All the organizations are striving for the best methodologies and principles that provide various competitive advantages to them. Project management is a core area where the project management principles are used to derive maximum output from the controlled and manageable resources. These may be meeting the customer expectations, faster time to market, more cost-effective, use of fewer resources, less lead time, fewer overheads and derive high profitability all these without compromising on the quality.
The organizations need to make tough decisions and which may affect the employees, the team, the management, stakeholders, the users, and the customer. All these come with the price and it may not be beneficial for the long term road to success of the organizations. That is where the project integration management comes into the picture.
Project integration management – Definition
Project integration management is the process in which the project manager is provided with the authority to control and manage projects that work seamlessly with all the departments of the organizations and with all the members of the organizations. This is done to complete the projects that are with the project manager within the given scope, time, and budget. Project integration management is a crucial process for the success of the projects given the authority, accountability, and responsibility of the project manager.
What Is Project integration management?
Project integration management is a process in which the project is controlled and managed with stability and coordination within the boundaries of the given tolerances of the project items such as cost, quality, scope, schedule, resources, changes, risks, and stakeholders, etc.
For example – If you are unable to deliver the project due to resource issues, then it depends whether you want to add more resources and bear the cost or to increase the time to market. This type of situation arises very frequently in the project. So you must take an appropriate decision in these situations. And decision making is the key area to focus on project integration management.
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Role of Project integration management
The role of Project integration management is to assign authority to the Project Manager to control and manage the project. Project integration management brings collaboration between the teams. It comes from the start of the project until the closure of the project. This is one of the key stages in Project Management certification and is included in the PMBOK 6th edition.
Importance of project integration management
- As a project manager, you need to manage the complexity of the projects within the stage boundary of the project.
- The items a project manager needs to manage are cost, quality, scope, schedule, resources, changes, risks, and stakeholders, etc.
- For example – there may be a situation where you are behind schedule and want to add more resources, in this case, you may either add more resources in which there may be an extra cost incurred or you may miss the deadline.
- Now to increase the resources if there is no Project integration management where would you get the resource suddenly from?
- Also, you need to talk to the finance team to get the extra cost. This is exactly where we need to look at Project integration management and integrate all the departments.
Also Read: How to Motivate a Team
Processes of project integration management
The 7 processes of the Project integration management are as follows,
- Developing the project charter
- Making the project management plan
- Directing and managing project work
- Managing project knowledge
- Monitoring and controlling project work
- Performing integrated change control
- Closing the project
Steps in implementing Project integration management
The 7 steps in Project integration management are implemented as follows,
- Project charter development – First thing is to develop project charter. In this, the project manager is appointed and he gets the authority to drive the project to the completion. Here along with roles and responsibilities, the goals and objectives of the project are stated. Next comes the project scope; here the Project Management explains what is inside the project and what is excluded, etc.
- Make the project management plan – Here all the objectives of the project, the budget, the schedule, the resources, and approaches along with risk assessment are done.
- Direct and manage project work – Here the project is started and executed. This is the phase were all the technical knowledge and domain knowledge comes into the picture
- Manage project knowledge – Here the objective is to use the existing knowledge and to create the new knowledge for the project execution and new future projects.
- Monitor and control project work – The project manager monitor and control the current project work by tracking, reviewing and communicating the status of the project
- Perform integrated change control – Every change request goes through a review process before it is managed. The entire change requests must be approved by the project board
- Close the project – Here the project is prepared for closure and deliverables are either delivered to the operations team or delivered to the clients. The resources will get released from that project.
Also Read: Milestone Project Management
Practices of Project integration management
The emerging practices in Project integration management are as follows,
- Visual Tools - These tools help in easily viewing the complex data points of the projects. This can then be shared with all the project members for better understanding
- Project Management Information System - This project management software is used for collecting, analyzing, and sharing information across the team.
- More Responsibility - Nowadays the project managers are given increased responsibilities to finalize the business cases and business benefits management. They are also provided with initiating and engaging the customers with frequent on-call meetings, this gives better project integration management.
- Project Knowledge Management - This enables continuous learning and knowledge sharing between all the members by bringing in knowledge, procedures, stakeholders, and tools together.
- Hybrid Methods - By combining the lean, agile, six sigma, and other management techniques provide a project manager to address the complex nature of projects.
Also Read: Fast Tracking in Project Management
Conclusion
Now that you know the requirements of Project integration management, we at StarAgile recommend you to enroll for training in PMP Course Online to explore more about this topic. StarAgile offers excellent online training in this area with more real-world examples in the course that is delivered with case studies, games, role-plays and simulation, etc.
