Integration Management

During the production of a software , different people are working on different parts of the system
independently .It is not feasible to wait for one part to develop and to carry it forward by other team as
it is not time efficient or cost effective . They are tested independently and then after complete
production of each part comes the INTEGRATION step where all of these part meet to work as a whole
because if they don’t so as a whole the project is a failure.

Thus we need software that are Highly cohesive and low on coupling. Thus their maintenance and
change becomes easy as the other part is not affected by the change in one or other. Thus to carry this
out all the teams should be on the same page and have same level of details , every new update or
change should be communicated to each individual or team working independently as in the end there
will combine to work as a whole.

Integration risk is very dangerous and costly as it usually arises in the closing stages of the development.
Any change now will cause a series of changes to be made which can take time and cost. Thus good
communication is very much needed in order to avoid this risk but still there is a possibility that this
might happen .

Project Manager Role:

A project manager role is very important in this regard as he is the main medium of communication
between all the teams . Thus it’s the duty of project manager that he gets the clerdtails of th initially and
everything is crystal clear between the demands of client and the understanding of development
team.

Even after the initial communication, there must be link between the progress of work in different
departments and if there are any changes to be made that should also be migitated between all . Thus
the project manager has certain roles which are:

1. Strategy: Enablement and implementation of a framework, including performance

improvement through effective governance and risk ownership

2. Assessment: Identification, evaluation and prioritization of risks

3. Response: Identification and implementation of mechanisms to mitigate risk

4. Communication and reporting: Provision of the best or most appropriate means to track and
inform stakeholders of an enterprise’s risk response

5. Monitoring: Identification and implementation of processes that methodically track governance

objectives, risk ownership/accountability, compliance with policies and decisions that are set
through the governance process, risks to those objectives and the effectiveness of risk
mitigation and controls

There are different ways these things can be achieved. A healthy and updated document tation helps in
keeping the changes and step recorded thus helping to track down who made the changes and when
and what effets it had. An Active documentation keeps everyone in the loop and there are less chances
of deviation.

Thus in order to save deviation from the plan or to increace time and cost of a project a manage rshould
keep everyone in loop and be active the manager can divide the process in three parts and look over
them which are :

System: IT systems are a vital piece of operations and it’s impossible to conceptualize an operational
landscape without such support. Changing something at the operations level that prompts current
systems or entering systems to integrate in a different way or with different systems to bring about
change itself is a serious risk. To mitigate this issue you need to:

 Identify technical owners for each of the involved systems, with a minimum competency set and
relevant experience, that have enough ownership to provide actual support to any modification
and information request related to the information being exchanged and the processes that
generate, trigger and process these flows;

 Include technical owners in all project stages, promoting clear and global information about the
process, the information, events and requirements to all stakeholders;

 Create clear, stable test environments that replicate all involved systems in the process change,
assuring team ownership about those systems and the processes required to generate and
validate required data;

 Design complete integration testing scenarios, validated and approved by all relevant technical
owners, which much be executed at least in two different test cycles by different testing teams,
with evidence collection and validation;

 Execute load tests on relevant scenarios to assure interface stability, performance and
resilience.

People: People tend to resist change, moreover if that change entails responsibility increase, service
level improvement, cycle team reduction or activity proliferation. To mitigate this, you need to seriously
engage in managing the impacts of putting people in the line. Some of the things you must do are:

 Involve people early in the process. The later you engage them, the more easily they will be
susceptible to imagine the wrong things about what’s about to change;
 Be clear, concise and transparent about what’s changing. If you don’t know what exactly is going
to change, be clear about the areas that will be affected and the schedule that will bring on that
change;
 Invest in creating multiple layers of engagement, to assure knowledge transfer and promote
change selling. Focal points, deeply engaged in the change process are extremely useful in
passing on the appropriate message and allow you to scale training quickly;
 Training is never enough, so be sure to create appropriate training schemes and schedules that
should be executed as close to the change date as possible.
Process: Changing a process, for whatever reason, means that you’ll do either new things or change the
way you already do something. Either way, there are critical integration aspects at the process level that
you need to focus on:

 Pilot all activities in real life scenarios, to assess if you’ll have the adequate performance and
information in every step of the process. If not, assure that you put in place the tools, interfaces,
training and information for each activity to reach the intended results.
 Check if all information is available at the right time in each activity and the source of that
information is reliable and accessible.
 Check if the information generated in each activity reaches the target and you are forwarding
the required information to the right target at the right time;
 Perform an upstream and downstream consistency check, so you assure that the requirements
and results of the process meet the requirements established by the involved stakeholders.

Using these strategies a Project manager can eliminate integrating risk and also improve efficiency .This
will help in confidently facing change and dealing with it.