How to Create a Work Breakdown Structure: A WBS Masterclass

the work breakdown structure is one of the truly fundamental tools of project management but how do you create [Music] one if you're managing a predictive or a hybrid project of any significant scale then there's a good chance you'll need a work breakdown structure so in this video we're going to look at how you create one and we'll do it using the globally more common approach of breaking down the project into products or deliverables and from that identifying the activities now it's worth mentioning that in the uk where i come from i was originally taught that

a work breakdown structure broke down the work the activities the tasks of the project and from that you can determine what the products need to be and link them to the tasks but american project managers and the project management institute teach the alternative approach neither is better nor worse than the other in my opinion both have their advantages and their adherence but because it is the more common approach and some would argue maybe the more rigorous approach on technical projects we're going to break down the project into its deliverables to create a work breakdown structure

and then use that to identify the tasks that need to be carried out for future planning and scheduling so because our work breakdown structure is going to break the project into deliverables let's start by understanding what they are deliverables are products or capabilities or results for example a thing a process or an event are deliverables you could argue that a deliverable is anything tangible that you can experience so to create a work breakdown structure all we need is a hierarchical decomposition of all of the deliverables and because it's all of the deliverables it means that

if it's not on the work breakdown structure it won't get done in your project so it's absolutely crucial that we do it in a systematic way so we don't miss anything now you'll find a lot of variants on the process that i'm going to give you and i don't claim that my approach is any more nor less correct than any others but what i do want to focus on is being crystal clear about the levels within a work breakdown structure so at the top of our work breakdown structure we have level zero this is the

product deliverable project that we are going to create through the project it is the totality of the entire deliverable set and therefore the project itself level one is what i am going to call the key line and this is not a commonly used term the key line is our organizing principle for the work breakdown structure it sets up the categories by which we're going to decompose our deliverables now sometimes the key line is nothing more complex than a few deliverables the biggest deliverables of all in other circumstances it may be the stages or phases of

the project it may be work streams that are thematic in nature like technology people and processes or it could even be a geographic set of divisions however once you set up the principle against which you're going to decompose the entire project that gives you level 1 your key line and therefore sets out the titles from the major work streams for your project at level 2 we have the major deliverables that sit within each element of the key line not all of these deliverables need to be an end deliverable end deliverable is something you want it

is there because that is what the project has been created to build end deliverables are often defined by the goal and the objectives of the project the alternative is interim deliverables and you may see some at level two but they are more likely to appear at level three but while we're at level two the key here is to use expertise the experts on your project team to identify the major end deliverables and the major interim deliverables so at level three we will see components of the major deliverables and we will see a large number of

interim deliverables interim deliverables are things we need to create in the project in order to help us get to the end deliverables typically they include things like prototypes and tests they include project management artifacts like plans and stakeholder lists they include things like test scripts and maybe even components that we don't need but they will find their way into the end deliverables so to create level three we need to brainstorm the sub deliverables and the interim deliverables for each of the items at level two remember because if it's not on the work breakdown structure it

won't get done be sure to include project management process deliverables the artifact of project management and one way to do that of course and my preference is to set up a project management heading at the key line level that way you can decompose your approach to project management into a number of major and then sub deliverables at levels two and three remember everything in this work stream will of course be an interim deliverable by definition because it's not something we want as an end product is something we need to create along the way if you

do create this project level work stream at the key line typical names would be project management or project integration level four and maybe levels below this further decompose the sub deliverables and the interim deliverables into smaller and smaller deliverables to the point where each deliverable is a unique and fully constrained thing in itself make sure that these are structured into logical hierarchies and as far as possible sequenced in a logical order and of course it may not look tidy but it is okay to go to different depths different numbers of levels at different parts of

the breakdown structure because your work breakdown structure should be determined by the work that needs to be done not by some platonic ideal of a perfect neat work breakdown structure the next thing to do is to document your work breakdown structure we start by creating a work breakdown structure index we number one two three four five and so on across the key line then starting with the first element we look at the sub deliverables on line two and we number them 1.1 1.2 1.3 and so on every item on your work breakdown structure will have

an index number in that format and that format should look very familiar to you because it is very easy to create a work breakdown structure using a simple word processing package like word or pages you have a number of ways that you can present this you can present it as a hierarchical list or as a tree diagram which is commonly presented as particularly in a training context but for a large project is rarely practical or you can create a work breakdown structure dictionary a wbs dictionary which lists every product with its reference number but now

you can add additional information you can add descriptions standards specifications resources costs durations and anything else that is relevant to you to create your work breakdown structured dictionary the final step is to present your work breakdown structure to your project sponsor to your client to your boss to your steering group and indeed to your stakeholders get their feedback on it and refine it before producing your final version your completed work breakdown structure is now a full and formal statement of the complete scope of your project before we turn our deliverable based work breakdown structure into

an activity tool that we can use for planning and scheduling let's look at some good practices in creating your work breakdown structure first make sure the labels of each item in your work breakdown structure provide a clear and unambiguous description of what that deliverable is secondly apply the mice principle is your work breakdown structure mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive what do we mean by mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive by mutually exclusive we mean there are no overlaps that the same deliverable doesn't appear twice or more times in different parts of the work breakdown structure and

by collectively exhaustive we mean that any deliverable at a level can be completely specified by all the sub deliverables below it that is to say that the entire work breakdown structure does indeed represent the complete project and everything you need both your end deliverables the components of the end deliverables and your interim deliverables now it's worth noting that on many modern projects where they are moving from a purely predictive to a more hybrid style of project management it isn't always going to be appropriate to try to complete the work breakdown structure at the start of

the project the project may evolve and you may need to add elements or indeed delete elements from your work breakdown structure as you go through the project discover new requirements learn more about the project you're doing so whilst i grew up in a predictive environment where we would create a full work breakdown structure before moving out of the planning phase into delivery that isn't necessarily going to be your approach in every project now you've got your deliverable based work breakdown structure how do you understand the tasks the activities it takes to create your project the

first step is to create work packages to identify deliverables or groups of deliverables that need to be created together and set up work packages that collectively develop those deliverables typically you will have one work package create one deliverable but that won't always be the case and also typically we'll allocate the task of creating this work package decomposition to your work stream leaders who understand the tasks and the deliverables within their work stream better than you do once they've created the work packages they will decompose those into the individual activities that need to be done these

can be then arranged into logical sequences and you can estimate time and resources against them and indeed budget for them and that's the third step planning is about taking the sequence of activities that you identified taking the estimates of how much work it takes to deliver them and the duration of those activities and putting them into a schedule and building a budget so from a work breakdown structure you can determine the dependencies estimate durations allocate resources into those tasks and therefore estimate costs so now i hope you can see why i describe the work breakdown

structure as a fundamental project management tool it's the tool that opens up the way and connects with so many other project management artifacts the work breakdown structure is a scoping and scope management tool it's a planning tool it's a resource allocation and resource management tool it's also the basis for detailed risk identification and it's therefore a tool for governance and because of that it becomes a communication tool and a tool to help you with reporting on project status and progress it can also by attaching specifications to the work breakdown structure dictionary be a quality management

tool and finally very often it is the basis for integrating all of the other project management tools do give a thumbs up if you like this video there's loads more great project management content to come so please do subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you don't miss any of it and i look forward to seeing you in the next video [Music]