Project integration assignment

Person 1 post: (mandeep)

Project integration is the way of coordinating and creating linkages among various knowledge, activities, and processes. The project integration’s primary purpose is to manage all the project process effectively to meet the objectives. The 2000 edition of PMBOK book guide defines the importance of project integration in project management activities. It describes mainly three project integration methods that included process speak about developing a plan, executing the project activities in a way, and the last one is coordinating the changes in the project (Streun, 2006).

The description of project integration explains what the project manager needs for the effective management of the project. To mention the initiation, monitor the plan’s mission, or integrate the closing activities comes under the life cycle of project management. The project management integration provides more detail about the planning, executing, and controlling of the project. Furthermore, the integration starts to monitor the project from initiating to the closing of the project. In the process of project management integration emphasis in monitoring and controlling for any size of the project. It works accordingly as the plan defined for the project (Streun, 2006).

I agree with the point that the primary role of the project manager is project integrator. The project manager is the primary person responsible for handling the project from start to end. A project manager is a person who controls all the activities of the project. Project managers look after all the project activities from initiating to the closing of the project. The project manager’s responsibility is to plan the project, make a project charter, make a project management plan, manage the project activities, control the project work, perform the project integrated change, and close the project. All these activities come under project integration which is the duty of the project manager. A project manager is responsible for performing the actions to produce the project deliverables. The project manager must identify, combine, unify, and coordinate the different processes of the project management process groups (Project Management Institute, 2017).

I am currently working for Quick Track, the chain for convenience stores. The place I am working is familiar with project integration (Streun, 2006) described in the article. First, the manager assigned a specific project to the departmental heads, and he made a list of who is working on that project. Then after he defines the project plan, executing, and managing the change process. Besides these, the manager provides the project planning documentation that explains the project’s initiation, main deliverable of the project, schedule and budget of the project, and closing of the project. Then the project team works through that, and in the case of necessary change during the project life cycle, we register the change process that the manager looks after and validate the difference if it helps reduce the project risk. Our team works together to finish the project with the project goal.

References,

Streun, G. (2006). CHAPTER 7: Project management integration in practice. In, AMA Handbook of Project Management (pp. 69-73). Ipswich, MA: American Management Association International.

Project Management Institute, In. (2017). A Guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide). (6th ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, Inc.

Person 2 Post: (aayusha)

The article provides a comprehensive information on the evolution of the project management integration in project management. Integration plays an important role for project managers. to co-ordinate and create linkages between knowledge, activities, and processes. According to 2000 edition of PMBOK Guide, three processes were discussed that were necessary to integrate the project management activities. First, a process that discusses about developing plan, second, execution of project activities in the plan and third, coordinating changes across the project and project integration provided a foundation to ensure that the project management activities were properly integrated and coordinated. However, in 2004, the PMBOK Guide reviewed this definition by expanding to provide more details on planning, executing, and controlling processes plus addition project initiation and project closure to it.

This helped the project managers to set specific processes to provide guidance for the initial activities required to develop project charter and a preliminary project scope statement. Also, project managers had clear guidelines for performing integrative processes needed to produce a comprehensive project management plan, project activities during project execution and proper monitoring and controlling of the project. The managers also had guidelines on integrated activities needed to effectively close a project.

The project managers uses integration process to start the project. First, step is to plan the project and prepare the Project Charter document. The second step is to prepare the preliminary scope document that addresses the project’s characteristics and boundaries and its resulting products. Next, the project manager defines, prepares and integrates the activities in the project management plan and the integrated and cohesive plan defines the information about how the project will be executed, controlled and closed. The project managers manages the team members and also looks at the technical and organizational interfaces required between the project and the organization. The project is then monitored by the project manager by collecting, measuring and analyzing information. Change control is another important integration concept. The project manager controls the factors that causes changes in the project documents by identifying and approving only the important changes.

According to the PMBOK guide, a project manager’s primary role is that of a project integrator, which I completely agree with. Project management is an integrated series of processes and activities. While working on any size projects, the project manager must plan and make decisions about the resources needed and also anticipate problems and plan the solutions. Therefore, the project manager becomes successful, if the project processes have been properly integrated. During project initiation, the project managers perform activities such as assigning members of the project team to initial activities to analyze the scope and understand the requirements, assumptions, constraints and potential risks. They also work with appropriate stakeholders to establish an initial schedule. Finally, the project managers also are responsible for setting initial customer expectation. Therefore, all these responsibilities make a project manager a project integrator.

DRK Enterprises is planning to implement the Human Resource Management System ADP for their payroll processing and benefits. The project manager follows the integrated process to execute the plan. The project manager prepares the project charter, then develops the preliminary scope documents, then integrates the activities required to execute, control and close the plan. Therefore, the integration process followed by the project manager at DRK enterprises is similar to the integration process in Streun (2006).

References:

Project Management Institute. (2017). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK guide) (6th ed.). Project Management Institute.

Streun, G. (2006). Chapter 7: Project Management Integration in Practice. In, AMA Handbook of Project Management (pp. 69-73). Ipswich, MA: American Management Association International.