How do you develop your work-breakdown structure, what are the key inputs and outputs?

I have taken a pragmatic approach to answer this

DescriptionA work breakdown structure (WBS) is a hierarchical outline of the tasks needed to deliver the project’s product or service.   It “breaks-down” the project into low-level subtask units of work that will be scheduled, executed and controlled.

PurposeThe work breakdown structure is the foundation of project planning.

The Project Manager uses the work breakdown structure to estimate the duration of the project, determine the required resources and schedule the work.

Who is InvolvedProject Manager Project Team

ResultsThis information is included in a separate section of your project plan often referred to as the “Work Breakdown Structure.”

How to: Develop Work Breakdown Structure

Recommended actions and strategiesThe table below lists the steps for developing a work breakdown structure:

What to do

How to do it

1

Determine your strategy for developing a work breakdown structure (WBS)

Consider meeting with project team members and others with expertise in similar projects to develop the WBS.  Some benefits of involving the team include:

• Team members and experts bring experience from other projects
• Fosters early buy-in to the project among team members
• Helps discover new or forgotten tasks
• Gives insight to the overall project for team members

2

Identify the highest level components of work  to be accomplished

Example of highest-level or first level components that logically group work:

• Product deliverables – such as Project Charter, Project Plan
• Life Cycle Phases – such as Analyze, Design, Build
• Functions – such as Create New Student, Update Grades
• Organizational responsibility -  such as Finance, Network Services

3

Break work process into small components

Under each high-level component, break the work into small components until each component is defined to a level of detail that allows accurate estimating for the time and cost required for its completion.

Note: Create the work breakdown structure to the level of project detail you understand.

If the project spans a long period of time, it is difficult to identify the detailed tasks for work a year or more in the future. In this case keep the tasks at a high level for the entire project and create a detailed work breakdown for work for the next phase or period of time

4

Name the component

The component name should adequately describe the task to be completed. Use the noun-verb format. Examples:

• Document User Manual
• Install Network Routers
• Review Project Charter

5

Make sure work has been broken down to the lowest level desired

Apply the following guidelines to ensure work has been broken down to its lowest level:

• One and only one staff resource can be assigned to a task (This is a general guideline. In certain instances there may be a team assigned to a task (such as a review team) or two people working side-by-side delivering one final product from a task).
• Each task has clearly identified results
• Tasks can be performed within a reasonable time. The industry “80 hour rule” states that a work task should be completed in two weeks (or less)
• The task name conveys the work to be accomplished
• The task is at the level you want to track the project
• Each task is well enough defined and small enough so estimates of duration are credible

Let us discuss this further

Dividing complex projects to simpler and manageable tasks is the process identified as Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Usually, the project managers use this method for simplifying the project execution. In WBS, much larger tasks are broken down to manageable chunks of work. These chunks can be easily supervised and estimated.

WBS is not restricted to a specific field when it comes to application. This methodology can be used for any type of project management.

Following are a few reasons for creating a WBS in a project:

·                                 Accurate and readable project organization.

·                                 Accurate assignment of responsibilities to the project team.

·                                 Indicates the project milestones and control points.

·                                 Helps to estimate the cost, time and risk.

·                                 Illustrate the project scope, so the stakeholders can have a better understanding of the same.

Identifying the main deliverables of a project is the starting point for deriving a work breakdown structure.

This important step is usually done by the project managers and the subject matter experts (SMEs) involved in the project. Once this step is completed, the subject matter experts start breaking down the high-level tasks into smaller chunks of work.

In the process of breaking down the tasks, one can break them down into different levels of detail. One can detail a high-level task into ten sub-tasks while another can detail the same high-level task into20 sub-tasks.

Therefore, there is no hard and fast rule on how you should breakdown a task in WBS. Rather, the level of breakdown is a matter of the project type and the management style followed for the project.

In general, there are a few "rules" used for determining the smallest task chunk. In "two weeks" rule, nothing is broken down smaller than two weeks worth of work.

This means, the smallest task of the WBS is at least two-week long.8/80 is another rule used when creating a WBS. This rule implies that no task should be smaller than8 hours of work and should not be larger than80 hours of work.

One can use many forms to display their WBS. Some use tree structure to illustrate the WBS, while others use lists and tables. Outlining is one of the easiest ways of representing a WBS.

There are many design goals for WBS. Some important goals are as follows:

·                                 Giving visibility to important work efforts.

·                                 Giving visibility to risky work efforts.

·                                 Illustrate the correlation between the activities and deliverables.

