Work breakdown structure

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is used to decompose a given task set recursively into small activities.
WBS provides a notation for representing the major tasks need to be carried out in order to solve a problem
Fig. 11.7: Work breakdown structure of an MS problem
!he root of the tree is labeled
by the problem name. "ach
node of the tree is broken down
into smaller activities that are
made the children of the node.
"ach activity is recursively
decomposed into smaller sub#
activities until at the leaf level$
the activities re%uires
appro&imately two weeks to
develop
'ctivity networks and critical path method
WBS representation of a project is transformed into an activity network by representing activities identified in
WBS along with their interdependencies.
Fig. 11.8: 'ctivity network representation of the MS problem
An activity network shows
the different activities
making up a project, their
estimated durations, and
interdependencies (as shown
in fig. 11.8).
Each activity is represented
by a rectanguar node and the
duration of the activity is
shown aongside each task.
Managers can estimate
the time durations for the
different tasks in several
ways.
(ne possibility is that they can empirically assign durations to different tasks. !his however is not a good idea$
because software engineers often resent such unilateral decisions.
' possible alternative is to let engineer himself estimate the time for an activity he can assigned to.
)owever$ some managers prefer to estimate the time for various activities themselves. Many managers
believe that an aggressive schedule motivates the engineers to do a better and faster job. )owever$ careful
e&periments have shown that unrealistically aggressive schedules not only cause engineers to compromise
on intangible %uality aspects$ but also are a cause for schedule delays.
A new project with estimated !"" #$%& embedded system has to be deveoped. 'roject
manager has a choice of hiring from two poos of deveopers( )ery highy capabe with very
itte e*perience in the programming anguage being used
%r
+eveopers of ow ,uaity but a ot of e*perience with the programming anguage. -hat is the
impact of hiring a deveopers from one or the other poo .