Project Management: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Project Management Fundamentals

• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provides a framework for organizing and managing project scope, ensuring all work is defined, and planning and controlling costs and schedule information.
• WBS can be organized by deliverable or project phase.

Sequencing Activities

• Determine the sequence of activities by identifying what comes first, second, and third, and looking for relationships between activities.
• Identify which activities can be done in parallel and which must wait for others to complete.
• Begin to identify milestones.

Network Diagram

• A network diagram consists of one start and one end point.
• It is a collection of related tasks, with each task having at least one predecessor (except the beginning) and one successor (except the end).
• Each task is connected to its predecessors and successors.

Resource Assignment

• Assign specific resources if known, or generic resource roles (e.g., "programmer 1", "technical writer 1").
• Check for resource over-allocation or under-allocation.

Estimating Duration

• Factor in productive hours per day, available workdays, and resources on each activity.
• Take into account part-time resources and calculate delays and lag times.
• Use bottom-up estimating, breaking down work into detailed activities and estimating each one.

Estimation Techniques

• Expert opinion: Use an individual with experience in the task or industry.
• Published estimating data: Use data from articles, books, journals, or periodicals.
• Previous history: Use actual hours tracked from similar projects.
• Analogy: Use similar projects from the past to estimate effort.
• Ratio: Compare projects with similar characteristics to estimate effort.

Project Planning

• Recognize influences that affect the project environment.
• Understand project politics and apply the needs-requirements life cycle.
• Recognize and articulate customer needs and identify project requirements.

Project Scope Planning

• Define project scope by identifying deliverables and what the project will produce.
• Prepare the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and develop project schedule, resource, budget, procurement, quality, and communication plans.
• Define scope statement, including product scope, project scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, and what is not part of the project.

Scope Statement

• A scope statement should include product scope, project scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, what is not part of the project, and constraints or assumptions.
• Example of a scope statement: "This project includes the design, programming, and testing of a new software application for tracking the company's finances..."