How to use Work Breakdown Structure in Project Management?
The WBS or Work Breakdown Structure is a key method used by project managers. Learn what it is, why it is important, what the benefits are to your project, and how to use WBS.
This article is part of the Project Management Fundamentals Series.
How to use a WBS Method?
You will learn:
What makes WBS a popular method
WBS Definitions and Uses
How to create a WBS
What is WBS?
WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure. It is a method used to plan multi-step projects. Work Breakdown Structure is used to:
Divide a project's objectives into incremental activities (Work),
Organize work into descending order of detail: Phases, Milestones, Tasks (Breakdown),
Use a standard format for tracking activities by time and effort (Structure),
This allows for effective and efficient project management. And that's the main goal of WBS.
“WBS is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical breakdown of the work to be done by the project team to fulfill the project objectives and generate the needed deliverables.”
What is the difference between WBS/Waterfall and an Agile Approach?
Why is WBS Important?
Many companies prefer a WBS approach due to its clarity and rigor.
Some projects require 'stage gates,' which are project review and sign-off approvals linked to milestones, making the WBS method a natural choice for these projects.
WBS is useful when planning conceptual project actives. While Kanban and Agile have their benefits, WBS can cover all project actives from Business Case creation through to project closure and hand over to operations. Tasks are tracked to show interdependencies and connections to other activity streams (such as governance and communications) of often easier with this Project Management method.
WBS gives a Project Manager the ability to:
Understand the logical flow of project actives
Gain insights into the total tasks to complete a milestone
Plan tasks that can run in parallel
Allocate team time and resources
Link dependent task (i.e., where task "B" depends on task "A" being completed first)
By dividing your project into small increments, the project is more controllable, and work is easier to allocate and complete. This organized way of working leads to work clarity, which improves team productivity and creates a less hectic project management environment.
12 WBS Definition and Uses
WBS documentations can track every part of planning. However, they primarily track these 12 components:
Phase - Standard Phases are: Initiate, Plan, Build, Test, Close. Monitoring and Controlling and Communications are overarching processes throughout the project lifecycle.
Milestone - Key moments when a major activity occurs, such as stakeholder acceptance.
Task - A discrete activity based on a certain activity, time, and team member assigned.
Effort - The amount of elapsed time or total working time of all team members involved to complete the task.
Planned Start Date - The calendar start of the phase, milestone, or task.
Planned End Date - the calendar end date of the phase, milestone, or task.
Total Elapsed time - The Start minus End date is calculated as a total number of days. This can be presented in days or as a percentage completed based on the current reporting date.
Dependencies - phases, milestones, or tasks that require actions before they can start or end.
Assigned Staff or Roles - the team, assigned to the task. Roles are important since they show the kinds of skillsets needed to perform the task. While identifying specific staff also allows managers to check for over allocation of a specific person for a specific period.
Task Owner: define who will oversee the work, manage the staff related to the work, and take responsibility for the final deliverable within the team.
Critical Path: the tasks taken together are those actives that deliver the project. See more on my CPM method here.
Percentage Complete - each row on the WBS has a total elapsed time. As this is updated based on work done, the Project Manager can see the percentage of the total work for that task. This data informs other Monitoring and Controlling actions, such as Budget analysis for Earned Value.
Uses of WBS
The WBS method is a great fit when the project manager also wants to:
Use the planning tool to assist project members in determining the scope and deliverables of their project.
Estimate costs and schedules.
Create a visible overview of the project of the entire project.
Needs a tool that includes monitoring and control steps.
How to create a work breakdown structure?
Before you start:
Ensure you have a clear and signed-off Project Charter. This allows you to have the key metrics the project will be judged by. This document provides the planned start and end date and the product milestones.
Create an action plan and calendar. These give you an idea of the key tasks and timeframe in which your project will take place. Look for holidays and vacation periods and other 'black out periods' that need to be accounted for in the project plan.
From the documents above, create the WBS as an interactive consultation with the team and Stakeholders.
An example of this iterative process could be
WBS version 1: create the document based on the fields you want to track, the Charter, Calendar, and Key Actives.
WBS version 2: Send the team leads version 1, so they can do their homework to confirm task, timing, effort, team roles needed, and dependencies. Use their input to align the steps, timing, and staff. Then do a reasonableness check.
Does the project plan meet the timing goals?
Are their resources required to start key tasks?
Are staff effort estimates in line with the resources available?
Is the Plan for staff and assets in line with the Charter-approved Budget?
