Project Task Planning 1

Concepts and Definitions

Work Breakdown Structures

Concepts

First, some terms: Deliverables: Things you produce and deliver to a stakeholder Activities: Major work groupings whose completion result in the

completion of a deliverable Tasks: Smaller units of work from which activities are composed Milestone: measurable achievement on a project; typically the

completion of an activity or the completion of a deliverable. Work package: Leaf nodes of a work breakdown structure; these

represent the atomic units of work from that WBS’ perspective• Subprojects may decompose a work package in a separate WBS

Second, notice what terms are not on here:• Schedule, Dependency, Time, Resources• These are not today’s game

Work Breakdown StructuresWhat are WBSs for?

Before worrying about what to do first (or next), a project manager must first have a tool for organizing the scope of work.• This dictates team composition, phases of work, reporting structure, …

An excellent “macro-”level tool• This is big picture, “get your arms around it” organizational stuff

• Therefore, this tool is useful early in a project or in a phase.

Approaches to Developing WBSs: Deliverables driven: Remain focused on decomposing by deliverable

to ensure better estimating and tracking. Guidelines: Some organizations (DOD), provide guidelines for

preparing WBSs Analogy approach: It often helps to review WBSs of similar projects Top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the project and

keep breaking them down Bottom-up approach: Start with the detailed tasks and roll them up

Course Technology, 1999

Work Breakdown StructureA work breakdown structure (WBS) is an outcome-oriented

analysis of the work involved in a project that defines the total scope of the project Provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules,

costs, and changes Does not show interdependencies or sequencing Captures the total scope of the project Note the tree-like, taxonomical categorization of work Can be organized many ways - this one by Deliverable

Course Technology, 1999

Intranet WBS Organized by Phase

Course Technology, 1999

IntranetProject

UIDesign

ApplicationDev

SystemsArch

Deploy-ment

Middleware

DatabaseSchema

SecurityArch

E-Commerce

MessageService

Intranet WBS Organized by

Function

More WBS Examples

Even More WBS ExamplesBuild software

System planning (1.0) Coding (3.0) Testing(4.0) Delivery (5.0)

Top-level design (2.1)

Prototyping (2.2)

User interface (2.3)

Detailed design (2.4)

System design (2.0)

Review specification(1.1)

Review budget (1.2)

Review schedule(1.3)

Develop plan (1.4)

«break down into»

Activities

Tasks

«roll up into»

1.0 Concept1.1 Evaluate current systems1.2 Define Requirements

1.2.1 Define user requirements1.2.2 Define content requirements1.2.3 Define system requirements1.2.4 Define server owner requirements

1.3 Define specific functionality1.4 Define risks and risk management approach1.5 Develop project plan1.6 Brief web development team

2.0 Web Site Design3.0 Web Site Development4.0 Roll Out5.0 Support

WBS Tabular Organization

Intranet WBS Organized by

Lifecycle Phase

Course Technology, 1999

A Bad WBS Example

WBS Top 10 Best Practices*1. The top element of the WBS is the overall deliverable of the project, and all

stakeholders agree with it.

2. The first two levels of the WBS (the root node and Level 2) define a set of planned outcomes that collectively and exclusively represent 100% of the project scope.

3. The WBS elements are defined in terms of outcomes or results. (Outcomes are the desired ends of the project, and can be predicted accurately).

4. The WBS encompasses everything that will ultimately comprise the project deliverable, and all deliverables in the project are included.

5. Each WBS element contains the following two items: 1. the scope of work, including any “deliverables,”

2. the name of the person responsible for the scope of work.

6. There is no overlap in scope definition between two elements of a WBS.

7. The WBS is not a project plan or schedule, and it is not a chronological listing.

8. The WBS is not an organizational hierarchy.

9. The WBS has been decomposed and it is no longer possible to define planned outcomes–the only details remaining are actions.

10.The WBS is not an exhaustive list of work. It is a comprehensive classification of scope.

*Abridged from M.D. Taylor, http://www.pmhut.com/wbs-checklist

Pros and Cons of WBSsBenefits:

Organized, hierarchical structure of tasks • Leads to traceability• Easier to plan task categories• Easy to track task categories at various levels• Accountability can be assigned at various levels

Tool support• There are a lot of WBS/PM tools available to you• RC/Jazz WorkItem hierarchies can be organized likewise

Drawbacks: Horizontal task dependencies not identified Does not provide a calendar or other type view of

concurrent tasks These drawbacks are really common misuses of WBSs!