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4 - PROJECT INTEGRATION MANAGEMENT

Management, Project Integration Management, Project Procurement Management, Project Quality Management,
and Project Stakeholder Management processes as described in the corresponding Knowledge Areas of the
PMBOK Guide and this Software Extension.
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Determining the composition of software teams is an important element of project planning for software projects
because software is developed by the coordinated intellectual effort of the team members. It is not advisable to
plan a large team for a large software project. A preferred approach is to scale up by increasing the number of 4
teams, which limits the number of communication paths within each team. Communication among teams can be
controlled by an architectural design that permits the allocation of requirements and interfaces to different teams
that can work on components in a concurrent manner with planned integration points.

The project plan includes the integration and verification processes, which typically occur following software
construction for predictive life cycles and are integrated into adaptive life cycles. Software projects that have
multiple teams typically have team leaders who report to the project manager. In addition to coordinating a team’s
work, software project team leaders are also developmental or functional contributors; however, they are not
considered to be management overhead.

Large complex projects may be organized as multiple subprojects with a project management team, or as
multiple distinct projects having a program manager who coordinates the multiple projects, each of which will
have a project manager and team leaders for each project. In these cases, it is important to allocate requirements
and interfaces to project, subproject, and team (or program, project, and team) so that development of product
components can proceed concurrently with a plan for periodic integration of work products. More emphasis is
placed on Project Human Resources Management and Project Communications Management processes as the
scale of a project grows (see Sections 10 and 13 of the PMBOK Guide and this Software Extension).
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The form of a software project management plan and the emphasis placed on various aspects of planning and the
plan depends on many factors, including but not limited to the project and product scope, product requirements,
the choice of software project life cycle model, the organizational assets, the influence of contextual factors, and
the nature of the customer relationship.

For example, the choice of a predictive or an adaptive project life cycle model influences the planning for
management of scope, time, cost, and product integration, in addition to other factors. A project that uses a
geographically distributed project team places emphasis on human resource issues and management of those
resources. Perceived complexity of the product and familiarity of the software team with the problem domain and
the technology to be used places emphasis on planning for quality control, quality assurance, and risk management.
Dealing with vendors and subcontractors places emphasis on planning for procurement activities.

Regardless of the software project life cycle adopted, the development and integration of elements of a software
project management plan is rarely a linear process because project elements evolve at different rates and exert
different levels of influence on other elements. Conducting a software project is a learning process that results
in revision of the project plan and subsidiary plans as understanding grows; replanning of both the project and
product is inevitable for software projects, regardless of the life cycle used.

©2013 Project Management Institute. Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition 49
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