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Integrated master plan


In the United States Department of Defense, the Integrated Master Plan (IMP) and the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) are important program management tools that provide significant assistance in the planning and scheduling of work efforts in large and complex materiel acquisitions. The IMP is event-driven plan documents the significant accomplishments necessary to complete the work and ties each accomplishment to a key program event. The IMP is expanded to a time-based IMS to produce a networked and multi-layered schedule showing all detailed tasks required to accomplish the work effort contained in the IMP. The IMS flows directly from the IMP and supplements it with additional levels of detail——both then form the foundations to implement an Earned Value Management System.

In civic planning or urban planning, Integrated Master Plan is used at the levels of city development, county, and state or province to refer to a document integrating diverse aspects of a public works project.

The primary purpose of the IMP—and the supporting detailed schedules of the IMS—is their use by the U.S. Government and Contractor acquisition team as the day-to-day tools for the planning, executing, and tracking program technical, schedule, and cost status, including risk mitigation efforts. The IMP provides a better structure than either the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) or Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) for measuring actual integrated master schedule (IMS) progress.

The primary objective of the IMP is a single plan that establishes the program or project fundamentals. It provides a hierarchical, event-based plan that contains: Events; Significant accomplishments; Entry and exit criteria; however it does not include any dates or durations. Using the IMP provides sufficient definition for explain program process and completion tracking, as well as providing effective communication of the program/project content and the "What and How" of the program.

The IMP is a collection of milestones (called "events") that form the process architecture of the program. This means the sequence of events must always result in a deliverable product or service. While delivering products or services is relatively straight forward in some instances (i.e., list the tasks to be done, arrange them in the proper sequence, and execute to this “plan”), in other cases, problems often arise: (i) the description of "complete" is often missing for intermediate activities; (ii) program partners, integration activities, and subcontractors all have unknown or possibly unknowable impacts on the program; and (iii) as products or services are delivered the maturity of the program changes (e.g., quality and functionality expectations, as well as other attributes)——this maturity provided by defining "complete" serves as an insurance policy against future problems encountered later in the program.


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