Establish and maintain empowerment mechanisms to enable timely decision making.

In a successful IPPD environment, clear channels of responsibility and authority must be established. Issues can arise at any level of the organization when integrated teams assume too much or too little authority and when it is unclear who is responsible for making decisions. Documenting and deploying organizational guidelines that clearly define the empowerment of integrated teams can prevent these issues.

Implementing IPPD introduces challenges to leadership because of the cultural changes required when people and integrated teams are empowered and decisions are driven to the lowest level appropriate. Effective and efficient communication mechanisms are critical to timely and sound decision making in the integrated work environment. Once an integrated team project structure is established and training is provided, mechanisms to handle empowerment, decision making, and issue resolution also need to be provided.

Refer to the Decision Analysis and Resolution process area for more information about decision making.

Typical Work Products

1.    Empowerment rules and guidelines for people and integrated teams

2.    Decision-making rules and guidelines

3.    Issue resolution documentation

Subpractices

1.    Determine rules and guidelines for the degree of empowerment provided to people and integrated teams.

2.    Determine rules and guidelines for the use of different decision types in making various kinds of team decisions.

3.    Define the process for using the decision-making rules and guidelines.

4.    Define a process for issue resolution when an issue cannot be decided at the level at which it arose.

Refer to the Resolve Coordination Issues specific practice in the Integrated Project Management process area for more information about resolving issues with relevant stakeholders.

5.    Maintain the empowerment mechanisms and the rules and guidelines for decision making.