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

1 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. .
• Statement of Work (SOW):document that provides information related to the customer´s requirements and expectations for the project .

Having an understanding of key elements related to scope will enhance the reader´s comprehension of the following sections focused on detailed planning.

2 Overview of the WBS

2.1 What is a WBS

A WBS, as defined in the PMBOK Guide - Seventh Edition, is “A deliverable-oriented 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.” .

2.2 Core characteristics

Based on the definition of a WBS provided in section 2.1 the following characteristics should be highlighted:

• The deliverable orientation indicates the definition of specific outcomes of the project. .
• The hierarchical representation indicates that a WBS is organized into parent-child relationships. Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of the work .
• The decomposition nature indicates that a WBS translates the entire project scope into smaller components called work packages as will be further described in section 3.2 .The 100% rule is related to this core characteristic of the WBS. This rule states that the WBS should contain 100% of the work defined in the project scope and include all the required deliverables that should be completed. This rule is applicable to all levels within the hierarchy in terms of having 100% of the activities defined at the “child” level to deliver the work presented by the “parent” level