The Integration Playbook is not a book. It is a collection of documents that together define how you will take on an acquisition integration, what the current status is, past reports, reference information and help documentation. It is owned and maintained by the Integration Management Office (IMO), the team that sets up and runs an acquisition integration.
There are five areas in the playbook. Here are some of the items you are likely to find in each of these areas:
- Workstream taskslists
- Taskslist are what many people consider a playbook to be: the list of tasks or projects that each workstream is working on, and their status
- Integration scope
- The definition of what the integration is, including timelines, calendars, phases of work etc.
- Meeting notes and reports
- Status meeting minutes, reports, and a dashboard
- Pre-acquisition snapshots
- A record of the two businesses before the integration began
- Help
- How To guides and links to training material
- Lessons learned from prior integrations
As you can see from the types of documents in the playbook, some are static, reference documents, whereas other information is in a living document that is constantly updated. This difference is key to the type of technology that should be used for each.
In the next part of this series, we talk about the technologies that should be used with your playbook.
Communication is a key element in integration success – and the playbook is a communication tool. At any time, an employee should be able to find out information they need about the integration, either directly within the playbook, or a via link/redirection to its location.
The Playbook is a topic in our online subscription, Managing Integrations. Learn how to integrate your own acquisitions through online learning, templates, and weekly group meetings.