Project Integration

The 9 topic areas of project management knowledge

Integration is one of the 9 topic areas of project management knowledge.

In the development sector every new project comes to life in the context of the existing social and political environment. When designing and implementing a project destined to have a social and economic impact, it is important to understand the other forces at work that will influence how the project deliverables will help in achieving the overall programme objectives and will lead towards the expected programme impact.

Forecasting and generating synergy between the project activities and the other social, policy, cultural and economic factors operating in the project environment can be the elements that decide the usefulness or not of the project. . It is important that people working on a project discover early in its lifecycle what its dependencies are, what services and resources are available, and how to integrate with them appropriately.

Who does Project Integration?

The project manager, as part of doing project planning, should identify key areas with which the project must integrate.
Actual integration work will typically be done by project team members working with suppliers of infrastructure services, external application services, or other resources. Since integration by definition is about the connections between your project and things outside of it, negotiation about where integration work happens, and who does it, is necessary and important

The knowledge area of Project Integration Management consists of the following processes:
Project Integration Processes	Project Phase	Key Deliverables
Relate the problem identified to the opportunity to implement the programme.	Origination	Project Business Case document Checklist for approval of Project Business Case Decision
Relate problems, opportunities, solutions, objectives, outcomes, outputs	Initiation	The problem tree Project scope document
Relate activities to project outputs and these to expected outcomes	Detailed planning	the project Plan Document List of Objectives and results
Integrate Management of Project Execution with Management of CSSQ	Execution	Execution Progress Report Project Issues Log Template Project Change Request Status Report Project Progress Report
Integrate the achievements and the lessons learned of this project with the management of the programme	closure	Project Control Checklist Template Project Closure Report Template