Project Management is the planning, organising, monitoring and controlling of all aspects of a
project in a continuous process to achieve its objectives, both internal and external.
What is a Work Breakdown Structure?
Successful project management depends in a large degree on the project manager’s ability to
specify the work content of projects in terms of its products (deliverables) and activities. One of
the principal tools for planning and controlling the work content is the WBS.
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a key project deliverable that organizes the team's work
into manageable sections. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines the
work breakdown structure as a "deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be
executed by the project team."
Detailed planning is essential for successful deployment of custom software. This document
provides project managers with a work breakdown structure (WBS), which defines all of the
application development project’s critical deliverables
The WBS is commonly used at the beginning of a project for defining project scope, organising
Gantt schedules and estimating costs. It lives on, throughout the project, in the project schedule.
A WBS is a product oriented family tree of phases, activities and tasks which organises, defines
and graphically displays the total work to be accomplished in order to achieve the final objectives
of a project. It is a fundamental project management technique for defining and organising the
total scope of a project, using a hierarchical tree structure.
Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of the project. It is a system
for subdividing a project into manageable work packets, components or elements to provide a
common framework for scope schedule, costs, allocation of responsibility, communications, risk
assessment monitoring and control.
TYPES OF WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE
Even though the term “Work Breakdown Structure” has been used as a label for all project
scope hierarchical diagrams, there are, in practice, many types other than “deliverable” oriented
structures. Which are:-
Verb-oriented WBS: a task-oriented WBS defines the deliverable of project work in terms of the
actions that must be done to produce the deliverable. The first word in a given WBS element
usually is a verb, such as, design, develop, optimize, transfer, test, etc.
Noun-oriented WBS: a deliverable-oriented WBS defines project work in terms of the
components (physical or functional) that make up the deliverable. In this case, the first word in a
given WBS element is a noun, such as, Module A, Subsystem A, Automobile Engine, Antenna,
etc. Since the nouns are usually parts of a product, this WBS type is sometimes called a “Product
Breakdown Structure (PBS). Deliverable-oriented WBS structures are the preferred type according
to PMI’s definition.
Time-phased WBS: a “time-phased” WBS is one that is used on very long projects. It breaks the
project into major phases instead of tasks. In this type, a “rolling wave” approach is adopted and
only the near-term phase is planned in detail.
Other WBS types may include organization-types, geographical-types, cost breakdown types, and
profit-center types
To get started, steps for developing a WBS for the project which are:
1.Determine the major deliverables or products to be produced.
2.Divide each of these major deliverables into its component deliverables in the same manner.
3.Divide each of these work pieces into its component parts.
The Wbs Contains Levels As Follows:-
It's common to have three levels of decomposition in the WBS. You might have a fourth and even
a fifth level in case of extremely complex projects. For most projects, however, three levels will
suffice.
