Project Management: Work Breakdown Structure
Building a work breakdown structure
A good WBS makes it easy for everyone on the project to understand his or her role – and it makes managing the project much easier, too.
There are three steps to provide a guideline to developing a useful WBS.
WBS Step One: Begin at the Top
You can begin the breakdown process by listing either the major deliverables or the high-level tasks from the scope statement on the first tier.
WBS Step Two: Name All the Tasks Required to Produce Deliverables
A task name describes an activity that produces a product. Breaking down the WBS can be the most difficult step in the planning process.
WBS Step Three: How to Organize the WBS
Different ways of organizing work packages may emphasize different aspects of a project.
Be sure that summary tasks are meaningful – their sole purpose is for communication or visibility. If there are summary tasks that have no audience – erase them.
Criteria for a successful WBS
The WBS must be broken down starting at the top.
- Work packages must add up to the summary task.
- Each summary task and work package must be named as an activity that produces a product. (E.g. Define hardware requirements, test the database)
WBS: The key to success: Break the project into small, meaningful, manageable units of work.
Work packages size
Follow these common rules of thumb: 8/80 rule
No task should be smaller than 8 labour hours or larger than 80
The reporting period rule: No tasks should be longer than the period between two status points. In other words, if you hold weekly status meetings, then no task should be longer than one week.
Put project management into the WBS
List them under summary task project management
Planning for quality
Common sense tells us that it is cheaper to design a product correctly than to fix it after it is built.
Realistic Scheduling
A realistic schedule
- Includes a detailed knowledge of the work to be done
- Has task sequences in the correct order
- Accounts for external constraints beyond the control of the team
- Can be accomplished on time given the availability of skilled people and enough equipment.
Planning overview
- Create the project definition
- Develop a risk management strategy
- Build a work breakdown structure
- Identify task relationships
- Estimate work packages
- Calculate initial schedule
- Assign and level resources
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Mag. Maria Peer