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Knowledge Area:Project Integration Management 

• A project plan is a comprehensive document which CONTAINS detailed information about how the project will be executed, how the project will be monitored and finally how the project will be closed. A project plan is similar to a blueprint or a guideline for the team to be followed during the project.
• Project planning is a structured approach to develop an integrated project plan by developing and integrating the subsidiary plans of SCOPE, schedule, cost, resources, QUALITY, communication, risk, procurement and stakeholder.

The final project plan will include the above subsidiary plans. It will also include the detailed project scope, detailed schedule and detailed cost estimates and expenditure plan. These are referred as the scope, schedule and cost baselines.

The project plan also will include the project life cycle and the associated phases, change management plan, CONFIGURATION management plan etc.

• The project planning will be carried out by the project manager by taking the help of the core team members who will assist in developing the different components of the plan. The core team will also assist in estimating. The team will refer to the project CHARTER document to understand the initial constraints of scope, time and cost as laid down. The detailed plan will be prepared to meet these constraints or goals.

The team will first start with elaborating the project scope, developing estimates for duration, cost and resources for each activity or work package in the project scope. In addition the team will also prepare a risk management plan, risk responses, communication management plan, quality management plan, stakeholder engagement plan, and procurement management plan to complete the overall project plan.

• Once the detailed project plan is prepared by the team, the plan finally gets approved by the sponsor or by the customer. The approved plan will have the scope, time and cost baselines approved. The project baselines will be used as a reference for measuring performance once project execution begins. Any deviation from these baselines will be treated as project variances. These baselines form the boundary of the so called triple constraints.

Knowledge Area: Project Scope Management 

The requirements are collected in consultation with various STAKEHOLDERS. Once the requirements are agreed, the project team will have to develop the end product/solution and make sure that all the requirements are fulfilled and nothing is missed.

When the project team is finally ready with the product and will be seeking final acceptance from stakeholders, it is often observed that few requirements may be missing. Having missing requirements at this stage will become a serious issue. The missing requirement will have to be immediately addressed and completed. It may require huge amount of rework in some cases and lot of unnecessary embarrassment for the team.

A requirement traceability matrix is USED to address this phenomenon of missing requirements. Mostly requirements may be missing because of HUMAN error and oversight. A well designed traceability matrix will track each requirement in EVERY phase of development. And will ensure a phase cannot be CLOSED unless all the requirements initially collected have been successfully taken care of in the phase. This way, the team will track every requirement before closing each phase. This enables the team to ensure that no requirement misses the attention of the team and goes unnoticed to the next phases.

This is a very simple mechanism, but a powerful and effective mechanism to ensure that every requirement gathered initially gets delivered finally without any miss during the development phase.

Knowledge Area: Project Scope Management

• The detailed project requirements will have to be collected from the various stakeholders. In the case of an ERP, we need to collect requirements from all levels of stakeholders. We need to understand the expectations of CXO level stakeholders, department head level stakeholders, departmental experts, end users of the solution in each department, from their IT department who LATER on will own the solution.
• The requirements will have to be collected and understood through different mode of interaction with the stakeholders. Stakeholders initially may not know very clearly about all their requirements. Some cases stakeholders may find it difficult to explain and articulate their requirements. The project manager and the TEAM will have to drive this process of requirements gathering by facilitating and driving the process.
• Requirements are collected from groups of stakeholders and the final concurrence and agreement of requirements are also done with the group of stakeholders. Business Analysts and functional experts may be involved in this process. Below are some of the techniques which are used for requirement gathering
  • Data Gathering (Brainstorming, Benchmarking, Focus Groups, Interviews, Questionnaires and Surveys)
  • Data Analysis (Analysing various existing documents of the project such as business case, agreement, regulatory documents, proposals etc.)
  • Observation (Shadowing and observing how people are working)
  • Categorizing and grouping of ideas and requirements (Affinity Diagram)
  • Prioritizing the requirements (Nominal Group Technique – Voting with the group. Using MuScoW and other techniques of PRIORITIZATION )
  • Prototyping
• A detailed requirement document is prepared using the above techniques as applicable. The requirements thus gathered can further be classified in various categories such as functional, non-functional, reliability, security, user interface related, quality, and regulatory, transition etc. Such CLASSIFICATION will make it easier for the team to visual different aspects of the requirements and accordingly give appropriate focus in addressing them.
• For more detailed understanding of this process, PLEASE refer:Requirement collection

Knowledge Area:Project Integration Management 

• Business case document:

Understanding the financial feasibility and reasons of doing a new project is important. Business case PROVIDES a detailed financial analysis of investments to be made and benefits to be reaped from the project with a final justification either to do or not do a project. Business case document is one of the first documents to be referred for an internal project to be initiated.

