Student number: 190533784

Role of seven project management processes

Introduction and Context

In the beginning was the word, but in the case of information system it was the project. However,
deployment of any information system (IS) based project is a hard work. Statistic is not friendly here,
less than a half IS projects are successful in all criteria. Moreover, there exists dozens of project
management abstractions of different levels, legacies and purposes. Those might be fundamental
Manifesto for Agile Software Development, project variables or more specific B2C and integration
management concepts, yet critical analysis of their aspects is a big deal. People that know those
concepts and always take responsibilities for poor implementation are project managers. According to
the (Reynolds, n.d.), those are people with combination of artistic as well as science characteristics.
Apart from being convincing, responsible, good in sales and able to understand complicated
abstractions, they need tools to create their value. Frameworks is a subset of those tools. This paper is
dedicated to analysis of one project management abstraction along with allocation suitable frameworks
to achieve efficient project start.

According to the project management institute, project managers must coordinate nine areas of
expertise, one of which is integration. Some managers call it the most important knowledge area since it
plays the role of the “glue” that the project manager uses to leverage all areas of the project. The goal of
a fast track project is to make sure that all parts of the project are aligned and balanced, and if
inconsistencies arise, they are corrected as quickly and efficiently as possible. Project integration
management is the main task of the project manager from the beginning to the end of the project, and
this is why PM is, in fact, needed.

The seven processes of project management with short description are listed below.

1. Development of a project charter.

The charter contains the main characteristics of the project and is agreed with the interested parties,
which are at least - the Customer and the Project Sponsor. Sometimes charter also includes an
assessment of the benefits of the project and even the choice of the project between different options,
but in this case project scope statement is usually merged with the project management plan.

2. Development of a project scope statement.

The overall understanding of the work that have to be done. Surely, the image of it will be constantly
moderated throughout the project lifecycle.

3. Development of a project management plan

This is the process of documenting the activities needed to define, prepare, integrate and coordinate all
supporting plans. The project management plan defines how the project will be executed, monitored,
controlled and closed. Depending on the applied field project management plan covers overall scope,
schedule and budget for the project.

4. Direct and manage project work

It is the process of carrying out the work defined in the project management plan to achieve the
objectives of the project. There are a lot of actions included in this part, yet few among others:
 taking actions to meet project requirements;

creating project deliverables;

selection, training and management of team members assigned to the project;

risk management and implementation of risk response actions;

vendor and supplier management. (Project Integration Management - Steps & Process | Adobe
Workfront, 2022)

5. Monitor and control project work

It is the process of tracking, checking, and regulating performance to achieve the performance
objectives defined in the project management plan. Monitoring is an aspect of project management
carried out throughout the project. Monitoring includes the collection, measurement and dissemination
of information on performance, as well as the evaluation of measurements and trends to influence
process improvement.

6. Perform integrated change control

It is the process of reviewing all change requests, approving them, and managing changes to
deliverables, organizational process assets, project documents, and the project management plan. The
process of implementing overall change control is carried out from the very beginning of the project
until its completion.

7. Managing the closure of the project (or its stage).

It is the process of completing all activities of all project management process groups in order to
formally end a project or phase. When closing a project, the project manager reviews all previous
information obtained during the closing of previous phases to ensure that all project work has been
completed and the project has achieved its goals.

Information systems management issue

Project deployment is indeed the core element in the process of IS based project. All knowledge areas of
the project management are formulated with the aim to help people in charge with their preparations.
At the same time the brief theory of one knowledge area lays heavily on the shoulders of project
managers. Moreover, the theory itself does not provide results, yet the dropout or decrement of even
one step in the project integration consequently lead the flow in it as whole. As will be shown in the
case of Hewlett Packard situation in 2004, the situation then goes out of the control at the increasing
speed, as will be shown in the case study.

There are many tactics to concentrate on the aspects which may lead to the flows in any of your
undertakings. In management field those techniques are called frameworks. The quantity of project
managerial tasks makes it impossible to analyze the structure of answers to any of them, yet an attempt
on allocating suitable frameworks for all seven integration processes of project management will take
place in this paper.

Discussion and argument

In 2001 right before the time of the case development Hewlett-Packard became the second largest
computer manufacturer in the world specializing in three business areas: personal systems, imaging and
printing and technology solutions (hp.com 2022). In 2002 HP had merged with Compaq Computer
Corporation. The Compaq being the big player on the market of personal computer (in 1996 Compaq
sold more PC than all its competitors (Market share of personal computer vendors - Wikipedia, 2022))
was not able to fit in to the current ERP system of HP, but both companies were selling interchangeable
goods. Luckily for HP, it did work with integrating SAP ERP solutions for other companies and did 34
successful projects on the similar architecture (Songini, 2022). In the year 2004 driven by those
incentives HP set out to streamline the disparate ERP systems across its North American division into an
integrated order-processing and supply chain management system. However, when the system went
into production were found technical glitches. The problem was not a big one, in 4 weeks period
everything was fixed, but the issue with the system stopped 20% of orders taking place at that time
(SHRISHRIMAL, 2022). The latter created the backlog of orders, the attempts to conduct workarounds
were not sufficient and some clients were left without products and even worse – switched to the
products of the competitors. Estimated financial drawback was $160 million (3 Lessons Learned From
The Hewlett Packard ERP System Failure, 2022).

Hewlett-Packard indeed had best specialists, financial resources, great experience in the sphere of IS
deployment and reputation at stake. Despite all those facts, it failed to answer time limits of the project
as well as monetary restrictions. Surely there is no one primary reason for the failure, yet it is possible to
construct a table as below with accepted causes for the flaw of the project. In the left column of the
table are allocated relevant processes of project management integration.

