...How to Develop Work Breakdown Structures Michael D. Taylor 2 Copyright 2003-2009 by Michael D. Taylor All Rights Reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means -- graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval system -- without written permission of Michael D. Taylor, Systems Management Services (http://www.projectmgt.com). Page |3 WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURES “A Work Breakdown Structure is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables.” 1 A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a fundamental project management technique for defining and organizing the total scope of a project, using a hierarchical tree structure. 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. At each subsequent level, the children of a parent node collectively and exclusively represent 100% of the scope of their parent node. A well-designed WBS describes planned outcomes instead of planned actions. Outcomes are the desired ends of the project, such as a product, result, or service, and can be predicted accurately. Actions, on the other hand, may be difficult to predict accurately. A well-designed WBS makes it easy to...
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...This is not necessarily a large project, but the installation of 10 wireless access points in a company is a complex undertaking that has the potential to impact a lot of stakeholders and also incur a lot of company resources and cost. The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is known as the “foundation” of the project (Mathis, 2008). The WBS helps break down the complex tasks into progressively smaller pieces. Basically a $100,000 could be made to look like a bunch of $5000-$10,000 projects. This activity has the scope of most departments in the organization; the WBS assists in coordination and communication with the different departments. What the WBS does best is provide visibility and awareness into any project. This essentially translates into the project teams and sponsors having a good view on the schedule estimates, and also to effectively manage the schedule to ensure that the project gets completed on time. The WBS should be designed with consideration for its eventual uses. The WBS design should try to achieve certain goals: • Be compatible with how the work will be done and how costs and schedules will be managed, • Give visibility to important or risky work efforts, • Allow mapping of requirements, plans, testing, and deliverables, • Foster clear ownership by managers and task leaders, • Provide data for performance measurement and historical databases, and • Make sense to the workers and accountants (Chapman, 2004). The activity of creating a project plans...
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...External company is called the outsourcing company Project overview The objective of this project is to research about outsourcing various services to an external company. The external company is called the outsourcing company. This research is based on outsourcing call centers of Dell Computers. Dell Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. The company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide. Dell Computer's strategy was built around a number of core elements: build-to-order manufacturing, mass customization, partnerships with suppliers, just-in-time components inventories, direct sales, market segmentation, customer service, and extensive data and information sharing with both supply partners and customers. Through this strategy, the company hoped to achieve what Michael Dell called "virtual integration"—a stitching together of Dell's business with its supply partners and customers in real time such that all three appeared to be part of the same organizational team. Outsourcing Outsourcing can be defined as the contracting out of business function(s) to an external, provider. The ability of businesses to outsource to external companies outside the nation is referred to as offshoring or offshore outsourcing. Outsourcing is done for various purposes. Business organizations...
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...work breakdown structure A WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE (WBS) IS A DECOMPOSITION OF ALL THE WORK NECESSARY TO COMPLETE A PROJECT. A WBS IS ARRANGED IN A HIERARCHY AND CONSTRUCTED TO ALLOW FOR CLEAR AND LOGICAL GROUPINGS, EITHER BY ACTIVITIES OR DELIVERABLES. THE WBS SHOULD REPRESENT THE WORK IDENTIFIED IN THE APPROVED PROJECT SCOPE STATEMENT AND SERVES AS AN EARLY FOUNDATION FOR EFFECTIVE SCHEDULE DEVELOPMENT AND COST ESTIMATING. PROJECT MANAGERS TYPICALLY WILL DEVELOP A WBS AS A PRECURSOR TO A DETAILED PROJECT SCHEDULE. THE WBS SHOULD BE ACCOMPANIED BY A WBS DICTIONARY, WHICH LISTS AND DEFINES WBS ELEMENTS. The goals of developing a WBS and WBS Dictionary are 1) for the project team to proactively and logically plan out the project to completion, 2) to collect the information about work that needs to be done for a project, and 3) to organize activities into manageable components that will achieve project objectives. The WBS and WBS Dictionary are not the schedule, but rather the building blocks to it. The progression of WBS and WBS Dictionary development is as follows: [pic] The WBS and WBS Dictionary should not be static documents. WBS construction is subject to project management progressive elaboration, and as new information becomes known, the WBS should be revised to reflect that information. A Project Team that has substantial changes to its WBS should reference the project’s Change Management Plan for guidance on management of changes to project scope. Example...
