https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/

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https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/

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Hello and welcome to the PM PrepCast, the future of PMP exam preparation that is

right in your hands. I am your instructor Cornelius Fichtner.

Today’s lesson is an overview of the Project Integration Management Knowledge area.

We’ll look at why we have it, what we do and the concepts you must know for your

PMP exam.

In this lesson we will concentrate on:

<Read bullets>

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I am Cornelius Fichtner and I am the lead instructor. Thanks for your interest in our PMP exam preparation course. This free webinar will allow you to experience what the lessons in the course are like and will also help you on your road to becoming PMP certified.

The complete PM PrepCast has over 140 lessons that you can simply watch, learn from and then succeed on your PMP exam.

You can find all the details about the course and how it will make studying for your exam easier at https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/

And now... on with the show.

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Let’s start out with a definition:

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.

What does this mean? Let’s take a look at the PMBOK® Guide . In the guide you will find

over 45 processes that tell you how to execute various aspects on your project. For instance

how to create a risk management plan or how to control your schedule. The processes

sometimes seem rather all over the place and unconnected. Yet somehow you as the PM will

have to bring them all together. You have to be the conductor who stands in front of the

orchestra and tells them to play.

This is what integration management will help you to do.

Understanding integration management is not difficult. The processes are easily understood

and brought into relation with the rest of the PMBOK® Guide and your project. It is much

more difficult to actually execute them during a project.

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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.

Develop Project Management Plan—The process of defining, preparing, and coordinating all subsidiary plans and integrating them into a comprehensive project management plan.

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’s objectives.

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Monitor and Control Project Work—The process of tracking, reviewing, and reporting the progress to meet the performance objectives defined in the project management plan.

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 their disposition.

Close Project or Phase. The process of finalizing all activities across all of the Project Management Process Groups to formally complete a project or phase.

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• The Project Manager and the Project Management Team will have to make decisions on

a day to day basis in order to execute the project with the goal of delivering what was

agreed upon. For instance there may be competing objectives on the project.

• Maybe you have an objective about integrating a specific new technology into the

result but at the other hand you had a highly aggressive deadline. Here you will

have to make the appropriate decisions on how much of this new technology can

be integrated in the available schedule. There is no process in the PMBOK®

Guide that tells you how to do this.

• You will find that The mechanics of project management are explained in the

various processes, but the art of project management isn’t

• And while we are talking about the processes, for the exam it is important to realize that

you must perform them all. You cannot simply “cut out” a process here or there just

because it looks like you don’t need them on your project. Instead, the idea is that the

project management team decides how much and to what depth of each process will be

used.

• For instance: In many cases it is clear, that there is a strong desire that a particular

project result will be built in-house without the need for vendors. That doesn’t

mean that you can simply cut out project procurement management. You should

at least do your due diligence and properly go through the Plan Procurement

Management process from Project Procurement Management in order to make a

proper make-or-buy decision.

• Once you have that decision, you can then decide how much or how little of the

remaining procurement processes are required on the project.

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There is another important note about the processes and that is on how they interact. If you

look at the PMBOK® Guide you might get the opinion that project management is a neat

and orderly thing. But as soon as you get out into a real project you’ll see that it is not as

clear cut. Processes interact with each other in many more ways than shown in the

PMBOK® Guide . In the Guide it looks like we have a nice jigsaw puzzle. In real life, each

project is like a town, with buildings and roads and buses and people and nightclubs and

shops and cinemas and all of them interact with each other in uncounted and sometimes

unpredictable ways.

And the PMBOK® Guide tries to make you aware of this.

The 3RD figure in most chapters about the PM processes is the data flow diagram that

depicts all processes and how they interact. But you must understand that not all

process interactions and data flow among the processes are shown.

And I think that you can also find a statement about process interactions in every

knowledge area chapter. The statement say something like this: “The processes may

be presented here as unique and separate processes with defined interfaces, while in

practice they intersect and interact in many more ways”.

After all, the PMBOK® Guide , is just a GUIDE. It doesn’t claim to contain every last bit

on project management know how.

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Let’s now take a look at a few key concepts from Project Integration Management that you

will need to know for the exam. Of course, we look at the detail during the individual

lessons of the appropriate process. Right now, we’re just going to go from one concept to

the next to give you a high-level understanding

• Integration is a central activity in project management.

• You will have to consolidate and integrate many project management actions that are

necessary to deliver the product.

• For example you will have to make decision as to where you need to apply

resources and you will have to revisit these decisions almost daily.

• You manage stakeholder expectations and you integrate new needs into the

project.

• And you will need to deliver the product into the ongoing operations of the

organization, which is yet another aspect of integration.

