IT Project

Management
F
Project Integration
Management
Objectives
• Describe an overall framework for project integration management
as it relates to the other project management knowledge areas and
the project life cycle
• Discuss the strategic planning process and apply different project
selection methods
• Explain the importance of creating a project charter to formally
initiate projects
• Describe project management plan development, understand the
content of these plans, and review approaches for creating them
Objectives (contd.)
• Explain project execution, its relationship to project planning, the factors
related to successful results, and tools and techniques to assist in
directing and managing project work
• Describe the process of monitoring and controlling a project
• Understand the integrated change control process, planning for and
managing changes on information technology (IT) projects, and
developing and using a change control system
• Explain the importance of developing and following good procedures for
closing projects
• Describe how software can assist in project integration management
The Key to Overall Project Success: Good
Project Integration Management
• Project managers must coordinate all of the other knowledge areas
throughout a project’s life cycle
• Many new project managers have trouble looking at the “big
picture” and want to focus on too many details
• Project integration management is not the same thing as software
integration
Project Integration Management Processes
• Developing the project charter involves working with stakeholders
to create the document that formally authorizes a project—the
charter.
• Developing the project management plan involves coordinating all
planning efforts to create a consistent, coherent document—the
project management plan.
• Directing and managing project work involves carrying out the
project management plan by performing the activities included in it.
Project Integration Management Processes
(contd.)
• Monitoring and controlling project work involves overseeing
activities to meet the performance objectives of the project
• Performing integrated change control involves identifying,
evaluating, and managing changes throughout the project life
cycle.
• Closing the project or phase involves finalizing all activities to
formally close the project or phase.
Figure 4-1. Project Integration Management
Summary
What Went Wrong?
• The Surrey police force began looking into replacing its criminal
intelligence system in 2005, but the project was finally cancelled in
2013, and the old system was replaced with a much less expensive
one used by thirteen other forces
• The person in charge of the project would not take responsibility for
it
• An audit report said the project was beyond their in-house
capabilities and experience
• Organizations must make the right staffing/outsourcing decisions
Strategic Planning and Project Selection
• Strategic planning involves determining long-term objectives,
predicting future trends, and projecting the need for new
products and services
• Organizations often perform a SWOT analysis
• analyzing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
• As part of strategic planning, organizations
• identify potential projects
• use realistic methods to select which projects to work on
• formalize project initiation by issuing a project charter
Figure 4-2. Mind Map of a SWOT Analysis to
Help Identify Potential Projects
Figure 4-3. Information Technology Planning
Process
Best Practice
• A 2013 survey identified companies most admired for their ability to apply
ITrelated business capabilities for competitive advantage
• Best practices of these companies include:
• Customer-driven IT is essential
• IT can enable branding and customer recruitment
• Keep improving

Methods for Selecting Projects

• There are usually more projects than available time and
resources to implement them
 • Methods for selecting projects include:
• focusing on broad organizational needs
• categorizing information technology projects
• performing net present value or other financial analyses
• using a weighted scoring model
• implementing a balanced scorecard

Focusing on Broad Organizational Needs

• It is often difficult to provide strong justification for many IT
projects, but everyone agrees they have a high value
• “It is better to measure gold roughly than to count pennies
precisely”
 • Three important criteria for projects:
• There is a need for the project
• There are funds available
• There’s a strong will to make the project succeed

Categorizing IT Projects
• One categorization is whether the project addresses
• a problem
• an opportunity, or
• a directive
• Another categorization is how long it will take to do and when it is
needed
 • Another is the overall priority of the project