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...impacting the completion time of the project. However, this time is shared by all of the activities on a path. If you use up all of your slack on an activity at the beginning of a path, subsequent activities will have less slack or no slack. 7. What is the definition of the project control process? Click to hide answer The project control process involves regularly gathering data on project performance, comparing actual performance to planned performance, and taking corrective actions if actual performance is behind planned performance. | 11. Define crashing a schedule. How does it relate to a time-cost trade-off? Click to hide answer Crashing a schedule means expediting the task by increasing the resources and costs associated with the crashed activities to accelerate the duration of said activities. | 4. As a project manager, would you ideally want your cost variance and schedule variance to both be...
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...How this activity improves the chances of your future IT project being a success? Work breakdown structure provides the project management team a way to define and group a project discrete work elements that organize and define the scope of the work for the project end results. WBS provides a framework of tasking to create detailed cost estimates and scheduling at the most detailed and accurate level if possible. The WBS provides the project manager, team, stakeholders, and customer a scope of whether they are capturing the necessary task based on the requirements for the project. The benefit of using WBS: - With WBS, its good to assigned specific task to members, it creates accountability for team member tasks that are schedule to be completed. So, each team member have to be commitment to complete their task and participant in team discussion. - forcing team members to capture and create detail steps. The activity encourages team members to communicate to clarify any issues, talk about any assumptions, narrow the scope of the project and raise any critical issues early. - develop effective scheduling and good budget plan for the project. WBS is a process, it will probably take time to learn the ins-and-outs of successfully implementing work breakdown structure with a project but the outcome will be worthy it. WBS can make a project planning and executing easier, and provide a ground layout of scheduling and budgeting. WBS is a good way to see what area, or member...
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...1. Potential benefits of using project management: Project management is the discipline of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and achieving specific goals. Project management enables managers to guide a project from point “A” to point “B” with the time, cost, or resources under control. Final product which meets the requirements from clients delivered. The successful project (people have different definition of success-can be delivered by meeting all the requirements) involves the project manager, whole team, and clients. The project manager benefits because communicate to the clients. Clients are business people. That they can see the niche doesn’t mean they are realist or they don’t really understand what they want. The requirements have to be measured so details are important. Therefore, the leader and guide and educate them. The clients benefits because they are allowed to provide feedback, while relishing in the knowledge that their input really means something. And the workers benefit from working together, sharing opinions, and finishing the project with high quality. The benefits of project management contain all the elements of what is a truly relationship between manager, client and worker. With project management, there are several benefits. Better efficiency in delivering services: Project management provides a roadmap to follow. A manager and business analyst communicate with the clients to get requirements, and make a project...
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...Controlling the Baseline January 21st, 2013 Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Technology Centre for the Built Environment PROJECT MANAGEMENT- ENVIRONMENT GRADUATE CERTIFICATE 1 Today’s Agenda • • • • • Review and case assignments for Tutorial 1 due today Textbook status Cover material for Tutorial 2 Begin to work on review and case assignments for Tutorial 2 Next week: complete review and case assignments for Tutorial 2 • Tutorial 2 assignments are due next Monday, January 28 2 Tutorial 2: Creating a Project Schedule Microsoft Project 2010 ® In Tutorial Section 2.1 you will: • • • • • • Start a new project Examine scheduling defaults Change a project and task calendar Enter and edit tasks and durations Enter and edit recurring tasks and milestones Enter lag and lead times New Perspectives on Microsoft Project 2010 4 In Tutorial Section 2.2 you will: • • • • • • Enter and edit task dependencies View project statistics Show the project summary Review project statistics Create and manipulate summary tasks Develop a work breakdown structure New Perspectives on Microsoft Project 2010 5 Scheduling • By default, the new project file is scheduled from a project Start date • All tasks are scheduled to begin as soon as possible • Project 2010 calculates the project’s Finish date based on the: – Tasks – Durations – Dependencies New Perspectives on Microsoft Project 2010 6 Project...
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...Course Project Part 1 Executive Summary – This report provides an analysis and evaluation of the costs and profitability of building a new AT&T retail location to support its growing consumer market. A budget and schedule will be formulated in order to gage the profitability of opening a new location. A WBS (work breakdown schedule) will also be formulated that will give us a breakdown of all work that is to be done. The WBS will give the different workgroups a schedule of responsibilities to adhere to. The cost analysis shows that it will be beneficial for AT&T to build a new location to service its growing customer base in this specific area. There are a couple of areas of concern that require further investigation and action by management. The recommendations discussed include: * Improving the accuracy of customer penetration as compared to location population * Improving/decreasing IT time to deploy all technologies needed in a retail location * Reducing waiting times for contractors to do work The report also investigates the fact that the analysis conducted has limitations. Some of the limitations include: the most resent population numbers in this area are not very current. The cost of a build out in this area is not known since there are no other locations in a 20 mile radius. The average cost of the build out is based on locations being built in neighboring cities. Project Scope Statement – Project Objective This project is...
