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Integrating processes span the other knowledge areas and provide overall project management direction.

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Project Integration Management

Integrating processes span the other knowledge areas and provide overall project management direction.

When to use

Integrating processes are used throughout the project lifecycle.  They literally include the first process, Develop Project Charter, and the last process, Close Project or Phase.

Instructions

Project Integration Management

“Project Integration Management includes the processes and activities to identify, define, combine, unify and coordinate the various processes and project management activities within the Project Management Process Groups” PMBOK® Guide

Much of the work of the integration processes involves communication, negotiation, and coordination across the project team and stakeholders.  These processes are broad processes that collect inputs from many other processes and create meaningful information for the rest of the project.  They include making the trade-offs that so often must be done as part of managing a project.  These processes are often considered the heart of project management because this is where everything comes together, “truth” about the project is determined, and decisions for continued project activities are made.

Project Integration Management Processes

There are seven Project Integration Management Processes.  They relate to each other as shown in the diagram below.  Although shown as distinct processes, they often overlap.  As can be seen by the diagram, they feed back into each other. The six processes are:

  • 4.1 Develop Project Charter: “The process of developing a document that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan: “The process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all plan components and consolidating them into an integrated project management plan.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.3 Direct and Manage Project Work: “The process of leading and performing the work defined in the project management plan and implementing approved changes to achieve the project objectives.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.4 Manage Project Knowledge: “The process of using existing knowledge and creating new knowledge to achieve the project’s objectives and contribute to organizational learning.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.5 Monitor and Control Project Work: “The process of tracking, reviewing, and reporting overall progress to meet the performance objectives defined in the project management plan.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.6 Perform Integrated Change Control: “The process of reviewing all change requests; approving changes and managing changes to deliverables, organizational process assets, project documents and the project management plan; and communicating the decisions.” PMBOK® Guide
  • 4.7 Close Project or Phase: “The process of finalizing all activities for the project, phase, or contract.” PMBOK® Guide

 

 

Common Tools and Techniques

All the project management processes rely on tools and techniques as the best practices for accomplishing the process.  Several of these are used in virtually all the Integration Management processes and are often used with other processes as well.  The Project Management Body of Knowledge provides unique definitions for some of these techniques.

  • Expert Judgment: “Judgment provide based upon expertise in an application area, knowledge area, discipline, industry, etc., as appropriate for the activity being performed. Such expertise may be provided by any group or person with specialized education, knowledge, skills, experience, or training.” PMBOK® Guide
  • Data Analysis Techniques: “Techniques used to organize, assess, and evaluate data and information.” PMBOK® Guide
  • Data Gathering Techniques: “Techniques used to collect data and information from a variety of sources.” PMBOK® Guide
  • Meetings: face-to-face, virtual, one-on-one, large group scheduled, ad-hoc settings where conversations between stakeholders occur.

Definitions are taken from the Glossary of the Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc., 2017, Pages 701, 704, 705, 706, 710, 711 and 712.

