1. Work Breakdown Structure
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Work Breakdown Structure
What do we need to do?
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2. WBS: An Exercise
Suppose we are going to make an Italian dinner. Answer the questions:
What do you want on the table?
What do we have to do to fix (each item)?
That is a Work Breakdown Structure. Now, let's talk about the details.
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3. Italian Dinner: What's on the Table?
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4. Italian Dinner: What do we have to do to fix?
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5. Work Breakdown Structure
What is it: An approach to answering the question of what do we have to do.
Top-down: start by listing the deliverables. Then expand the activities needed for each one.
Bottom-up: list activities that you know are needed. Then group them, and name the product of the activities (the deliverable)
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6. Approaches
Sticky notes: (Easiest approach) use sticky notes and a large board. Let's you rearrange easily.
Organization Chart (Powerpoint, Word, Visio)
Outline format (Word, Excel)
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7. Two Approaches to Completeness
"Classic" approach:
try to ensure that all the work of the project is shown in the WBS.
I.e., all the deliverables, and all the activities, should be shown.
Use experts, stakeholder meetings, and other methods to make sure that everything is explicit.
Agile/Extreme methods:
Assume that we don't really know what all the work is.
However, we do know what the near future work is.
Do a "rolling wave" type WBS, filling in known deliverables and activities, and then adding more details later.
Make sure you, your project team, and the stakeholders agree as to which approach you are taking.
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8. How Much Detail is Enough?
Rule of Thumb: 1 person, 2 weeks "chunks"
It depends. For rough cut with experienced staff, you can use "bigger" chunks. For better estimation and inexperienced staff, use "smaller" chunks.
Rule of thumb: Do you know what to do? If yes, then you have enough detail. If not, you need to do more breakdown.
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9. Well-Defined Activities
Status/Completion measurable
Definite beginning and ending
Activity has a deliverable
Time to complete and cost easily estimated from prior or similar experiences.
Activity duration is within acceptable limits
Work assignments are independent
(from Effective Project Management, 2nd Edition, by Robert K. Wysocki, Robert Beck Jr., and David B. Crane)
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10. Some Cautions
Order is NOT important in a WBS (that comes later, in a network logic diagram)
Don't forget Project Management, Communications, and other parts of the project that are often left out. Planning, meetings, etc. take time and resources!
Try to keep to the same "level" of detail in activities.
Although the examples don't show this, you can (and should, often) use subdeliverables and subactivities to break down the large chunks.
Your WBS should make sense to you and your project team.
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11. WBS: Deliverables and Activities
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12. WBS: Nouns and Verbs
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13. WBS: Outline Format
Deliverable
Activity
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14. WBS: An Exercise As individuals, for 10 minutes
Take your project and list the deliverables.
List the activities for each one.
As a group, for 20 minutes
Construct a combined WBS using sticky notes for your project.
As a group, for 5 minutes
Collect the "lessons learned" in constructing the WBS
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