Do you believe that Project Integration knowledge domain is the most important domain for project managers? Why or why not?

Analyze these domains. Which one do you believe to be the least important? These knowledge domains include Integration, Stakeholder, Scope, Schedule, Resources, Cost, Communication, Risk Quality, Supply Chain, Conflict, and Governance

Do you think there are other management knowledge domains that should be added to these 12

CASE STUDY

VIII. Integration Management About Global Information Store

Introduction

In the relaunch of the ERP system, now with Ms. Adriana Holmes as the new CPO, the project team reexamined and refreshed the business case. After a detailed analysis, the team agreed to apply a program management approach to manage the overall ERP implementation. Within the ERP program, however, there were a number of important specific projects to consider including the sequencing of them. After much deliberation, it was recognized that one of the previous biggest challenges was the inconsistency in the data design from the earlier attempt that led to so much confusion. Even though the actual ERP application is still under investigation, everyone eventually agreed that the company needed to launch a project to build a master data management system (MDM) that can establish and enforce clarity of important data elements across its customers, products, and people. The GIS project was launched in December 2012 to build the MDM system.

The first phase of the GIS system includes the three most important types of data: People, Products, and Customers. The GIS People brings clarity to how the organization and its systems view and manage its employees and contractors. This role-based system will eventually be used by other systems, including the ERP, for authentication and access control. Plus, in a future phase of the ERP, this GIS People will be an invaluable input to the HR system. The GIS Products formalizes the product and services categories of the 20 million (and growing) SKUs throughout the organization. By standardizing the product and service categories, the organization can assign proper product management processes including service delivery. GIS Customers is required for the ERP system to better manage the supply chain. It also has a strategic importance for another project under consideration customer relationship management (CRM) in which the GIS Customers will be an important foundational component. There are additional GIS components being planned for future phases. This includes WWE retail store, distribution center, and vendors and suppliers.After much deliberation, the project team agreed with these strategic business drivers for the GIS system:

Single source of truth. GIS system will be the system of record for the information in its system.

Reduce redundant data. GIS system will be the only system for these records, to avoid confusion.

Single point of accountability. Once done, the GIS system will have one global team to manage the system and govern the processes for data identification, categorization, cleansing, use, and termination.

Continuous improvement. This team will be responsible for the ongoing management of this application and its data as a strategic asset of the organization.

Phase 1 of the GIS System is estimated to be $10 million and requiring about 1.5 years to complete, after the sign-off of the project charter. Given the importance of the project, Ms. Holmes will be the project sponsor, and she will also be forming a Governance Committee in which Mr. Zhang will also be participating. The ongoing operating budget for maintaining and improving the system is estimated at $2 million per year. Both the budget and schedule are approximations, and refinements are expected. However, given the history, the need to produce a quality system is the highest priority. Mr. Zhang has also suggested that WWE should use this project as a way to develop its employees. One of the noticeable failures of the previous attempt with the ERP implementation was treating the project as an information technology project. As such, the previous project team, including Mr. Zhang, was viewing the project through the lens of technology challenges how to make the systems talk to each other. But ultimately, the failure was not so much that the systems did not talk with each other, it was that the systems were talking over each other. Furthermore, there were significant employee issues not knowing why the system behaves the way it did or why some tasks that were very simple in the legacy system now take three times longer to perform. Apparently, there was also poor alignment between the system and the business processes, and in the second week after the launch, there were 2,500 incident tickets generated. The project and the operational teams were so overwhelmed, as they were designed to handle just 100 tickets per day. Thus, many incidents fell through the cracks and the resulting problems impacted customer service and delivery. Learning from past lessons, Ms. Holmes has insisted on better integration management. Working with the project manager for the GIS System, the team agreed to implement the following processes:

1. Integrated change management. All changes will be deliberately managed after their approval

2. Dependency management. Project manager is responsible for overseeing the dependencies across multiple teams within the project.

3. Reports. Detailed project performance reports will be shared across the entire project team. All team leads and above are required to read them.

4. Meetings and communication. Project meetings and broader communication are planned in advance with mandatory attendance of every manager and above, of impacted departments.

Ms. Holmes and the project manager believe that through these activities conducted regularly throughout the project, the GIS project will be able to achieve a strong degree of integration across the various project teams within the overall project.