• Agreement:

A document which is a CONTRACT siged with an external customer and is used for initiating a new project. This document will LAY the boundaries of the new project with regard to the scope, time and cost and the agreed terms and conditions between the REQUESTING organization and performing organization. It is one of the initial documents the project manager will like to refer to understand about the project.

• Project charter:   

This is the very first initial document of any new project getting initiated. Project charter establishes the formal authorization for the new project. This document will lay down the objectives of the project, the name of the PM and will be approved by the initiator/sponsor. The business case and/or the agreement will be referred while preparing the project charter document.

Please refer to the link for more DETAILS on this: Project Charter

• Stakeholder register:

This is a very important document which is used to list all the stakeholders and all the relevant information about each stakeholder. This document is also used to include the information about their interest and power towards the project, their current levels of engagement such as resistor, neutral or supporter of the project. This is one of the first documents created during the project initiation. This is a live dynamic document. As new stakeholders are identified through the project life cycle, their relevant information will be added into the stakeholder register.

Knowledge Area:Project Stakeholder Management 

We need to make an EXHAUSTIVE list of all stakeholders who will be somehow connected with the project. Once the list of stakeholders is PREPARED, there is a need to prioritize the stakeholders in TERMS of their SIGNIFICANCE in the project.

One of the practical and popular methods for analysing the stakeholders is analysing and assessing their level of power and interest in the project. The stakeholders are classified into different groups such as:

1. How Power – High Interest,
2. High Power – Low Interest,
3. Low Power – High Interest and
4. Low Power – Low Interest groups.

This helps in prioritizing their positions in the project, which in turn will be helpful in devising APPROPRIATE stakeholder engagement strategies for each group.

For more detailed understanding about stakeholder management, refer: Stakeholder Management

Knowledge Area:PROJECT Stakeholder Management 

Stakeholders are all the people or organizations or groups who are directly involved in the project, whose INTERESTS may be positively or negatively impacted by the outcome of the project, who can influence and impact the project with their power and money.

A stakeholder register is PREPARED. We can identify the stakeholders by asking the FOLLOWING questions to ourselves –

1. Who will use the end product/solution created from the project
2. Who will help with their skills and knowledge in developing the final product of the project
3. Who will give the requirements for the project
4. Who will provide funding for the project
5. Who will provide other kind of support
6. Who will provide resources for the project
7. Who will provide any kind of special guidelines or regulations to be followed/complied to while working in the project

Knowledge AREA:Project Stakeholder Management 

STAKEHOLDERS are the real PEOPLE or GROUPS or organizations whose INTERESTS have to be fulfilled through the project. Project is being undertaken to fulfil stakeholder expectations and needs. Hence knowing them and engaging them through the project right from initiation will be critical for project success.

Knowledge Area:Project STAKEHOLDER Management

Yes, very MUCH. I will need to KNOW about all the STAKEHOLDERS in the project in HAND.

KNOWLEDGE Area:Project Integration Management 

As a PM, I will NEED support from senior management from time to time with regards to mobilising resources, getting the funding in time, coordinating with other functional groups for project WORK and making various project decisions in a timely manner ETC. I will look forward to my sponsor for his/her support on above matters as needed. I will explain about the IMPORTANCE of his/her timely and unstinted support for the project success and request for the same.

Knowledge Area:Project Integration Management 

Since this project is to be done for an EXTERNAL client, there must be an agreement/contract already signed between the client and our ORGANIZATION. I will request to get access to a copy of the contract. I will ALSO request to see a copy of our proposal and internal estimation done by our team before SIGNING the contract. The contract/agreement will provide more INFORMATION about the expected goals of the customer. From the contract I can understand about the scope of the project, and other constraints such as time and cost which are being agreed.

Knowledge Area:Project Integration Management 

Since this is the initial stage of the project, I will seek more information about the project from the sponsor and business DEVELOPMENT team of our organization. If needed, I will also plan discussions with other KEY stakeholders to understand the reasons for doing this project and to understand the business NEEDS and expected OUTCOMES from the project.

Knowledge Area:Project INTEGRATION Management

As a PM, I need to understand the objectives and the goals of the project clearly. I need to establish a formal UNDERSTANDING with my sponsor and other key stakeholders about the project needs to be fulfilled, objectives and final goals to be achieved. I will seek formal authorization for STARTING the new project. I ALSO need to start identifying all the stakeholders of the project, both within our organization and also from the client side.

Two documents NAMELY project charter and stakeholder register are prepared during project initiation.

1. Project charter is initiated by the sponsor to officially appoint the PM and also to establish the agreed project objectives and goals.
2. Stakeholder register is prepared to capture the detailed list of all project stakeholders, with all relevant information about the stakeholders.