Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we will begin our review of the project integration management knowledge area. In our brief overview of the nine knowledge areas, I mentioned that the purpose of the project integration knowledge area is to coordinate all aspects of the project management plan in order to accomplish the project objectives. That's a fairly large undertaking and therefore it's no surprise that this is the largest knowledge area of the nine and the only one that has processes within each of the five process groups. It is also the only knowledge area that has processes in the initiation process group, so naturally it plays a critical role at the start of a project. I'd like to refresh your memory on the definition of integration in the context of project management and the PMBOK Guide. It refers to making choices on where to concentrate resources and efforts, anticipating and dealing with issues affecting the project and coordinating the project work. Based on this, you can imagine the important role this knowledge areas plays in managing the interaction of processes. In a sense, it creates the core structure of the project. For example, it creates the project management plan, which is flushed out of the other knowledge areas. The integrate and change control board and guidelines are created and managed here and this controls and monitors the changes throughout the project. It begins and ends the project and it includes the execution, monitoring and controlling of the project work. There are a total of seven processes in this knowledge area. Within this course we'll cover these seven processes very thoroughly. We'll take a glimpse at the processes as an introduction and we'll take a closer look at the processes of this knowledge area in the movie that follows before dissecting each of the processes individually. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that you'll find a document within your work files called Project Integration Knowledge Area Overview. This document is a great way to take some important notes so that you can reference them later on. On a high level, you'll want to take note of the purpose of the process and the process group it belongs to. If you've taken the course PMBOK Part 1, then you'll notice that we went through a similar exercise by noting down the purpose of each process organized by process group. So this is a repetitive exercise meant to help you memorize the processes and also in linking the processes not just by process group, but also by knowledge area. This document will have room for future notes as well from information that you'll get in upcoming movies. Let's take a list of the processes within the integration knowledge area. These include develop project charter, develop preliminary project scope statement, develop project management plan, direct and manage project execution, monitor and control project work, integrated change control and close project. In simply looking at the title of the processes, you can get an idea of the high-level nature of this knowledge area. This is what was also meant by referring to this knowledge area as developing the core of the project. It covers the full spectrum of a project while the other knowledge areas in a sense fill in the details. Because it covers such a wide spectrum, this tends to be one of the toughest sections within the certification exams, so you'll want to pay very close attention to not just being familiar with the individual processes, but also thoroughly understanding them. If you've gone through Part 1 of this course series, understanding integration will come easier to you since you've already been introduced to all of the processes and knowledge areas. If you haven't gone through Part 1 yet, my suggestion would be to go through the movies on integration and then come back to it at the end of the course. That wraps up our overview and introduction to the project integration management knowledge area. In the movie that follows, we'll go through an introduction of the seven processes within this knowledge area to prepare you for the individual process reviews.