What Is A Work Breakdown Structure?

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. Once the project scope is available, the WBS should be the first deliverable. With the WBS clearly defined, it’s then possible to scope out other resources, including human resources, particular skill sets, material resources and facilities.

Creating a WBS can be referred to as the process of subdividing project deliverables and project work into smaller and more manageable components. The planned work is contained within the lowest level WBS components, which are called work packages. A work package can be scheduled, cost estimated, monitored, and controlled. Developing the work breakdown structure is a team effort. This is because rarely can one person know everything required to complete a project. When creating the work breakdown structure, the team should create the baseline schedule, draw up task lists, and provide assignments.

WBS Design Principles

This rule states that the WBS should define the total scope of the project, by including 100% of the work and capturing all deliverables, no additional tasks are added. By applying the 100% rule concept, project managers would be able to ensure that all of the project efforts are captured and nothing unrelated is included in the structure. This is because the risk of gaps and missing components is high if it doesn't contain 100% of the work.

An effective limit of WBS granularity may be reached when deliverables are not possible to be defined. The "80 hour" rule can be used to determine when to stop dividing deliverables into smaller elements as a single activity shouldn't require more than 80 hours to produce deliverables. In this rule, the work packages or the work required to create the deliverables should not take less than eight hours and more than eighty hours.

In a WBS, all deliverables and sub-deliverables must be mutually exclusive, which means they shouldn’t appear twice within the work breakdown structure. In simpler terms, there should be no overlap in scope definition between two tasks of a WBS. This is because the ambiguity could result in duplicated team's efforts, miscommunication and create confusion on responsibility among the team.

The work breakdown structure must focus on the outcomes or deliverables and not the activities that are required to be completed to get there. As such the project manager should plan based on the outcomes and not actions. In simpler terms, you should think about the what, not the how. This is because the key purpose of a work breakdown structure is to define the main deliverable in terms of the small components that form it.

Importance Of Work Breakdown Structure

Results In Developing Effective Schedule And Good Budget Plans

A well-defined WBS enables resources to be allocated to specific tasks, helps in generating an effective schedule, and provides a reliable budget.

Reduce Complicated Activities To A Collection Of Manageable Tasks

Aid the project manager in managing the tasks more effectively and provide the project team members an understanding of where their pieces fit into the overall project management plan.

Facilitates Communication Between Stakeholders

Project manager can communicate and cooperate with project stakeholders effectively by showing the hierarchy of the project work and deliverables of a project scope, current condition and remaining work items.

How To Make A Work Breakdown Structure

Step 1: Define The Project Scope, Goals And Objectives

The first step when creating your work breakdown structure should be to define the project goals and objectives. This information would form the project scope and would usually be documented in the project charter. Understanding and defining your project’s scope allows you to be able to better identify the key deliverables of the project.

Step 2: Identify Project Phases And Control Accounts

Once the project scope has been defined, the next task would be to break down the project into its phases. In this step, the project scope statement is broken down into a series of phases that would span from the project initiation all the way to the project closure. You can also create control accounts, which are task categories for different work areas you want to keep track of.

Step 3: List Your Project Deliverables

During this step, the project team should come together to list down all the deliverables and sub-deliverables for each phase of the project. When listing the project deliverables, it is important to list down every deliverable and note the tasks that are needed to achieve the deliverables. Generally, these deliverables would become the second level in the Work Breakdown Structure.

Step 4: Set WBS Levels

The project management body of knowledge book (PMBOK) states that the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) levels are what makes a work breakdown structure a “hierarchical deconstruction of your project scope”, In this, you will need to start at the final project deliverable and work your way down by assessing on all the deliverables and work packages that are needed to get there from the start.

Step 5: Create Work Packages

Work packages are the lowest parts in a Work Breakdown Structure as they are normally used to define the work, duration and costs or the task to be completed in order to achieve the deliverables. When creating your Work Breakdown Structure, you should assess your deliverables from above and break them down into every single task and subtask that is necessary to deliver them. Once all the tasks have been broken-down, group those related tasks into work packages.

Step 6: Choose Task Owners

Now that all the work packages and tasks have been defined, listed out and linked, you can assign them to the project team. When assigning the task to the person in charge, it is essential that each team member is provided with the necessary resources, management tools as well as the authority to execute the task.

Examples Of Work Breakdown Structure

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