·                                 Show clear ownership by task leaders.

In a WBS diagram, the project scope is graphically expressed. Usually the diagram starts with a graphic object or a box at the top, which represents the entire project. Then, there are sub-components under the box.

These boxes represent the deliverables of the project. Under each deliverable, there are sub-elements listed. These sub-elements are the activities that should be performed in order to achieve the deliverables.

Although most of the WBS diagrams are designed based on the deliveries, some WBS are created based on the project phases. Usually, information technology projects are perfectly fit into WBS model.

Therefore, almost all information technology projects make use of WBS.

In addition to the general use of WBS, there is specific objective for deriving a WBS as well. WBS is the input for Gantt charts, a tool that is used for project management purpose.

Gantt chart is used for tracking the progression of the tasks derived by WBS

The efficiency of a work breakdown structure can determine the success of a project.

The WBS provides the foundation for all project management work, including, planning, cost and effort estimation, resource allocation, and scheduling.

Therefore, one should take creating WBS as a critical step in the process of project management.

WBS is a part of Scope Knowledge Area in the Planning Stage of the Project. During WBS formation, the Project Scope of Work is broken down into smaller manageable components and each of them is further divided into activities chart.

WBS is an important, crucial and time taking work as it ensures that all work and requirements required to successfully complete the project are documented and sequensed. It is also the basis for preparation of Detailed Statement of Work, Schedule, Cost & Budget.

It is thus prepared jointly by the Project Manager and hisTeam as it helps in better understanding of the project and also gives the team a sence of involvement and motivation.

As mentioned above, the key input of WBS is the Project Scope and the key output is the List of Activities based upon which the Network Diagram & Critical Path, Schedule, Cost & Budget are prepared.   

The practical inputs in my field (construction) are Bill of quantities , Drawings, Specs, Contract.

The outputs is WBS.

We can Develop WBS through the information involved in the project charter and according to the study of the customer needs but the problem is how to balance with budget, quality, and other project constraints.

The main output is WBS document which is the starting point to determine the resources, budget, risk, purchasing, etc.

break it in cycles and make the tasks fit in: the answer is knapsack problem resolved in order of time

Dear Mr Salauddin, 

There is not only one golden answer and solution for your question as the situation is the same  regarding usually to any other question in our life. You can choose your own way to the truth.

My practice is the next.

The best starting point I used to do is to identify the main deliverables of the project. These are the most important part of any project a project manager should focus on.

Usually I am doing that by my own or involve a subject matter expert (SME). As a project manager I shouldn’t be a person has skills about everything. The SME is who knows the best about the area where the projects deliverables coming from or being established.

Then the breakdown can be processed to different levels and to different sub-tasks. Be careful that too many sub-tasks can make the structure more complicated and you will not be able to overview it. I guess10-15 levels can be still handy.

When the structure is going down the level of responsibilities for the tasks are getting closer to individuals. That means on higher level the tasks can belong to groups but on the bottom level they are usually personal tasks of individuals.

You should aware the “size” of the tasks too. I would suggest using some “golden rules”. One is that less than2 working days task is not worth to work with. It is simple too small to worth to manage. The second I used to follow is that choose the most visible format of your work breakdown. Many style are available for project managers but not all of them is fit to all project. The easiest to understand structure is the most efficient. So, the output will be a very clear and easily digestible structure that speak for itself that not requires too much explanation to any internal or external stakeholders. This breakdown can make your life easier and can spare a lot of precious time for you.

As our colleagues have clearly explained the WBS development way and its inputs and outputs, I found that there is no need to add anything else!

Happy to see some good answers and detailed write-ups. I hope you have the technical explanatons by reading out those. 

I am going to put it slightly different here. WBS as you know is the work break down structure. Now lets assume the work as making Tea. This particular project can be broken down to smaller tasks like - making the ingredients ready, making the utensils ready, boiling water, boiling milk, adding sugar and tea dust to the milk and water mix, pouring it to cups and then serving. So now, you have your WBS defined here. You can estimate at the minor task levels and calculate the effort for the entire project.

Input for any WBS would be the slicing of the project to smaller pieces. Try to slice it at the same volume if possible so that if a task can be split into5 identical smaller tasks which takes4 hrs of effort , then you will know that the total effort will be5x4=20 hrs.

Another input for the WBS would be adding constraints. there are many like Finish-to-Start, Start-No-Later-Than etc..  So try adding those constraints to your tasks.

Good WBS, then good estimate. good planning!

Wrong WBS, then project scope, schedule, cost everything will de-rail.