Table 1. Integration processes and Causes of failure

№ Responsible project integration process Causes of migration failure

1. Charter of the project The demand of the clients was estimated 25%
smaller than appeared
2. Contingency plans Using the copy of the plan from the previous
project of that kind
3. Direct and manage project work Incapability to manage communication
between backend and frontend developers
4. Monitor and control project work Improper testing,
inadequate support/teaching
5. Perform integrated change Ignorance of the employee’s awareness about
control project risks by the company

6. Managing the closure of the project Time limits are not satisfied

Causes are taken from (SHRISHRIMAL, 2022)

As seen from the table HP project had problems within six out of 7 project processes. The remaining
process related to the scope of the project is left behind due to the complexity to allocate some aspect
to it or because the enterprise was quite experienced with the projects of that kind and did not have
problems with scope indeed. Nevertheless, the issue with even one of the processes will lead to the
difficulties along with possible struggle of the project. All the difficulties related to the project
implementation might be allocated to the certain process of project management. Therefore, this case
supports the theory about importance of project integration knowledge area.

With the aim to make excellence in project processes and therefore the project overall, few examples of
suitable frameworks are listed below. At the same time author understands that there are much more
solutions than can be analyzed. Following that, frameworks that could help HP to prevent project failure
are discussed in the first place.
Table 2. Causes of failure and Frameworks

№ Causes of migration failure Frameworks

1. The demand of the clients was estimated
25% smaller than appeared
2. Using the copy of the plan from the
previous project of that kind
 Stakeholders' map identifies client’s
interest (What is stakeholder
mapping? How to map stakeholders,
2022)
 The Hierarchy of Client Needs for
demand estimation
 Risk responses matrices (Puscasu,
2022)
 CCPM for resource planning

3. Incapability to manage communication  The Communications Spectrum

between backend and frontend (Hartland, 2022)
developers
4. Improper testing,  Scrum for constant testing
inadequate support/teaching  Extreme programming
5. Ignorance of the employee’s  Human relation matrix
awareness about project risks by  Kaizen
the company
6. Time limits are not satisfied 
Waterfall to see the size of the project

Lean to decrease time and financial
costs
(What Is a Project Management Framework? | Wrike, 2022) (What is a Project Management
Framework?, 2022)

Conclusion

In the project management context, integration includes characteristics of unification, consolidation,

communication, and integrative actions that are crucial to controlled project execution through
completion, successfully managing stakeholder expectations, and meeting requirements. Project
Integration Management includes making choices about resource allocation, making trade-offs among
competing objectives and alternatives, and managing the interdependencies among the project
management Knowledge Areas. (Lewis, 2017)

The implementation of the information system is a hard task which often goes wrong. In this sense,
integration processes of project management play the core role in the success of the undertaking. The
decrement in even one process will lead to the struggles of the project. Moreover, there is no one
ultimate solution to the problem which leads to the difficulties of management under project activities,
yet it is possible to excel the knowledge area of integration through consistent refreshing the processes
and undertaking the experience in the field. The good approach to start with project integration is to
follow accepted frameworks tackling the specific issue. Finally, it is unwise to be ignorant with those
simple approaches even in the situation of big companies with great experience in the technical and
managerial aspects of information system projects.
Critical reflections

ERP systems chapter

Existence of ERP system in the company is a natural event since the firm theory says that firms were
found to reduce the operational costs of the manufacturing (Cardona and Sánchez-Losada, 2016) ,
exactly what ERP systems are for. The first thing which would be analyzed in terms of the case from the
perspective of the ERP systems is the need of the firm in the new software. In this sense, the existence
of enormous amount of disunited enterprise systems surely reduces the speed of the orders processing,
enables additional costs savings and brings the standardization to all the firm’s processes.

The second thing applicable for the discussion under that scope is the choice of the software for the ERP
system. The latter is the E/3 ERP solution of the tier I vendor SAP. Then it would be the decision to stop
on the MySAP APO for Supply Chain Management implementation that enables to run everything in
browser as well as reduces costs by eliminating the need in the customization of the interface. At the
same time facing difficulties with ordering products from different product lines. (SHRISHRIMAL, 2022)
Also, would be worth mentioning the difficulties related to MySAP Product Life Cycle due to the number
of products of the company and their suppliers. The Customer Relation Management was not found to
have any problems before the project start, yet MySAP platform provides the solutions for those needs
as well.

In the end, there is a room to estimate the probable benefit from the implementation of new ERP
system in monetary equivalent. Whereas the comparison with expenses and extra costs caused by the
failure would be the logical continuation of that part.

Information technology and business strategy chapter

The upbringing of a new ERP system is a tough decision that cannot come out of nowhere. The
implementation of one should be considered only if managers would be able to maximize the potential
offered by the technology. One may discuss business practices and processes, which could be automized
by implementation such IS in the scope of IT&BS chapter. (Reynolds, n.d.) The analysis of information
system strategy in HP counting the position of the company in the IT sphere and the image of their
expertise on the specific markets. At this point would be correct to mention some of frameworks for
strategic planning, which are five Porters Forces, SWOT and PESTLE analysis. Following that lead the
word about identification on the market among the competitors would be reasonable. Then the SMART
analysis will be the first draft of the project plan development in addition to the risk management and
classification of the benefits from the implementation.

Another possible theme for discussion is the company business culture. HP was assumed to be
traditional, conservative, slow, systematic and risk averse company, whereas the Compaq was living
under the constant aggressive and risk loving culture. The latter certainly could affect the merger as well
as the deployment of ERP system. On the other hand, one may discuss the synergies emerged from the
employment of one unified resource system. At the end, the answer would provide the arguments for
and against the deployment of ERP system.

Wordcount: 2384
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