What Is A Work Breakdown Structure?

Hello, I'm Jennifer Whitt, director at projectmanager.com.

Well, welcome to our whiteboard session today on what is a work breakdown structure.

So, a lot of times we get questions from the forum and other sources of people calling in really trying to understand what the work breakdown structure is.

And there's so much confusion out there because it gets tied into maybe a software tool or other aspects.

And people can't determine what's the difference between that and a schedule and other parts of the project.

So, I want to take the time out on this whiteboard session just to clarify what the work breakdown structure is.

Well, you know me, I'm big on terms and I like to be clear and go forward on a real definition of terms.

So,

a lot of times you'll see me on the whiteboard sessions reference my good friend Google.

Well,

in this case,

I'm referencing

a guide.

A guide

to the Project Management Body of Knowledge by PMI and this specifically is the fourth edition.

Many times I see the teams get confused because they lose track of, they lose essence of, why are we doing this project?

And specifically the reason we're doing a project is to produce the deliverables.

So,

this is a very important piece.

And if you can create a work breakdown structure from the beginning and identify the deliverables being produced when, then that a picture truly is worth a thousand words for not only you the project manager, but your team, it sets the vision again for the project objectives.

So, let's take a look at the purpose.

The purpose again is to organize and define the total scope.

So, the scope is comprised of the deliverables.

So, this hierarchical decomposition of the work,

uh, it looks like this.

Here's a graphical picture.

So, here's just generically,

you can take these this generic hierarchical structure and begin breaking it down for your own.

So, here's a project and in this specific one,

uh, you may work on uh projects that include phases.

So, there may be a phase one, phase two or other multiple phases.

This one has two phases and a deliverable, a main high high level deliverable produced.

And this also has sub projects, so this also can include sub projects that are broken down as well.

But if you look at phase one and break down this, this has two deliverables beneath the phase, so it's producing two main deliverables.

And so we look at what's the work required to produce these deliverables.

So, we keep breaking it down, we break it down to the work.

The work, the work to be executed, so work is executed by work packages.

So, this deliverable one is broken down to other sub deliverables and which are broken down eventually to work packages.

And remember, your team members are completing work packages

that produce these deliverables.

And again, this can continue to be broken down.

But this simply is a work breakdown structure, I think it's very important to understand the definition and the structure, the purpose and how we do this.

Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words.

And I hope this one helps you for your teams and your projects.

At projectmanager.com, we believe firmly in work breakdown structures and that they do and can create a picture that's worth a thousand words for you and your team.

So, if you need a tool that can help you decompose the work done on your project, then sign up for our software at projectmanager.com.