WBStool User Manual

Rhys Henson
Dietmar Schoder
WBStool Work Breakdown Structure

WBStool Tutorial
Work Breakdown Structure
Contents
1 WBS ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
1.1 WBS on post-it notes .................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Create a new Project ..................................................................................................................... 4
1.3 Basic Settings ................................................................................................................................ 5
1.4 Numbering .................................................................................................................................... 5
1.5 Build empty elements ................................................................................................................... 6
1.6 Horizontally show sub-elements................................................................................................... 6
1.7 Enter element names .................................................................................................................... 7
1.8 Optimise card height ..................................................................................................................... 7
1.9 Visible levels .................................................................................................................................. 8
1.10 Sub-trees ..................................................................................................................................... 9
1.11 Copy, save and print ................................................................................................................... 9
1.12 Setting responsible persons ...................................................................................................... 10
1.13 Adding and editing notes on elements ..................................................................................... 10
1.14 Milestones................................................................................................................................. 11
1.15 Documentation paths ............................................................................................................... 12
1.16 Showing project progress ......................................................................................................... 12
1.17 Dye elements ............................................................................................................................ 13
1.18 Multi-PM ................................................................................................................................... 13
1.19 Excel export ............................................................................................................................... 14
1.20 HTML export ............................................................................................................................. 14
1.21 Teamwork ................................................................................................................................. 14
2 Effort Estimation ................................................................................................................................ 15
2.1 Share responsibility ..................................................................................................................... 15
2.2 Calculating hours......................................................................................................................... 16
2.2.1 Obvious Effort ...................................................................................................................... 16
2.2.2 Formula ................................................................................................................................ 16
2.2.3 Experience ............................................................................................................................ 16
2.2.4 Acceptance ........................................................................................................................... 16
2.3 Work consists of work................................................................................................................. 17

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2.4 Top down view ............................................................................................................................ 18

2.5 Points of interest ......................................................................................................................... 18
3 Scheduling .......................................................................................................................................... 19
3.1 Set the font size for the Gantt chart ........................................................................................... 19
3.2 Toggle the views to show Gantt only .......................................................................................... 19
3.3 Select the project (summary line) and set its start date to the planned project start. .............. 20
3.4 Plan in weeks............................................................................................................................... 20
3.5 Zoom the calendar as needed (There are 3 ways to do so) ........................................................ 21
3.6 Elapsed time of tasks .................................................................................................................. 21
3.7 Schedule the project ................................................................................................................... 22
4 Project Controlling ............................................................................................................................. 24
4.1 Save the baseline ........................................................................................................................ 24
4.2 Controlling of dates..................................................................................................................... 26
4.3 Project change management ...................................................................................................... 26
4.4 Controlling of effort .................................................................................................................... 27
4.5 Controlling of cost ....................................................................................................................... 28
4.6 Automatic collection of actual effort/hours ............................................................................... 29
5 Video Tutorial..................................................................................................................................... 29

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1 WBS
1.1 WBS on post-it notes

Methodological foundations

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1057090/Project-Planning-I-The-Work-Breakdown-Structure

1.2 Create a new Project

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1.3 Basic Settings

Click Gantt, Elem, R, h or $ to toggle display options

Make sure you use these standard values for the start

1.4 Numbering

Or

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1.5 Build empty elements

(See key shortcuts by right clicking an element)

Ctrl+Ins: Create a new sub-element

Ins: Create a new element

Delete: Delete the selected item

Move items if required with the mouse

1.6 Horizontally show sub-elements

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1.7 Enter element names

• Start by Double clicking the top most item

• Enter the name of the element, then press return/enter to go to the next element

1.8 Optimise card height

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1.9 Visible levels

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1.10 Sub-trees

• Select the item you would like at the top of the subtree and press TAB
• To return, go to the top item and press TAB

1.11 Copy, save and print

To make elements clearer when printing, temporarily increase the zoom to make elements appear
bigger

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1.12 Setting responsible persons

Use nicknames or initials to show who is leading on each work package

1.13 Adding and editing notes on elements

Select a work package and click in the Description box in the bottom right

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Enter notes for the work packages

1.14 Milestones

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1.15 Documentation paths

Select where the path where document that goes with the work package is

• View all of the documents and the paths within the selected folder
• Open the paths and documents by double clicking them in the window

1.16 Showing project progress

Show that progress has been made with the spacebar, once to show that it has begun and a second
time to show that it has been completed

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1.17 Dye elements

For example, high-contrast setting: Filling planned (165/165/165), started (255/96/0), completed
(0/0/0) selected (0/0/255) planned writing (255/255/255) started (0/0/0), completed (0/0/0)
selected (255/255/255)

1.18 Multi-PM

Use the mirror feature to save a copy of the file to an external drive (e.g. Server, Dropbox)

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• Projects are grouped by folders and sub-folders

• To make this more readable, you can enable showing elements horizontally
• Double click a project to open it in read only mode

1.19 Excel export

1.20 HTML export

1.21 Teamwork

Details: http://wbstool.azurewebsites.net/WBStool%20Teamwork.pdf

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2 Effort Estimation

2.1 Share responsibility

Here is a project that already has responsible persons set, as described in the last chapter (part 12).
They have been assigned as the leaders of each work package, other people can work on each work
package but they will be responsible for getting everything done (For example, on package 5.1, there
would be a team rather than one person). All 4 people has been assigned based on experience, how
they can deal with each situation and not to give people so much to do as to overwork them.

