Project Planning : Work Breakdown Structure

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ITSU 2006 [ Lesson 3 ] Copyright © 2018 VIT, All Rights Reserved 1

 Develop the Management Plan and
Schedule
• Effective scheduling can result in benefits in the critical
areas of time, cost, and quality. Consequently, project
managers must be good schedulers.

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 Develop the Management Plan and
Schedule
• The scheduling process consists of the following steps:
– clarify the project’s goal
– develop the work breakdown structure (WBS)
– put the WBS activities in sequence
– compute and chart the durations of all WBS activities

continued on next slide

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 Develop the Management Plan and
Schedule
• The scheduling process consists of the following steps:
– develop the network diagram and determine the critical path
– update the schedule as needed
– monitor the schedule throughout the project

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 Creating the Work Breakdown Structure
(WBS)
• A WBS is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work
involved in a project that defines the total scope of the
project
• WBS is a foundation document that provides the basis for
planning and managing project schedules, costs, resources,
and changes
• Decomposition is subdividing project deliverables into
smaller pieces
• A work package is a task at the lowest level of the WBS
• The scope baseline includes the approved project scope
statement and its associated WBS and WBS dictionary

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 Approaches to Developing WBSs

• Using guidelines: Some organizations, like the DOD,

provide guidelines for preparing WBSs
• The analogy approach: Review WBSs of similar projects
and tailor to your project
• The top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the
project and break them down
• The bottom-up approach: Start with the specific tasks and
roll them up
• Mind-mapping approach: Mind mapping is a technique that
uses branches radiating out from a core idea to structure
thoughts and ideas

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 Figure 5-7. Sample Mind-Mapping
Approach for Creating a WBS

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 Figure 5-8. Gantt Charts With WBS
Generated From a Mind Map

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 The WBS Dictionary and Scope Baseline

• Many WBS tasks are vague and must be explained more so

people know what to do and can estimate how long it will
take and what it will cost to do the work
• A WBS dictionary is a document that describes detailed
information about each WBS item

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 Table 5-5. Sample WBS Dictionary Entry

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 Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS
Dictionary
• A unit of work should appear at only one place in the WBS.
• The work content of a WBS item is the sum of the WBS
items below it
• A WBS item is the responsibility of only one individual, even
though many people may be working on it
• The WBS must be consistent with the way in which work is
actually going to be performed; it should serve the project
team first, and other purposes only if practical

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 Advice for Creating a WBS and WBS
Dictionary (cont’d)
• Project team members should be involved in developing the
WBS to ensure consistency and buy-in
• Each WBS item must be documented in a WBS dictionary to
ensure accurate understanding of the scope of work
included and not included in that item
• The WBS must be a flexible tool to accommodate inevitable
changes while properly maintaining control of the work
content in the project according to the scope statement

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 What Went Wrong?

• A project scope that is too broad and grandiose can cause

severe problems
– Scope creep and an overemphasis on technology for technology’s
sake resulted in the bankruptcy of a large pharmaceutical firm,
Texas-based FoxMeyer Drug
– In 2001, McDonald’s fast-food chain initiated a project to create an
intranet that would connect its headquarters with all of its restaurants
to provide detailed operational information in real time. After
spending $170 million on consultants and initial implementation
planning, McDonald’s realized that the project was too much to
handle and terminated it

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 Figure 4.6 WBS for producing a motorcycle with time
allocations and numbering.

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 Figure 4.9 Sample Gantt chart schedule.

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 Figure 5.3 Example of a milestone schedule summary that tracks any approved schedule
variances.

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 Figure 5.7 Planning a project overview.

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 Figure 6.1 Partial graphical WBS for a software selection project.

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 Figure 6.2 Partial outline WBS for a software selection project.

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Figure 8.1 An example of a partial schedule displayed in table form.

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 Figure 8.2 An example of a partial schedule displayed in Gantt chart form.

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 Figure 8.3 The schedule development points to be reviewed in this chapter.

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 Figure 8.4 The ten steps involved in creating a schedule.

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Figure 8.5 Example of a partial network diagram showing logical sequence of tasks.

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 Figure 8.6 Overview of developing a schedule.

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