• Almost the whole project comes together here. This makes integration a key activity. So

you should definitely understand Inputs, Tools and Techniques, and Outputs for each

process and not simply by memorizing them, but by understanding WHY we use them

and what their purpose is.

Production notes

• Check the capitalization of the words on the slides. In the 3rd box we had “Resource Allocation”, which we changed to “Resource allocation”, to align capitals with the rest of the boxes.

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• Feel free to reorder slides when necessary. This slide here came after the next one in the old prepcast. It just seemed to make sense to switch them out.

• PMBOK Guide 5 now also mentions integrating the product of the project into operations. So we included that here.

JH-Changed font in text box to Helvetica

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The first process in Integration management is Develop Project Charter. This is an

important document.

• The project charter is the document that formally authorizes a project. It presents the

project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to the project.

• In other words, you as the PM are named in the charter, and based on this you are now

allowed to spend time and money on this project and probably even hire other people for

it.

• Also important to know is the fact that the project manager should be assigned prior to

the start of planning and preferably as you are creating this charter.

• This is a very important project document that and you must understand its purpose for

the exam. That is why we have a separate lesson just on the project charter where we

look at the details.

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After the development of the charter which is part of project initiation, follows the very

large planning process group. Why do we have it?

• What is the goal of all this planning? From a project point of view, the goal is to better

define what we need to deliver but also how we are going to deliver it.

• What we deliver is primarily defined in the project scope. But also in the budget where

we say how much it will cost, in the schedule, where we say when it will be done and in

the Quality management plan, where we say at what grade we will be delivering the

results.

• The how is defined in all our various other plans. For instance the Staffing Management

Plan will tell you the processes that you will perform in order to put a team of specialists

together that can deliver the what.

• It might say that we will primarily try to assign internal resources, then we will

look for appropriate consultants and we will also need to employ 3 new engineers

for project specific research & design

At the end of the planning process group we will have a solid understanding of our project

and product thanks to all the plans that were developed and integrated into the project

management plan.

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• So… the What and the How is what we do in planning and The Project Management Plan

is the output (or in some of the processes it’s an update to the already existing plan).

We have a separate lesson just on the PM Plan, so for now, let me just say that

The PM plan is not a single document. Instead, it integrates a number of subsidiary

plans (like the staffing management plan or the quality management plan) as well as

other import documents for the project.

And it is probably the single most important document on the project. And that makes it

extremely important for the PMP® Exam.

So much for the Project Management Plan

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Another important cornerstone of integration are historical files. We also know these as the lessons learned files. The idea is that we integrate the lessons learned from past projects into the activities we perform on our current project. • Historical files (or lessons learned) are part of the Organizational Process Assets. Here

are some key points to remember in regards to lessons learned and historical files: • It is your responsibility as a PM to hold lessons learned meetings and document project

results for the future. This historical information is often a focus on sample questions. • That is because historical information is important and helpful input from other project

managers regarding successes and failures on their projects. • It enables you to rely on best practices that have worked in the past. You can rely on this

as a reference. • Creating this historical information is an important output of the close project process. As

a matter of fact, it is the last ones listed, because it is one of the last thing that you should do on the project. After all is said and done, you should document what has been said and done.

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As part of the integrated change control process, the Configuration Management System

and the Change Control System are two key areas to understand. We discuss them in not just

one, but two separate lessons. So you can see that this is important and that you should

understand their purpose.

• The configuration management system is the system in which you define what your final

product will look like in specific and technical detail.

• For instance, if you build a house, the plans and drawings will be part of the

configuration management system because they describe exactly what you will

build. They show how your house will be configured.

• And the change control system is the set of procedures and processes that you need to

apply in order to make a change. For instance, if you want to add another bathroom to the

house, you will have to invoke this change control system in order to make the

appropriate updates the current configuration of your house.

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And this takes us seamlessly to the Integrated Change Control System This is also one of the major systems on a project because change is inevitable. At some point during the project someone is going to want to make a change. Either increase the scope or reduce the scope. Or maybe we find that our quality management processes don’t work the way that we had envisioned, so we must make a change to the actual processes. That is when you need a change control system. Without it, change will be rampant on the project. Everyone will add or remove parts and nobody will be able to keep track of anything. • At its core, a change control system is very simple:

• If you want to make a change, fill in a form. • This form will be reviewed and then either approved or denied. • If it is approved, we will integrate it into the project. • If it is denied, we will give you a reason for denying it. And that’s it in a very basic form.

When it comes to change requests they can be verbal, but should better be in writing. You can get these change requests from internal sources – like your stakeholder – or from external sources, such as government agencies or new laws. That is why some change requests are mandatory. But never the less, they have to go through the integrated change control system, where their effect on the rest of the project will also be evaluated.

