Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management Introduction Recently while renewing my PMI membership, I came across an interesting

article highlighting survey results for the rise in project managers jobs and salaries. My curiosity had

me read the entire article. According to PMI Salary Survey report (Project Management Institute, 2011), approximately 1.2 million project management jobs are projected to be filled by 2016 and 25% of companies will still be hiring project managers of different specialties. Within US, the average salary for PMP certified project manager is $112,500 which is almost $15,000 more than non-PMP certified project manager. Projects exist in every organization, may be to create a unique product, service or result (PMBOK, 2008). Not all of the organizations initiate projects or even if they kick-off the project, it is critical to follow best project management practices to have successful project delivery for the organization. According to New Horizons Industry Research (2012), 74% of all projects hit roadblocks, are over budget or are late and remaining 28% of these projects fail altogether. In a broad mindset, organizations should continue effectively managing their projects with due importance to planning, executing, monitoring and controlling processes of project management and prepare a culture of working together for a shared outcome and design systems to integrate organizational processes rather diffuse its performance (Barkley, 2006). The purpose of my final paper will be to explore the right use of integrated project management approach to raise the probability of success with the projects. Project Life Cycle and Organizational Benefits of Project Management For organizations creating something that has been never developed can be very challenging. As opportunities are identified, organizations invest in projects. As every project is unique by definition, for a project manager, one of the convenient way to develop the project

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management

plan effectively is to separate the project work into blocks with defined sequence (Young, 2007). Such pattern of project work is included into a phase that constitute the project life cycle. Typically projects can be single-phase or multiple phase where extra control is required to effectively manage the major deliverable completion. The high level nature of project phases makes them an element of the project life cycle that is shown in figure 1 as below.

Figure 1 Four Phases of the Project across the Project Life Cycle (Source: Adapted from PMBOK, 4th Ed. 2008. pg. 16) Starting of the project is referred as the project definition phase that defines what the project will attempt to accomplish when is finished as documented in the project charter. Organizing and Preparing stage refers to the project planning phase where all of the planning work happens and a realistic schedule (project management plan) is derived taking into account all constraints identified. The next phase is the project execution phase where the greatest

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management amount of work is carried out and additional effort, time and money is expended to develop the accepted deliverables as per the project management plan (Figure 1). Closing the project is the final phase of the project indicating all of the work is complete with formal acceptance from the customer. The project teams captures lessons learned, project documents are archived and all administrative tasks are completed that officially end the project (Campbell & Baker, 2007). Therefore the project manager often refers to the project life cycle structure when communicating with senior management or other stakeholder that are not totally familiar with the details of the project (PMBOK, 2008). However the overall integration can be accomplished only by keeping the customer involved and engaged throughout the project life cycle (Barkley, 2006). Increased globalization and expanding technologies are the real drivers of the global

business in the twenty-first century. Organizations compete to do more with less and as such they undertake projects to build new products and services as part of their strategic plan. The question is what makes for better business and why is it good do a specific project in achieving organizational goals and objectives. Organizations manage projects within programs or portfolios based on their strategic plan because of discrete benefits, viz. bringing a new product or service to market, increasing market share, reaching new markets or customers, increasing production, delivering to customer in new ways, speeding up cycle time, avoiding costs, reducing risk and protecting assets (Kemp, 2006). Leadership & Sponsorship Support for Projects A project sponsor controls the financial well-being of the project. A sponsor could be a senior manager within an organization who wants the project to be done as it will benefit the organization in some way. Conceptually sponsor has a business need and focuses on the business

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management objectives (Barkley, 2006). Projects wont survive unless there is a real business need. In organizations, leadership is particularly interested to know if the project is worth the investment and remains a viable business proposition (Buttrick, 2005). Project sponsor ensures a real business need is being addressed by the project and whatever being created by the project is really needed and this need is fulfilled in a viable way. As a result, project manager has a high commitment to meet all of those specific goals identified for the project by means of his project management skills (Barkley, 2006).