Financial Analysis of Projects

• Financial considerations are often an important consideration in
selecting projects
• Three primary methods for determining the projected financial
value of projects:
• Net present value (NPV) analysis: current worth with respect to a discount rate
• Return on investment (ROI): return on investment (subtract costs from the
benefits and divide by the costs)
• Payback analysis: how long does it take to recoup the invested amount
Net Present Value Analysis
• Net present value (NPV) analysis is a method of calculating the
expected net monetary gain or loss from a project by discounting all
expected future cash inflows and outflows to the present point in
time
• Projects with a positive NPV should be considered if financial value
is a key criterion
• The higher the NPV, the better
Figure 4-4. Net Present Value Example
Figure 4-5. JWD Consulting NPV Example
Note: See the template called business_case_financials.xls
NPV Calculations
• Determine estimated costs and benefits for the life of the project
and the products it produces
• Determine the discount rate (check with your organization on what
to use)
• Calculate the NPV (see text for details)
• Notes: Some organizations consider the investment year as year 0,
while others start in year 1. Some people entered costs as negative
numbers, while others do not. Check with your organization for
their preferences
Return on Investment
• Return on investment (ROI) is calculated by subtracting the project
costs from the benefits and then dividing by the costs
ROI = (total discounted benefits - total discounted costs) / discounted costs
• The higher the ROI, the better
• Many organizations have a required rate of return or minimum
acceptable rate of return on investment for projects
• Internal rate of return (IRR) can by calculated by finding the
discount rate that makes the NPV equal to zero
Payback Analysis
• Another important financial consideration is payback analysis
• The payback period is the amount of time it will take to recoup, in
the form of net cash inflows, the total dollars invested in a project
• Payback occurs when the net cumulative discounted benefits equals
the costs
• Many organizations want IT projects to have a fairly short payback
period
Figure 4-6. Charting the Payback Period
Weighted Scoring Model
• A weighted scoring model is a tool that provides a systematic
process for selecting projects based on many criteria
• Identify criteria important to the project selection process
• Assign weights (percentages) to each criterion so they add up to 100%
• Assign scores to each criterion for each project
• Multiply the scores by the weights and get the total weighted scores

• The higher the weighted score, the better

Figure 4-7. Sample Weighted Scoring Model
for Project Selection
Implementing a Balanced Scorecard
• Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed this approach to
help select and manage projects that align with business strategy
• A balanced scorecard
• is a methodology that converts an organization’s value drivers, such as
customer service, innovation, operational efficiency, and financial performance,
to a series of defined metrics
• See www.balancedscorecard.org for more information
Developing a Project Charter
• After deciding what project to work on, it is important to let the rest
of the organization know
• A project charter is a document that formally recognizes the
existence of a project and provides direction on the project’s
objectives and management
• Key project stakeholders should sign a project charter to
acknowledge agreement on the need and intent of the project; a
signed charter is a key output of project integration management
Develop Project Charter
Develop Project Charter Data Flow
Inputs for Developing a Project Charter
• A project statement of work
• A business case
• Agreements
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Organizational process assets, which include formal and informal
plans,policies, procedures, guidelines, information systems,
financial systems, management systems, lessons learned, and
historical information
Table 4-1. Project Charter for the
DNASequencing Instrument Completion
Project
Table 4-1. Project Charter (cont.)
Developing a Project Management Plan
• A project management plan is a document used to coordinate all
project planning documents and help guide a project’s execution
and control
• Plans created in the other knowledge areas are subsidiary parts of
the overall project management plan

Common Elements of a Project Management

Plan
• Introduction or overview of the project
• Description of how the project is organized
• Management and technical processes used on the project
• Work to be done, schedule, and budget information

Develop Project Management Plan

Develop Project
Management Plan
Data Flow
Table 4-2. Sample Contents for a Software
Project Management Plan (SPMP)
What the Winners Do
"The winners clearly spell out what needs to be done in a project, by
whom, when, and how. For this they use an integrated toolbox,
including PM tools, methods, and techniques…If a scheduling template
is developed and used over and over, it becomes a repeatable action
that leads to higher productivity and lower uncertainty. Sure, using
scheduling templates is neither a breakthrough nor a feat. But
laggards exhibited almost no use of the templates. Rather, in
constructing schedules their project managers started with a clean
sheet, a clear waste of time.“*
 *Milosevic, Dragan and And Ozbay. “Delivering Projects: What the Winners Do.”
Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars &
Symposium (November 2001).

Directing and Managing Project Work

• Involves managing and performing the work described in the
project management plan
• The majority of time and money is usually spent on execution
• The application area of the project directly affects project execution
because the products of the project are produced during execution
Directing and Managing Project Work
Directing and Managing Project Work Data
Flow
Coordinating Planning and Execution
• Project planning and execution are intertwined and inseparable
activities
• Those who will do the work should help to plan the work
• Project managers must solicit input from the team to develop
realistic plans
Providing Leadership and a Supportive
Culture
• Project managers must lead by example to demonstrate the
importance of creating and then following good project plans
• Organizational culture can help project execution by
• providing guidelines and templates
• tracking performance based on plans
• Project managers may still need to break the rules to meet project
goals, and senior managers must support those actions
What Went Right?
• 2015 PMI report found that only 12 percent of organizations were
considered to be high performers
• Percentage remained unchanged in past few years
• Organizations must make major cultural changes to improve