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2.2 Calculating hours

There are different ways of predicting how many hours will be used, all of these can be seen above
and are as follows:

2.2.1 Obvious Effort

According to David, 1.1 will obviously take only 1 hour as it is checking numbers against other
numbers and quite a simple task. Of course, he would make a larger estimation for a task he would
see as harder

2.2.2 Formula
A formula can be used to figure out how much time can be used for tasks that involve multiple parts,
for example, part 1.2 can involve installing 18 programs at 10 minutes to download and install. This
would take 3 hours to install all of the programs

2.2.3 Experience
Experience can really help people estimate how long it will take, for example, 1.5 could take any
amount of time but David says 5 hours as it could take that long as finding a good alternative that
works with the planned system could take a lot of time, as well as finding fixes to issues that can
occur.

2.2.4 Acceptance
In some cases, the responsible person may be asked how much time they can accept, for example,
1.4 could be done in 1 hour or even less but 4 hours have been given to testing so that everything
can be fully tested so that any issues can be found and fixed before being sent out.

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2.3 Work consists of work

In the WBS shown at the start of this chapter, there was one work package that was very broad,
describing training, this can easily be split into smaller work packages as shown below

Here, I have assigned a responsible person at the lowest level as they are responsible for each
individual package. This can be done as many times as needed

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2.4 Top down view

Let’s see the project so far:

Here, we can see that this uses 187 estimated hours, if there was a budget for 200 for example, it
can be worked out how the hours could be distributed and it may happen that the extra 13 hours
are used for any package that may need more time to do.

2.5 Points of interest

One thing that can happen is that plans can change, for example, maybe there are more computers
to setup or maybe the take longer than expected, a plan can change and this can easily be reflected
within the plan itself as the plan progresses.

Another thing is that the hours only count to employees, any contractors or outside workers should
be part of the external cost

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3 Scheduling
3.1 Set the font size for the Gantt chart

3.2 Toggle the views to show Gantt only

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3.3 Select the project (summary line) and set its start date to the planned project
start.

It can be done by dragging the mouse too

3.4 Plan in weeks

We recommend that you plan in ‘weeks’ and give the people who are working on work packages a
timeframe from Monday morning to Sunday midnight (elapsed time). Project management is based
on the idea that each single person plans their personal tasks by themselves. So set out the calendar
grid to ‘weeks’.

When you now move any element on the calendar with the mouse, the dates ‘jump’ by 7 days. This
does not change the data and you can change the settings of ‘days/weeks’ whenever you need it. It
only makes things easier to move dates with the mouse on the calendar when you plan in weeks.

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3.5 Zoom the calendar as needed (There are 3 ways to do so)

3.6 Elapsed time of tasks

Change the planned elapsed time of each task (if it is not 7 days, which is taken as default elapsed
time of any task in WBStool). Take the estimated effort into consideration, but do not confuse
‘elapsed time’ (on the calender) and net working hours of effort (see here).

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3.7 Schedule the project

Move phases and work packages. You can ‘grab’ any element with the mouse not only on it is blue
bar but anywhere on the same line:

Produce dependencies: click into the predecessor element line and drag the mouse pointer vertically
down or up into the line of the follower element:

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Repeat this for all predecessors and followers:

If you want to undo a dependency, repeat the action in the same way you produced the
dependency.

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4 Project Controlling

4.1 Save the baseline

This is our demo project:

Save the baseline for this project:

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The baseline is saved per today, and it is shown as purple shadows:

From that moment on you cannot delete elements which are part of the baseline. If you want to
make further changes to your baseline, you can delete the baseline again:

If you want to save a baseline per a date other than today, you can deliberately change the “today”
date and save the baseline:

Now you can show or hide the baseline in your plan as you need it:

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4.2 Controlling of dates

When your project is running, you compare your actual dates with the dates of your baseline:

In this example it is the 23rd of February now.

Work package A.1 was started and finished, but it took more time on the calendar than originally
planned.

Work package A.2 was started and is still in progress. It was started later than originally planned, but
it will not take longer on the calendar than originally planned as far as we know now.

All dates for all other work packages were adapted to a realistic forecast as far as we see it now. The
comparison between the purple baseline and the blue actual plan shows a predicted delay of the
finish of the total project of three weeks.

4.3 Project change management

You can save one baseline per day (any saving of a baseline overwrites any possibly existing baseline
of that specific day). By this you can compare your actual plan with any older baseline:

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4.4 Controlling of effort

On each controlling day in your project you enter

• the hours needed until now for all started and finished work packages (e.g. A.1 and A.2), and
• the hours needed from now on to finish any started work package (A.2).

When you switch on “h” in the ribbon menu you can see some controlling figures in the WBS.

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In the “Plan/Actual” tab you see the comparison between your actual plan and your forecast:

And in the “Change” tab you see the comparison of your actual forecast to any of your baselines:

4.5 Controlling of cost

Do everything with the external cost as you did it with the effort, e.g. €5000 unplanned external cost
in work package A.1 and additional €2500 predicted in this work package from today’s viewpoint:

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4.6 Automatic collection of actual effort/hours

Please contact us, if you need an automatic collection of actual hours of effort in your projects:

• we implement bi-directional interfaces with any existing system, and

• we also provide a small app for team members which can be used to collect actual hours of
effort and accumulate them automatically in WBStool projects.

5 Video Tutorial

Find videos showing WBStool in action here.

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Second Edition

© 2016, 2017 Eastbourne:

milestoned LLP
10 Arlington Road 2
Eastbourne
BN21 1DJ
United Kingdom
support@milestoned.co.uk
www.milestoned.co.uk

Authors:
Rhys Henson
Dietmar Schoder

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