While issues, challenges remain in every project and project manager does have authority to manage such situation falling under his preview. However there are cases when you face problems, issues, or situations that lie beyond the scope of your influence, then it is particularly valuable to have a project sponsor to support you (Heerkens, 2002). Hence it is advisable to keep project sponsor up-to-date to all project related communications. Many a times, when I dont have connections or the clout of make things happen, I take help from project sponsor. In my experience working at GM client site, there is always an issue to get access to client network for offshore resources despite escalating to leadership. I have observed escalating such issues to my project sponsor has given me quicker results. My project sponsor helps to justify the need for having the resource to get access to GM network to execute the project work, facilitate approval or decision from the leadership and ensures access is provided at earliest. Often sponsor is a gateway to get your voice heard at the leadership level. Usually the project team members will have their heads down, but the sponsor always keeps his head up convincing leadership and making management aware that the need still exists and the capabilities being produced fit the need (Buttrick, 2005). Finally, communication is the key and a good sponsor will always help you to overcome organizational obstacles and advise

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management

you on decisions at the right time during the project and ensure leadership support is available all the time. Project Team Building Techniques Today projects involve working with cross-functional and multi-cultural teams. Due to many personalities and cultures combining, for a project manager, it is hard to please everyone. Sometimes specific project teams are assigned with certain tasks having finite deadlines or there may be Ad hoc teams set up like outside consultants who are hired to work with organization on certain projects (Duke, 2005). In recent years, most projects tend to have virtual teams that makes difficult for project managers to verify if each project team has understanding of the project and its business need for the organization (Campbell & Baker, 2007). Some of the project team members may be great technical people; however project manager has to take more active role in developing synergistic team relations to get results using his team building skills (Barkley, 2005). At times, resolving conflict can be an effective aspect of team building exercise for a project manager. A simple team building exercise can diffuse tension and rebuild healthy relationships between project teams. A successful project manager can do this by ensuring that project teams work has context and meaning, that they have necessary skills and resources to produce the work, that their internal team dynamics are facilitating and that they are integrated and working collaboratively with their external client environment (Duke, 2005). In one of my sustain projects, I remember doing a team building exercise at offshore location to resolve conflict situation between two interdependent teams. Each team being master of their own technical expertise, would hardly respect each other, instead show disrespect towards work for other. Most times, if there is heated argument, they will not listen; instead

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management point one another and keep blaming each other for the differences they carry for their work assignments and role, responsibilities and cannot come to a common ground. As a result, the overall productivity figures had downward trend that was truly dissatisfying and the client satisfaction score had been low from past three months.

In fixing the conflict, I did separate meetings with each team to understand their concerns and differences from the other team. After coming up with final analysis, I hosted the collective meeting and had both team write their major performing tasks on the flip charts and explain the criticality of executing each task on time. Both teams were made aware of the importance of doing work delivery on time, focusing on interest not positions and follow the process guidelines to successfully meet client expectations. From overall project integration perspective, there should be unification of work, sharing responsibility, integrative actions and effective partnership to manage all workload on the entire team and managing expectations for other stakeholders (Barkley, 2006). After one week of transition, I facilitated job rotation for two weeks between both the teams so that each team member identifies the work profile of other rather degrading the other role and promote self-protectiveness. All this worked out so well, in a month time we were able to see spike in our productivity figures increased to 80% from 55%. Scope Definition Techniques and its Management The project charter is the first document where a project manager can find the high level description and project requirements, whether delivering a product or service. However the project team members will be more interested to know what requirements is in scope, what to develop and what the list of deliverables is. Project charter serves as an input to derive individual requirements that meet business need for the project (PMBOK, 2008).

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management

In process of defining project scope, the analytical skills of project manager matters a lot. An experienced project doing similar projects in transition may not need any assistance from the project team; however for the one managing for the first time need careful identification of various alternatives so as to determine the best approach to execute and perform the project work. Herein I recall one of my projects in Mainframe technology, where I had to work with my project team to initiate lateral thinking for analyzing the project charter information to develop the project scope statement. Similarly when I had been doing sheet metal product development at Kinetic Engineering Company, India, in 1999, different product analysis techniques like material requirements analysis, value analysis, product breakdown, bill of materials and systems engineering were very effective tools in defining the product scope. Having clear and defined scope provides a common understanding about the deliverables among all project stakeholders and helps the project team to determine the amount of work required to complete the project. Essentially it defines what the project will and wont do (Campbell & Baker, 2007). The project scope statement as document contains detailed requirements documentation, acceptance criteria, list of deliverables, any constraints, assumptions and especially exclusions because it is important to know, declare and make project stakeholders aware what is out of scope for the project. Once the scope is defined and successfully baseline, next thing the project manager has to ensure the project scope is controlled and managed carefully otherwise several things keep adding to the project and the project gets bigger and bigger. Because change is inevitable, project manager should be firm to accept new changes only if reviewed and authorized by change control process (PMBOK, 2008); provided the baseline project schedule permits the successful integration of the new changes with the actual scope defined deliverables and avoids missing