For instance, a change in a law may result in added project complexity and increased cost for implementation. But your stakeholders may not be willing to pay this additional cost so therefore, the decision is made to cancel the project. That is why every change must be fed into the integrated change control system. And by the way, it’s the same with emergency change requests. If there is an emergency, go ahead and implement the change. But then, follow the appropriate procedure and feed the change into the system for review.

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And finally, we have the two closure activities.

• They are Close Project Or Phase and Close Procurements

• Close Procurements is performed once for each of your contracts. And to make sure that

you don’t forget any steps to properly close it, you will rely on a checklist called the

Contract closure procedure.

• Close Project Or Phase on the other hand is performed once for every project phase and

once for the complete project. A lot of expert judgment is needed during this process, to

make sure that nothing gets forgotten and that the project of phase is closed according to

all the relevant standards and procedures that we should be following.

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So, what types of questions do we see in sample tests online or in books?

o The simplest one that we found asked: What does project integration

management consist of?

The answers however weren’t a list of the processes in the knowledge

area, but they offered various concepts to select from. So you really must

understand what the goal of the processes are and not just their names.

o You can expect question that test your understanding of the various T&T

employed during integration. For instance

Which system will help you in project execution?

That would be the PMIS

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Which system helps keep the project scope under control?

That would be the integrated change control system

And of course the configuration management system is the place

where your project’s product is described in detail. *

o And as a general rule, questions on integration management focus on the

integrative nature of the processes and also test your understanding that you

must follow the appropriate procedures in order to successfully complete the

project.

JH- Where is the bolded bullet statement represented on the slide??

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One of the students of the PM PrepCast said it like this

The PM Prepcast™ does spell out the concepts from PMBOK® Guide really well. But what counts on PMP® Exam Sample Questions is how well you understand, interpret & analyze the situational questions & based on the learned concepts are able to decide which is the most appropriate answer.

And this concludes our overview of Project Integration Management.

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Before we go, here is another PMP® Exam tip for you:

This one is all about… what if you fail the exam? What can you do?

Let’s start at the beginning:

• After the exam you will be handed a score report which will show you in which of the

domains you were proficient, moderately proficient or below proficient. That way you

can see in which of the domains you had problems and failed the exam.

• This is important information for you so that you can prepare properly for next time.

• If you believe that there was an actual mistake during your exam or on your score report,

then you can challenge the result. PMI has an appeals procedure for this:

• PMI’s certification program is administered and supervised by the PMI Office of

Certifiation appeals. at the Global Operations Center. All challenges to the

certification program are governed by the comprehensive and exclusive rules of

the PMI Certification Governance Council’s (CGC) Certification Appeal

Procedures.

• The appeals process is the only method to review all decisions made by the Certification

Department regarding applications, eligibility, examinations, test administration and

results, and other application or testing-related certification issues and/or challenges or

complaints.

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Since you have not passed the exam on your first attempt you may now re-test

• You are granted a one-year eligibility period in which to pass the examination.

• During the eligibility period, you may take the examination up to three times. So plan

your time carefully to leave enough time during the eligibility period to retake the

examination, if needed.

• If you fail the examination three times within their one-year eligibility period, you must

wait one year from the date of the last examination you took to reapply for the credential.

• There is (of course) a re-examination fees that you will have to pay when you take the

exam for the 2nd or 3rd time. If you need this information (and I hope you never do) then

please look into the PMP® handbook to see the most current prices for the re-

examination fees as well as some more details regarding the Certification Appleasl

Procedure.

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And what is the best way not to fail? Here are some basic recommendations:

• Start by watching all the lessons of The PM PrepCast™

• Create yourself a sound study plan, in which you define how much you will study every

day. Follow your own plan, track your progress and adjust when necessary

• Take a lot of sample questions

• Begin with the free ones that you find on the internet (but make sure that they are

based on the current version of the PMBOK Guide)

• And then also get yourself an online exam simulator to really hunker down and

take several complete 4-hour exams

• And then you need to get two book

• First you want to get the PMBOK® Guide and you want to study with and go

through the guide at least twice.

• And then you also want to get yourself a PMP® prep book and study from this

book alongside reading the PMBOK Guide and watching our lessons here

If you are not sure what book to buy… then we have recommendations for you

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Simply go to pm-prepcast.com/book and that will take you to our page where we have recommendations for several exam prep books. One of these (the first one from the left) is the one that I personally used when I got ready for my PMP exam.

And with that we have come to the end of this lesson. So it's time for Justine to say "X" and of course... I say Until Next Time.

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https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/

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