Review and discuss all of these reasonable checks as part of the meeting.
WBS version 3: Meet and review the WBS with the Stakeholders. They may not care about the details. However, they need to know the key activities and the critical path to project completion. It can be helpful to have the Project Charter and Calendar updated based on confirmed information. Once reviewed, updates may be needed. If so, review with the leads to ensure the Plan is agreed upon.
WBS version 4: This reviewed and agreed WBS becomes the approved Plan. It should be aligned with the Budget, staff plan, and other key project documents. These documents make up the Project Workbook Baseline. Every change after this requires a review of staffing, budgets, and planning. This means that all changes after the approved baseline represent a change request to the Project Plan and related documents.
This iterative process may be achieved in different ways. Still, the most reliable and realistic WBS will include these kinds of checks, balances, and approvals to ensure the Plan is as accurate as possible to start with.
When you are ready to build your WBS:
Review which tool or process you want to use. The approach needs to last the life of the project. After all, the goal of the project is not the management. It is the outcome. So keep your options simple.
What does your organization use? If the standard option is fit for your project, it is often the easiest choice.
If there are no standards? You may want to choose an online tool. See the video below for the pros and cons of the five tools which allow for Gantt charts and WBS processes.
If you prefer a simple 'off-line' method that still covers all of the key steps, you can use MS Project or download my free Project Manager's Workbook.
How to present the WBS?
You may also want to consider how to present the WBS to your project team and stakeholders. In fact, many of the online tools noted above give several options to present the same information, which comes in handy to allow for personal preferences.
Work breakdown structure examples:
The key goal is to clearly display everyone participating in the project's hierarchy and progress, whether a member of your team or an external stakeholder. These are some of the common WBS formats:
WBS List: You can set your WBS as a simple list of tasks or submissions and sub-tasks. This is the most straightforward way to do WBS.
WBS Flow Chart: A workflow drawing may be used to build up your WBS. Flowcharts may be found in almost every WBS sample and template.
The work breakdown Gantt chart structure: You may utilize your WBS to display both the spreadsheet and the timeline in a Gantt chart. You may link task dependencies and illustrate project milestones with a WBS structured with a Gantt chart.
WBS Spreadsheet: You may fine-tune your WBS spreadsheet by adding columns and rows for various categories, functions, or contributions.
How to create a WBS?
A WBS structure should be built as follows:
WBS is most often based on the Initiate to Close
Every new level in the project hierarchy should contain all of the tasks of its parent level to be finished first.
Each parent task must have at least one child task to be deemed complete for the parent task element.
Start with the structure and key inputs: The dates (start and end) and key steps. If you want to know more about what kind of task goes into each phase see the box above.
Detail the work within each phase: Focus on columns 1, 2, 4, and 5. And document all of the steps needed for the phase. Once the tasks are added, document the other information you will collect, such as dependencies and staff effort.
Check the data: Once you have a completed plan, test the data for logic and reasonableness.
Are dependencies circular (e.g.: does A get done before C and C before A)
Is the total effort possible: Check the math. (e.g. FTE x Total Project Workdays = the total effort in hours or days). If you plan to exceed that, review what needs to change.
Check for the effort by staff by week or month to ensure that your Plan does not depend on overtime. If you have a bottleneck, consider 'smoothing work' or adding staff.
Look for underutilized staff. If so, have you considered all of the work they will do? Can they help in other areas?
Make sure your Plan includes communication and monitoring and control, staff onboarding and tracking, and any other kind of task that will use resources. Review your PMO actives to ensure that weekly tasks are accounted for in planning staff and hours required.
Add users and workgroups into your Plan. While these may not be official staff, they are part of the workload and must be considered. Include or exclude their effort in checkpoint B, depending on your project and stakeholder.
Account for black-out periods (e.g., when company systems are down), holidays, and personal vacations for the team or key stakeholders.
Consider procurement requirements to ensure that items needed for the project for the final product are ordered based on the needed lead time.
Add Contingency time before finalizing your numbers. You'll need to plan for the unexpected, so don't use every second on the project, have 5% -20% time and cost contingent depending on how known the project, team, and the outcome is.
WBS is one of the most common ways of working within Project Management, and so knowing the process of creating a plan and how to manage it is critical to any project team member.
If you want to know more about Project Management Fundamentals blogs here or my video series here.
What part of WBS do you find the most challenging? Let me know in the comments below, and I will answer your question.
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Thank you! And all the best on your next project.