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  • 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:06 I'd like to now talk about the project integration management knowledge area.
  • 00:12 The project management body of knowledge, PMBOK guide definition is
  • 00:16 project integration management includes the processes and activities to identify,
  • 00:20 define, combine, unify and coordinate the various processes and
  • 00:24 project management activities within the project management process groups.
  • 00:29 Integration processes collect inputs from any other process in all of the other
  • 00:33 knowledge areas.
  • 00:35 To make sense of what they've received and create guidance and
  • 00:37 control outputs that are then used by all the other processes.
  • 00:42 To make it easier to understand the type of integration activity that occurs,
  • 00:45 they're separated into different processes.
  • 00:47 However, in practice, they overlap.
  • 00:50 During a typical project day, the project manager may be doing activities and
  • 00:53 several at the same time.
  • 00:55 For instance, a project manager may be directing project work,
  • 00:58 while they are monitoring the progress on other work and
  • 01:01 processing a change request that requires them to re-plan a portion of the project.
  • 01:07 There are seven integration management processes.
  • 01:09 Let's take a look at them.
  • 01:11 The first one is to develop the project charter,
  • 01:14 which sets the project boundaries.
  • 01:16 Next is to develop the project management plan.
  • 01:18 This is one of the busiest of the integration processes,
  • 01:21 since it has integrated the output of the other 23 planning processes.
  • 01:25 Third is to direct and manage project work
  • 01:28 which is one of the integrating processes in the execution process group.
  • 01:31 This is directing the day to day work of the project.
  • 01:34 Fourth is the process, manage project knowledge.
  • 01:37 This is a new process in this edition of the PMBOK Guide and reflects
  • 01:40 the importance of knowledge management systems in today's business environment.
  • 01:44 Fifth is monitoring and controlling project work.
  • 01:47 When all is going well, this is a very easy process.
  • 01:50 But in times of crisis, this is the primary activity of the project manager.
  • 01:54 Sixth is performing integrated change control.
  • 01:57 I've never been on a major project that did not have a change requiring a root
  • 02:00 plan at some point in time.
  • 02:02 And finally, close project or
  • 02:04 phase, which is the administrative close out of the project.
  • 02:08 I wanna take a few minutes to look at several of the tools and
  • 02:10 techniques that are found on many processes and particularly,
  • 02:13 on the integrating processes.
  • 02:15 These techniques have some unique characteristics when applying them to
  • 02:18 project management processes.
  • 02:20 First is the technique called expert judgement.
  • 02:22 The project management body of knowledge, the PMBOK Guide,
  • 02:25 defines this as judgement provided based upon expertise and
  • 02:28 an application area, knowledge area, disciplined, industry,
  • 02:32 etc., as appropriate for the activity being performed.
  • 02:35 Such expertise may be provided by any group or person with specialized
  • 02:39 education, knowledge, skills, experience, or training.
  • 02:43 Expert judgment does not required that someone have a recognized certification or
  • 02:47 title to be called an expert.
  • 02:49 It can be provided by anyone who has the requisite knowledge, skills, or
  • 02:53 experience, for the issue at hand.
  • 02:55 Another commonly used technique is data analysis.
  • 02:58 The project management body of knowledge, the PMBOK Guide, defines this as
  • 03:02 techniques used to organize, assess and evaluate data and information.
  • 03:07 This means just about any analysis technique that you can think of,
  • 03:11 on any given process, the PMBOK Guide may highlight one or
  • 03:14 two techniques as examples.
  • 03:16 But it's really a very broad term and can include just about anything.
  • 03:20 In a similar manner, the PMBOK Guide defines the technique data gathering,
  • 03:24 as techniques used to collect data and information from a variety of sources.
  • 03:29 Just about any method you can think of for
  • 03:31 gathering data, can be included in this category.
  • 03:35 Finally, there is the term, meeting.
  • 03:37 PMBOK Guide does not provide a definition for meetings, but
  • 03:40 the technique is used in almost every integration process and reflects that need
  • 03:44 to interact with the rest of the project team in order to do these processes.
  • 03:49 These could be face-to-face, virtual, one-on-one, or adhoc meetings.
  • 03:55 Let's look now at how the seven integration processes
  • 03:58 interact with each other.
  • 03:59 We'll start with the first one, develop project charter.
  • 04:03 No surprise here, it develops a charter that is used by develop project management
  • 04:06 plan process and is also used again at the end of the project in the close project or
  • 04:11 phase process.
  • 04:12 Project management plan is created and
  • 04:14 used by the other five integration management processes.
  • 04:17 This plan is also used by many other processes, but
  • 04:20 we're just focusing on integration management processes right now.
  • 04:23 The develop project charter also creates the assumptions log, which is considered
  • 04:27 one of the many project documents used to manage the activity of the project.
  • 04:32 Four these processes, direct and manage project work,
  • 04:35 manage project knowledge, perform integrated change control and monitor and
  • 04:39 control project work, provide updates back to the project management plan.
  • 04:43 In particular, they provide the components of the project plan the change management
  • 04:47 plan and the configuration management plan.
  • 04:50 In addition, during the planning process, key elements incorporated into the plan
  • 04:54 are the performance baseline, the project lifecycle and the development approach.
  • 04:59 Other elements of the project documents that are created
  • 05:01 is that the manage project knowledge creates the lessons learned register and
  • 05:05 the direct and manage project work creates the issue log.
  • 05:09 Now let's look a little bit closer at perform integrated change control.
  • 05:12 Monitor and control project work and direct and manage project work
  • 05:16 will create change requests that go on another project document, the change log.
  • 05:21 And of course, if approved, these become approved changed requests
  • 05:25 that are input for direct and manage project work process.
  • 05:29 Finally, direct and manage project work, monitor and control project work,
  • 05:33 perform integrated change control and close project or phase, will all provide
  • 05:37 updates to these and other project documents as the project unfolds.
  • 05:43 Integration processes tie everything together in the project to keep it
  • 05:47 coordinated.
  • 05:48 More than any other knowledge area, this is the domain of the project manager.

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