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PMP Practice: Consolidate the project/phase plans

Question 1 of 5 in Integrate Project Planning Activities

Birch Volkov is leading a predictive project to upgrade the customer relationship management system for Bold Ridge Labs, a freight and warehousing company operating across twelve distribution centers. During integrated planning, Kira has received component plans from the procurement lead, technical architect, training manager, and change management consultant. The procurement lead's timeline assumes vendor equipment will arrive in six weeks, but the technical architect's infrastructure plan requires nine weeks for data center preparation before equipment installation can begin. The training manager's schedule shows customer service staff training starting in week eight, but the change management consultant's stakeholder assessment indicates that regional managers—who supervise those staff—have not yet been engaged and may resist the new system. Kira needs to reconcile these plans into a cohesive project schedule and budget. Which approach would be MOST effective for integrating these component plans?
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Correct answer: Facilitate a planning workshop with all plan contributors to identify dependencies, resolve timeline conflicts, and adjust component plans to create an integrated baseline

Explanation

Integrated planning requires collaborative reconciliation of dependencies, constraints, and conflicts across component plans. The scenario presents multiple interdependencies and conflicts that cannot be resolved by the project manager working alone: the procurement timeline conflicts with infrastructure readiness, and stakeholder engagement gaps threaten training effectiveness. A facilitated workshop brings plan contributors together to surface dependencies, negotiate adjustments, and collectively build an integrated baseline. This collaborative approach ensures technical feasibility, stakeholder buy-in, and shared understanding of the integrated plan. The regional manager engagement issue—flagged by the change management consultant—can be addressed collaboratively in the workshop, potentially adjusting the training schedule or adding earlier stakeholder engagement activities. Integration is fundamentally a collaborative exercise requiring input and negotiation from those who will execute the work.

**Why not B:** Creating a responsibility matrix is useful but does not resolve the timeline conflicts or dependency issues. Simply consolidating conflicting plans into a master schedule without collaborative reconciliation perpetuates the conflicts rather than resolving them. Integration requires negotiation and adjustment, not just compilation.

**Why not C:** Escalating to the sponsor is premature. The project manager has not yet attempted to work with the team to resolve the conflicts through schedule adjustments, resource reallocation, or dependency management. Adding budget to accelerate one component may not address the stakeholder engagement gaps or other conflicts. Escalation should occur after collaborative problem-solving attempts, not as a first response.

**Why not D:** Reviewing plans individually against the charter is important but insufficient for integration. The core issue is that component plans conflict with each other—this requires the plan owners to work together to reconcile dependencies and negotiate adjustments. The project manager making unilateral adjustments without input from plan contributors risks creating technically infeasible solutions or undermining team ownership of the integrated plan.

Key Concept

This question covers Consolidate the project/phase plans under Integrate Project Planning Activities (Process).

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