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management target dates. If such scope creep increases, a project may turn into disaster or may need additional change request to extend the project work. Work Breakdown Structure For the given scope of the project, one cannot accomplish the project objectives until the requirements are subdivided into manageable work components. It is one of vital planning tasks for the project manager to decompose the requirements mentioned in the scope statement to the lowest level that can be scheduled, cost estimated, monitored and controlled (PMBOK, 2008). Once a project is successfully filtered through the concept definition phase, further detailed planning occurs that integrates the scope of work with a work breakdown structure and task definition (Barkley, 2006). Like the way projects are divided into different phases to ease planning and control, creating a work breakdown structure (WBS) helps project manager to allow resources to be assigned and accomplish estimations of task durations across the project activities (Lewis, 2007). In my opinion, creating WBS entertains a team development activity. In the sense, the project team who will actually perform the work on the project also participates in the planning (Lewis, 2007) and verifies if the decomposition of lower level WBS tasks correspond to the completion of higher level deliverable (PMBOK, 2008). A clear and detailed WBS shows depth of the project that essentially ties all the project components together. As a standard practice, it is recommended to develop WBS before the schedule (project management plan) and is a good way to show the scope of the project to all project stakeholders. In my experience developing WBS for IT Release Management projects, the project stakeholders were overwhelmed by the complexity and magnitude of WBS. I feel the best part

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management about WBS in any project that it allows project manager to delegate the accountability for parts of the work to the project team members (Buttrick, 2005). Contingency Planning There cannot be a single project without any uncertainty. Due to uncertainty involved with projects, the project managers mission is to systematically managed the project deliverables as per the project management plan keeping the eye on the future (Buttrick, 2005) and increase the probability of meeting the projects objectives (Young, 2007) utilizing risk management technique. The project risk management is about planning for the uncertain future events that might happen during the course of a project that could change the delivery of the project, result in a major roadblock and significant negative impact and significant deviation from the expected outcome (Hopkin, 2013). According to PMBOK (2008), risk management is a continuous process throughout the

project life cycle and all project team members are encouraged to identify and assess risks as and when risk planning meetings are held. An experienced project manager documents mitigation action for most anticipated risks well-advanced during planning phase and the corrective action is generated by risk assessment information (Barkley, 2006). This further helps in completion of risk matrix that includes the development of contingency plan for each task, judged to be medium, high or low risk. Therefore contingency planning allows the project team to use alternative strategies (PMBOK, 2008) like a response plan B that provide a means for recovery of a project, impacted by a risk event (Barkley, 2006). Project Managers should always have a contingency plan ready that will help to move forward the project without any major setbacks.

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management Out of the various software deployments that I manage in my client (GM OnStar) infrastructure, each time I have to produce plan B. Due to its 24X7 operational nature, any project implementation in the production environment has more complexity and carries high

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risks. Obviously, due to involvement of high risks, any potential problem if occurred is treated as severity one issue and thats exactly contingency plan comes in picture. In simple terms, if software deployment fails, use the contingency plan either to fix/mitigate the deployment or undo the changes that were applied to the production environment and restore the operations back to normal with minimum impact to client business. Phase Review with Sponsors Typically, the project management office recommends conducting reviews at every phase and results are documented to assure the project integration and all actions resolved (Barkley, 2006). A communications management plan determines what type of project information is to be made available to which project stakeholders. The solution that manages expectations and results to prevent the expectation gap is the gate reviews that bring the project up to specification while bringing customer back down to earth (Kemp, 2006). Generally, the stage-gateway reviews are a chance to stay in tune with your customer and therefore the project management plan should include control points, for instance, stage-gateway reviews, to ensure that management authorizes movement from one phase or stage to another (Barkley, 2006). In my experience, dealing with IT projects doing phase reviews as per the project management plan with the project stakeholders essentially helped me to verify whatever work done for the given milestone is completed as expected and meets expectations of the sponsor & client.

