a key factor during initiation and planning process of the project is to integrate resources and processes that are necessary for the project from those beyond the ones controlled by project.

Influencing and coordinating resources outside the project’s command

Influencing resources outside the project’s control is related to the previous subsection, on integrating external inputs to the project. The problem of influencing and coordinating resources over which the project team have no direct authority needs to be managed at all stages of the project. Project never have enough resources or access to processes. This is natural given the nature of projects as temporary endeavors concerned with innovation or change. Project have direct control of only a fraction of what they need in order to succeed.

The individual processes within project integration management are:

      1.      Develop project charter

      2.      Develop preliminary project scope statement

      3.      Develop project management plan

      4.      Direct and manage project execution

      5.      Monitor and control project work

      6.      Integrated change control

      7.      Close project

The sequence of integration processes

Project management starts with the project initiation. In project initiation the various project stakeholders are brought together to develop the project charter and the preliminary scope statement. Once those things are done then moves into the planning phase. Planning uses the outputs from initiation to start integrating all the detail needed to prepare, develop and coordinate the subsidiary plans produced in the project management plan.

The next stage of integration management is to direct and manage the execution process group by completing the work specified in the project management plan, together with the implementation of the approved changes. During execution a major output presented to the project manager is information about work performance. This information is assessed and reviewed to determine whether the project is running as planned or whether it is running at variance to the performance baselines. This information gathering and assessment is what is called monitoring and controlling.