The Work breakdown structure in project management shows the hierarchy of the project work and deliverables in a project. It is a very important document in any project work when executed correctly, as the project manager uses it to have an overview and keep track of the project’s pace and progress. One of the things I found difficult to understand about this particular document, is what pourpose it serves. I also believe that there are many people who mistakenly think that the document serves to breakdown the project. Actually, it’s purpose is to give an overview on the breakdown of the deliverables. PMBOK defines it as:
“A deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables”
This is to say that the way the work is broken down, should follow a hierarchy pattern, defining how the different blocks are linked together. It is these links that defines the project objectives and their completon leads to the delivery of deliverables. While working in a project, this is what defines the “What of the project”
But who is responsible for creating the WBS we may wonder. The document is created by the project manager. It may be the case that the project manager may have some senior team members help to define the tasks involved, to avoid any ommission. The development of the WBS will typically occur at the end of the planning phase. It is here that the project manager already has a charter project, created long time ago and has the specifics of the project that they will begin to specify the tasks to be performed.
The figure above, shows the required documents in each step. As seen in the the planning phase, WBS is created alongside two other documents:
- Project scope statement – helps in understanding the scope of the project in details.
- Project scope management plan – Helps the project manager to understand how change in the project scope will affect the deliverables.
Normally, these will be changed after making reference to the project charter. To make out understanding better, imagine the project manager is tasked with developing a website for a company. This may sound simple, but it can also be challenging when under execution. The project manager will typically break it down to levels where each deliverable arising from the breakdown can be translated to deliverables. Secondly, every team is responsible for a single deliverable. In my next post, I will clearly highlight the benefits of having WBS as part of project management.
Project Management 