Project Task Planning 1 Concepts and Definitions Work Breakdown Structures

Concepts First, some terms:  Deliverables: Things you produce and deliver to a stakeholder  Activities: Major work groupings whose completion result in the completion of a deliverable  Tasks: Smaller units of work from which activities are composed  Milestone: measurable achievement on a project; typically the completion of an activity or the completion of a deliverable.  Work package: Leaf nodes of a work breakdown structure; these represent the atomic units of work from that WBS’ perspective Subprojects may decompose a work package in a separate WBS Second, notice what terms are not on here: Schedule, Dependency, Time, Resources These are not today’s game

Work Breakdown Structures What are WBSs for?  Before worrying about what to do first (or next), a project manager must first have a tool for organizing the scope of work. This dictates team composition, phases of work, reporting structure, …  An excellent “macro-”level tool This is big picture, “get your arms around it” organizational stuff Therefore, this tool is useful early in a project or in a phase. Approaches to Developing WBSs:  Deliverables driven: Remain focused on decomposing by deliverable to ensure better estimating and tracking.  Guidelines: Some organizations (DOD), provide guidelines for preparing WBSs  Analogy approach: It often helps to review WBSs of similar projects  Top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the project and keep breaking them down  Bottom-up approach: Start with the detailed tasks and roll them up Course Technology, 1999

Work Breakdown Structure A work breakdown structure (WBS) is an outcome-oriented analysis of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project  Provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules, costs, and changes  Does not show interdependencies or sequencing  Captures the total scope of the project  Note the tree-like, taxonomical categorization of work  Can be organized many ways - this one by Deliverable Course Technology, 1999

Intranet WBS Organized by  Phase Course Technology, 1999 Intranet Project UI Design Application Dev Systems Arch Deploy- ment Middle ware Database Schema Security Arch E- Commerce Message Service Intranet WBS Organized by Function  More WBS Examples

Even More WBS Examples Build software System planning (1.0) Coding (3.0) Testing(4.0)Delivery (5.0) Top-level design (2.1) Prototyping (2.2) User interface (2.3) Detailed design (2.4) System design (2.0) Review specification(1.1) Review budget (1.2) Review schedule(1.3) Develop plan (1.4) «break down into» Activities Tasks «roll up into» 1.0 Concept 1.1 Evaluate current systems 1.2 Define Requirements Define user requirements Define content requirements Define system requirements Define server owner requirements 1.3 Define specific functionality 1.4 Define risks and risk management approach 1.5 Develop project plan 1.6 Brief web development team 2.0 Web Site Design 3.0 Web Site Development 4.0 Roll Out 5.0 Support WBS Tabular Organization  Intranet WBS Organized by Lifecycle Phase  Course Technology, 1999

A Bad WBS Example

WBS Top 10 Best Practices* 1.The top element of the WBS is the overall deliverable of the project, and all stakeholders agree with it. 2.The first two levels of the WBS (the root node and Level 2) define a set of planned outcomes that collectively and exclusively represent 100% of the project scope. 3.The WBS elements are defined in terms of outcomes or results. (Outcomes are the desired ends of the project, and can be predicted accurately). 4.The WBS encompasses everything that will ultimately comprise the project deliverable, and all deliverables in the project are included. 5.Each WBS element contains the following two items: 1.the scope of work, including any “deliverables,” 2.the name of the person responsible for the scope of work. 6.There is no overlap in scope definition between two elements of a WBS. 7.The WBS is not a project plan or schedule, and it is not a chronological listing. 8.The WBS is not an organizational hierarchy. 9.The WBS has been decomposed and it is no longer possible to define planned outcomes–the only details remaining are actions. 10.The WBS is not an exhaustive list of work. It is a comprehensive classification of scope. *Abridged from M.D. Taylor,

Pros and Cons of WBSs Benefits:  Organized, hierarchical structure of tasks Leads to traceability Easier to plan task categories Easy to track task categories at various levels Accountability can be assigned at various levels  Tool support There are a lot of WBS/PM tools available to you RC/Jazz WorkItem hierarchies can be organized likewise Drawbacks:  Horizontal task dependencies not identified  Does not provide a calendar or other type view of concurrent tasks  These drawbacks are really common misuses of WBSs!