ITM750 Week 3

Chapter 4: Project Integration Management

Project Integration Management
Project Involves coordinating all of the other project management knowledge areas
Integration throughout a project’s life cycle. Ensures that all elements come together which
Managemen includes the six main processes:
t 1. Developing the project character—working with stakeholders to create
formal documents
2. Developing the project management plan—coordinating all planning efforts
to a consistent document
3. Directing and managing project work—carrying out the planned activities
4. Monitoring and controlling project work—overseeing activities to meet the
performance objectives of the project
5. Performing integrated change control
o Interface management: identifying and managing the points of
interaction between various elements

Strategic Determining long-term objectives by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of an

Planning organization, studying opportunities and threats in the business environment,
predicting future trends, and projecting the need for new products and services
 Identify potential projects
 Use realistic methods to select which projects to work on
 Formalize project ignition by issuing a project charter

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SWOT Analyzing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats—one tool used in

Analysis strategic planning; often used with mind mapping

Best Practice  Customer-driven IT Essential

 IT can enable branding and customer recruitment
 Keep improving

Methods for Selecting Projects

Five 1. Focusing on broad Organizational Needs
Common  Often difficult to provide strong justification for many IT projects, but
Techniques everyone agrees they have a high value
 “It is better to measure gold roughly than to count pennies precisely”
 Three important criteria for projects:
o There is a need for the project
o There are funds available
o There is a strong will to make the project succeed

2. Categorizing IT Projects:
 The impetus for a project is often to respond to—
o Problems
o Opportunities
o Directives
 Another is how long it will take to do and when it is needed
 The overall priority of the project

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3. Financial Analysis
 Net Present Value (NPV): a method of calculating the expected net monetary
gain or loss from a project by calculating the value of all expected future cash
inflows and outflows at the present time
o Cost of capital—the return available from investing the capital
elsewhere
o Discount rate—interest rate used to discount cash flows
 Return on Investment (ROI) = (total discounted benefits – total discounted
costs)/discounted costs
o Required rate of return—minimum acceptable rate of return on
investment for projects
o Internal rate of return (IRR)—calculated by finding the discount rate
that makes the NPV equal to zero
 Payback analysis: amount of time it will take to recoup the total dollars
invested in a project, in terms of net cash inflows

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4. Using a Weighted Scoring Model

 Weighted scoring model: a tool that provides a systematic process for
selecting projects based on many criteria
o Identify criteria important to the project selection process
o Assign weights (%) to each criterion so they add up to 100%
o Assign scores to each criterion for each project
o Multiply the scores by the weights and get the total weighted scores
 The higher the weighted score, the better

5. Implementing a Balanced Scorecard

 Balanced scorecard: a strategic planning and management system that helps
organizations align business activities to strategy, improve communications,
and monitor performance against strategic goals

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Developing a Project Charter & Management Plan

Project A document that formally recognizes the existence of a project and provides
Charter direction on the project’s objectives and management
 Key stakeholders should sign a project charter to acknowledge agreement on
the need and intent of the project
 The key output of project integration management

Inputs For Developing a Project Charter

 A project statement of work
 A business case
 Agreements
 Enterprise environmental factors
 Organizational process assets: includes formal and informal plans, policies,
procedures, guidelines, information systems, financial, management systems,
lessons learned and historical information

Project A document used to coordinate all project planning documents and help guide a
Managemen project’s execution and control
t Plan  Plans created in the other knowledge areas are subsidiary parts of the overall
project management plan

Common Elements:
 Introduction or overview of the project
 Description of how the project is organized
 Management and technical processes used on the project
 Work to be done, schedule, and budget information

Sample Contents for a Software Project Management Plan (SPMP)

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Directing and Managing Project Work

Directing &  Involves managing and performing the work described in the PMP
Managing  The majority of time and money is usually spent on execution
Project  The application area of the project directly affects project execution because
the products of the project are produced during execution

Coordinating  Project planning and execution are intertwined and inseparable activities
Planning &  Those who will do the work should help to plan the work
Execution  PMs must solicit input from the team to develop realistic plans

Provide  PMs must lead by example to demonstrate the importance of creating and
Leadership & a then following good project plans
Supportive  Organizational culture can help project execution by—
Culture o Providing guidelines and templates
o Tracking performance based on plans
 PMs may still need to break the rules to meet project goals, and senior
managers must support those actions

Capitalizing on  Helpful for IT PMs to have prior technical experience

Products,  On small projects, the PM may be required to perform some of the technical
Business, and work or mentor team members to complete the projects
Application  On large projects, the PM must understand the business and application
Area area of the project
Knowledge
Project  Expert judgment: experts can help PMs and their team make many decisions
Execution Tools related to project execution

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& Techniques  Meetings: allow people to develop relationships, pick up on important body
language or tone of voice, and have a dialogue to help resolve problems
 Project Management Information Systems: hundreds of software products
available on the market today; and many are moving toward powerful
enterprise PM system that are accessible via the Internet

Monitoring &  Since changes are inevitable, so it’s important to develop and follow a
Controlling process to monitor and control
Project Work  Includes collecting, measuring, and disseminating performance information
 Baseline: the approved PMP plus approved changes

Performing Involves identifying, evaluating, and managing changes throughout the project life
Integrated cycle. The three main objectives are:
Change Control  Influencing the factors that create changes to ensure that changes are
beneficial
 Determining that a change has occurred
 Managing actual changes as they occur

Change Control  Former view: team should strive to do exactly what was planned on time
on IT Projects and within budget
 Problem: stakeholders rarely agreed up-front on the project scope, and time
and cost estimates were inaccurate
 Modern view: a process of constant communication and negotiation
 Solution: changes are often beneficial and the team should plan for them

Change Control A formal, documented process that describes when and how official project
System documents and work may be changed
 Who is authorized to make changes and how to make them

Change Control A formal group of people responsible for approving or rejecting changes on a
Board (CCB) project
 Provide guidelines for preparing change requests, evaluate change requests,
and manage the implementation of approved changes
 Includes stakeholders from the entire organization
 Configuration management: ensures that the descriptions of the project’s
products are correct and complete

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Closing Projects Must finalize all activities and transfer the completed or cancelled work. The main
or Phases outputs include:
 Final product, service, result transition
 Organizational process asset updates

Using Software  Documents can be created with word processing software

to Assist in  Presentations are created with presentation software
Project  Tracking with excel
Integration  Communication facilitators
Management  Pulls everything together and show detailed and summarized information