Dr. NICHOLAS WATSON

Project Integration Management

By: Lottoya Shaw

Project Integration Management is the integration of all the process and activities involved in identifying, defining, combining, unifying and coordinating the various processes within the project management.
Project integration management is an important part for the successful completion of a project as it helps in integrating all the processes of the project and maximizes the performance in order to achieve the successful completion of the project throughout the entire life cycle of the project.

The project manager is responsible for an effective project integration method as the success of any project is highly dependent to it and helps to satisfy the stakeholders. An effective project integration management involves six main steps that are as follows:
Developing the project charter

It is the first step of project integration management that involves developing a document that provides a formal authorization of a project through proper documentation of the initial requirements satisfying the needs and specifications of the stakeholders.
The project manager then uses the project charter for organising all the required resources for the successful completion of the project. A project charter helps the project manager to decide the goal, objective, budget and timeline of the project. In addition to that, a project charter also defines the stakeholders, their requirements, interests and expectations. It also helps to determine the external as well as internal environment that can influence the project.

Develop project management plan

It is very essential for a project to have a purposeful plan for its effective execution. A detailed documentation of project management plan proves very beneficial for the project managers to understand the project and execute it properly. However, a project management plan should always be flexible so that it can be modified if there is any change in the requirements of the customer in the middle of the running project work. A project management plan should include the project name, description, sponsor's name, project manager and the key team members with their contact information also reference materials that will be introduced in the project as a part of the project. A project plan should be effective enough to guide the project managers as well as the team members for directing and managing the execution of the project properly.

Directing and managing project execution

This is the execution phase of the project integration management that involves the effective management and performance of the work assigned to each individual of the team in the project management plan. This is the longest phase of a project management plan and most of the budget allocated for the project is spent here. If the plan is good enough, it becomes very easy to deliver a good product or service. However, if the number of risks involved in the project is high, then the project manager should have adequate knowledge of risk management as well as procurement management. In addition to that organisational support plays an important role in this phase. The outputs of this phase include work performance information, change requests and updates.

Monitoring and controlling project work

This phase includes collecting, tracking, reviewing, evaluating and regulating the progress of the project to measure the performance objective of the project management plan. It is very essential to check the project performance on a regular basis in order to get the maximum outcome. If the client places some change to be made in the project during the execution phase, the project management plan should be revised and modified accordingly. The outcomes of this phase are Change requests, Project management plan updates and Project document updates.

Performing integrated change control

This phase includes the reviewing change requests, approving changes and managing changes during the entire project life cycle for the absolute delivery. It is almost unrealistic to execute a project exactly as per the project management plan as changes are quite likely to occur in every stage of the project cycle.

Closing project or phase

This is the last phase of the project integration management, which indicates the formal closure of the project activities. The outputs of this phase are the final products or services. In addition to that, the closing phase also includes documentation of the project.

 

 

PROJECT SCOPE MANAGEMENT

 

by: NICHELLE STERLING

Scope refers to all the work involved in creating the products of the project and the processes used to create them (Schwalbe, 2007, p. 180)
A deliverable is a product produced as part of a project, such as hardware or software, planning documents, or meeting minutes (Schwalbe, 2007, p. 181)

Project scope management includes the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It ensures that the project team and the stakeholders have the same understanding of what products the project will produce and what processes the project team will use to produce them. There are five main processes involved in project scope management:

 Scope planning: deciding how the scope will be defined, verified, and controlled
 Scope definition: reviewing the project charter and preliminary scope statement and adding more information as requirements are developed and change requests are approved

 Creating the WBS: subdividing the major project deliverables into smaller, more manageable components
 Scope verification: formalizing acceptance of the project scope
 Scope control: controlling changes to project scope

SCOPE PLANNING

This is the process of creating a scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, validated, and controlled. It provides guidance and direction on how the scope will be managed. Key inputs include the project charter, preliminary scope statement, and project management plan

SCOPE DEFINITION

The process of developing a detailed description of the project and product. The preliminary scope statement, project charter, organizational process assets, and approved change requests provide a basis for creating the project scope statement. As time progresses, the scope of a project should become more clear and specific.

CREATING THE WBS (WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE)

This involve subdividing the project deliverables and project work into smaller and more manageable components. The work breakdown structure is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of project work.

 Inputs: Scope Management Plan, Project Scope Statement, Enterprise Environment factors, Organization Process Access, Requirements,

 

Documentations

 Tools and Techniques: Decomposition, Judgements
 Outputs: Scope Baseline, Project Documents, Updates

SCOPE VERIFICATION

Scope verification is concerned with acceptance of deliverables while quality control is concerned with correctness of the deliverables and meeting quality requirements. It also includes reviewing deliverables with the client and obtaining formal acceptance of deliverables and formalizing acceptance of the completed project deliverables.

 Inputs: Project Management Plan, Documentations, Requirements, Work Performance Data etc
 Tools and Techniques: Inspection, Group Decision, Making technique
 Outputs: Accepted Deliverables, Change Requests, Work Performance, Project Documents, Updates

SCOPE CONTROL

It involves monitoring the status of the project & products scope, managing changes to scope baseline, ensure all requested changes and recommended corrective or preventive actions are processed through the “Perform Integrated Change Control” process, and uncontrolled changes are often referred to as project scope creep.
Inputs: Project Management Plan, Documentation, Requirements, Requirements Tracebility Matrix, Work Performance Data, Organization Assets.

Tools and Techniques: Variance Analysis
Outputs: Management Plans Updates, PROJECT Documents Updates, Work Performance etc.