Capitalizing on Product, Business, and

Application Area Knowledge
• It is often helpful for IT project managers to have prior technical
experience
• On small projects, the project manager may be required to perform
some of the technical work or mentor team members to complete
the projects
• On large projects, the project manager must understand the
business and application area of the project

Project Execution Tools and Techniques

• Expert judgment: Experts can help project managers and their
teams make many decisions related to project execution
• Meetings: Meetings allow people to develop relationships, pick up
on important body language or tone of voice, and have a dialogue
to help resolve problems.
• Project management information systems: There are hundreds of
project management software products available on the market
today, and many organizations are moving toward powerful
enterprise project management systems that are accessible via the
Internet

Monitoring and Controlling Project Work

• Changes are inevitable on most projects, so it’s important to
develop and follow a process to monitor and control changes
• Monitoring project work includes collecting, measuring, and
disseminating performance information
• A baseline is the approved project management plan plus approved
changes

Monitor and Control Project Work

Monitor and
Control Project
Work Data Flow
Performing Integrated Change Control
• Three main objectives are:
• Influencing the factors that create changes to ensure that changes are
beneficial
• Determining that a change has occurred
• Managing actual changes as they occur
Performing
Integrated Change
Control
Performing
Integrated Change
Data Flow
Change Control on Information Technology
Projects
• Former view: The project team should strive to do exactly what was
planned on time and within budget
• Problem: Stakeholders rarely agreed up-front on the project scope,
and time and cost estimates were inaccurate
• Modern view: Project management is a process of constant
communication and negotiation
• Solution: Changes are often beneficial, and the project team should
plan for them
Change Control System
• A change control system is a formal, documented process that
describes when and how official project documents and work may
be changed
• Describes who is authorized to make changes and how to make
them

Change Control Board (CCB)

• A change control board is a formal group of people responsible for
approving or rejecting changes on a project
• CCBs provide guidelines for preparing change requests, evaluate
change requests, and manage the implementation of approved
changes
• Includes stakeholders from the entire organization

Making Timely Changes

• Some CCBs only meet occasionally, so it may take too long for
changes to occur
• Some organizations have policies in place for time-sensitive
changes
 • “48-hour policy” allows project team members to make decisions, then they
have 48 hours to reverse the decision pending senior management approval
• Delegate changes to the lowest level possible, but keep everyone informed of
changes

Global Issues
• Rapid changes in technology, such as the increased use of mobile
roaming for communications, often cause governments around the world
to take action.
• Incompatiblehardware, software, and networks can make
communications difficult in some regions, and a lack of competition can
cause prices to soar.
• Fortunately, a group called the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) promotes policies that will improve the
economic and social well-being of people around the world.
• In February 2012, the OECD called upon its members’ governments to
boost competition in international mobile roaming markets.
• By the end of 2013, wireless broadband penetration grew to 72.4% in the
OECD area

Configuration Management
• Configuration management ensures that the descriptions of the
project’s products are correct and complete
• Involves identifying and controlling the functional and physical
design characteristics of products and their support documentation
• Configuration management specialists identify and document
configuration requirements, control changes, record and report
changes, and audit the products to verify conformance to
requirements
• See www.icmhq.com for more information
Table 4-3. Suggestions for Performing
Integrated Change Control
Closing Projects or Phases
• To close a project or phase, you must finalize all activities and
transfer the completed or cancelled work to the appropriate
people
• Main outputs include
• Final product, service, or result transition
• Organizational process asset updates
Close Project
Close Project Data Flow
Using Software to Assist in Project
Integration Management
• Several types of software can be used to assist in project
integration management
• Documents can be created with word processing software
• Presentations are created with presentation software
• Tracking can be done with spreadsheets or databases
• Communication software can facilitate communications
• Project management software can pull everything together and show
detailed and summarized information
Figure 4-8. Sample Portfolio Management
Software Screen
Source: www.projectmanager.com
Summary
• Project integration management involves coordinating all of the
other knowledge areas throughout a project’s life cycle
• Main processes include
• Develop the project charter
• Develop the project management plan
• Direct and manage project execution
• Monitor and control project work
• Perform integrated change control
• Close the project or phase
References
• https://www.accord.edu.so/web/content/33460?download=true&a
ccess_token=bb2b556c-9cbc-4ca8-9542-452369e0540c
• Information Technology Project Management, Eighth Edition, Kathy
Schwalbe