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management

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As long as project manager updates the project sponsor with the regular status reports it is more likely to receive the support from sponsor to manage critical escalations and make right decisions in the favor of project's success. Developing and maintaining your relationship with the project sponsor is key to making the overall project and its implementation successful, in many ways, I would say, it is a partnership. In fact, I will always say that as a project manager when you need help or think you are in trouble, the first person you confide in should always be the project sponsor. Use of Project Management Software The overall success of the project cannot be ascertained unless project manager bundles all of the project activities into an integrated project management plan. A project is surrounded by several interfaces internal or external to the project and the effective usage of a project management software allows empowerment to all project team members to work smarter and efficiently. It is like a step by step project guide that helps project manager to determine the entire project tasks are aligned with the overall business objectives. The regular tracking and updates to project management plan is a good practice for a project manager. In doing so, the project management software can help project manager to track the project resource utilization, get resources and finances under control by generating realistic cost estimates, providing detailed cash-flow down to tasks and phases, analyze and manage budgets. Very importantly, if project sponsor looking for some immediate project reports, project manager can generate customized reports like milestone charts, bar charts, histograms (PMBOK, 2008) using the software and submit a detailed report to sponsors. Obviously, this ties up extra

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management trusting relationship with sponsor and helps the project manager to instill confidence in the project sponsor. Conclusion

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Projects are a part of everyday life. However for business organizations, projects are not seen simply as investments with costs and deliverables, instead they are considered as opportunities for financial performance in the marketplace (Barkley, 2006). No matter how big or small a project is the simple fact is that as a project manager, you are accountable for the project success in producing revenues and customer values out in the target markets. Once you plan to undertake a project, an initial investigation can help you decide the most appropriate way to take the project forward and develop the project scope statement. Some of the projects are too complex to manage as single entity, hence dividing the project in different phases and further decomposition of high level requirements facilitates ease of management, planning and control. Project manager should be effective in delegating tasks per WBS and build an environment where team does brainstorming for innovative solutions to project problems and avoid hinder the project performance. The active participation from the project team in all planning meetings encourages an open communication channel between the project manager and the project team. In consultation with the project team and using self-expertise, project manager should exercise leadership style to reject or allow the new changes to the project considering required impacts to the appropriate baseline. Also, the use of good project management software to develop the schedule, resource histograms, project timelines and reports can help project manager to meet the sponsor and client expectations towards timely completion of project deliverables.

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management Lastly, the risk identification, its assessment and contingency planning should be reviewed and discussed in every project team meeting and the risk mitigation plan has to be updated on regular basis. On the final note, all of this integration may not happen successfully

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unless the senior leadership supports and invests in the business case (Buttrick, 2005) and work towards an integrative vision to follow integrated project management approach (Barkley, 2006) for all of their projects across the organization in achieving strategic objectives.

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management References Barkley, B. (2006). Integrated Project Management. (1st Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Buttrick, R. (2005). The Project Workout A toolkit for reaping the rewards from all your business projects. (3rd Ed.). London, UK: Prentice Hall.

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Campbell, G. M., & Baker, S. (2007). The Complete Idiots Guide to Project Management. (4th Ed.). New York, NY: Penguin Books. Duke, C.E. (2005). Building Effective Teams Leading from the Center. Chicago, IL: Dearborn Trade Publishing. Heerkens, G. R. (2002). Project Management A Briefcase Book. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. New York. USA. Hopkin, P. (2013). Risk Management. (1st Ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page. Kemp, S. (2006). Project Management for Small Business Made Easy. Madison. WI: Entrepreneur Press. Lewis, J. P. (2007). Fundamentals of Project Management. (3rd Ed.). New York. NY: American Management Association. New Horizons. (2012). Project Management Training & Certification. Retrieved from http://www.newhorizons.com/courses/project-management-training.aspx PMBOK - A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (4th Ed.). (2008). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. Project Management Institute. (2011). Project Management Salary Survey. (7th Ed.). Retrieved from https://drm.pmi.org/Default.aspx?doc=PMI_SalarySurvey_7thEd.pdf&r=http://www.pmi.or g/Knowledge-Center/Virtual-Library-Project-Management-Salary-Survey.aspx

Running Head: Principles of Integrated Project Management Young, T. L. (2007). The Handbook of Project Management - A practical guide to effective policies, techniques and processes. (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page.

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