Building Effective Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail" Benjamin Franklin

Regardless of the life cycle approach, successful project management requires a comprehensive and detailed plan . A project manager’s main responsibilities include planning, integrating, and executing plans. Structured planning is essential given the relatively short duration and controlled resources of projects. Without proper planning, projects, and programs can face the following consequences :

• No clear and defined requirements at the beginning of the project
• Setting unrealistic expectations
• Disorder and chaos
• Attempts to place blame
• Punishment

There are four main reasons for project planning: 1) To minimize or eradicate uncertainty, 2) To improve operational efficiency, 3) To gain a better understanding of the objectives, and 4) To establish the foundation for monitoring . The first major step in the planning process after defining the project requirements is to develop the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), it is the most important element because provides a common framework for :

• Describing the total project described as a summation of decomposed elements
• Planning can be performed
• Determining costs and budgets
• Monitoring time, cost, and performance
• Establishing schedules

Given all the benefits of building an effective WBS, the purpose of this article is to serve as a guide for project managers in:

1. Understanding the purpose and importance of creating a WBS.
2. Identifying the key characteristics and components of a WBS.
3. Implementing a delivered-oriented WBS effectively.
4. Evaluating the quality and completeness of a WBS.

Developed by Luisa Fernanda Salazar Rivera s222401

Introduction

To determine when the development of a WBS can start, it is necessary to have an idea of the typical phases involved when launching a project . Figure 1 presents a standard project launch process:

Figure 1: Typical project launch :

The PMBOK Guide - Seventh Edition addresses the five elements related to scope:

• Scope: Scope encompasses all the deliverables required as part of a project. A deliverable is any unique product or work that should be produced to complete a process, phase, or project. .
• Project Scope:Refers to the tasks that must be completed to achieve the defined scope of the project .
• Scope Statement:Document that describes the objectives, deliverables, end result, and justification of the project. It addresses the questions: who, what, when, why, where, how, and how many. This document confirms that the scope of the project aligns with the Statement of Work (SOW) provided by the customer .
• Scope Management Plan:Document that describes how the project scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and verified. It stated the processes and techniques used to manage the project scope .
• Statement of Work (SOW):document that provides information related to the customer´s requirements and expectations for the project .