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...2011. I have prepared the following document as per your requirement. Vision Tech is developing a new Vision system for Pharmaceutical companies which will save countless lives. The objective of this technology is to inspect drug labels to ensure they contain the proper information to meet the ever evolving governmental standards. This technology is a high resolution camera and the product development process for the same is explained by a Work Breakdown Structure which will be essential in developing and designing the product from concept to development. The Project team will ensure that new product development process is going through the right stages and we will continue the process by gathering the requirements for the project and analyze them with the help of Marketing, Research & Development and design/testing team. The following Work Breakdown structure is created and developed after meeting and discussing the product concept and design with Marketing Director, Kara Rose and R& D Director, Jessie Megana. The WBS will give a breakdown of activities involved in the product development process. These activities will be carried on until we reach the selling phase. WBS WBS 5.0 Sales 5.0 Sales 4.0 Development/IT 4.0 Development/IT 3.0 Design 3.0 Design 2.0 R & D 2.0 R & D 1.0 Marketing 1.0 Marketing 1.1 Market Feasibility ...
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...1. Q: How effectively do you think Rachel spent her day? A. Rachel spent her day very adequately. Scheduling the work properly makes her day more comfortable to her. She got a coalescence of both relaxation and work in her busy schedule which makes her day most effective. Additionally she managed her project on schedule and has a top-notch association by availing other project which is lacking behind schedule to be back on the path. On the other hand, if the correspondence breakdown was not happening and no week by week status reaching, she will utilize just 20 moment to listen to their team in one day. I think this is short of what it ought to be. Really, the conversation in the middle of manager and team member is huge with a specific end goal to keep extend on track and develop their relationship. At the point when the correspondence breakdown happened, Rachel was not apprehensive to face with the issue however then again she demonstrates her examination expertise by she quick identify the underlying drivers of the issue by talk about with an alternate division where the issue happened. Likewise, after get done with characterizing main driver she demonstrates her great coordination expertise by straightforwardly show up for her manager and provide for her group realize what is going on and evaluating the effect that could have on this task. She make her day professional planed. All things considered, her anticipate can...
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...Having a quality program is plan that strives to ensure that the quality of a project will meet what was originally planned. This plan establishes quality goals, policies and standards that are related to the project scope. The design of the quality planning tool is critical to ensure that processes are synchronized with the core processes of the scope of the project which include the schedule, cost, facilities, team and risk management. The quality program should guide each process to ensure that the customer’s demands are able to be met. This will ensure that all of the processes are goal oriented to the customer’s needs. The process that the VW Mexico Team utilized was to develop a work breakdown structure (WBS). This structure integrated the plans submitted by various project participants and detailed the timeline for the overall project. As a quality control individual I would utilize the WBS as a structure to integrate a quality control program that would be based on Volkswagen’s expectations of it’s component assembly for the new Jetta. This program that is developed for the project will begin with obtaining information of the quality policy and procedures, customer expectations, the project scope statement and the WBS. As the case study explains, the project that VW Mexico is undertaking is to produce several motor and axle parts and assemblies that include the front axles and cornermodule assemblies. During the scope of this project, the WBS was developed...
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...the Future or Enormous White Elephant? Introduction 5.1 CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT The Statement of Work 5.2 THE SCOPE STATEMENT The Work Breakdown Structure Purpose of the Work Breakdown Structure The Organization Breakdown Structure The Responsibility Assignment Matrix 5.3 WORK AUTHORIZATION 5.4 SCOPE REPORTING Project Management Research in Brief: IT Project Failure – Burying Our Heads in the Sand 5.5 CONTROL SYSTEMS Configuration Management 5.6 PROJECT CLOSEOUT Summary Key Terms Discussion Questions Problems Case Study 5.1: Calcutta’s Metro Case Study 5.2: Project Management at Dotcom.com Cas Study 5.3: Runaway Scope – The Bradley Fighting Vehicle Internet Exercises MSProject Exercises Integrated Project – Developing the Work Breakdown Structure Bibliography TRANSPARENCIES 5.1 ELEMENTS IN PROJECT SCOPE MANAGEMENT 1. Conceptual Development - Problem statement - Information gathering - Constraints - Alternative analysis - Project objectives - Statement of Work (SOW) 2. Scope Statement - Goal criteria - Management plan - Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) - Scope baseline - Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) 3. Work Authorization - Contractual requirements - Valid consideration - Contracted terms 5.1 ELEMENTS IN PROJECT SCOPE MANAGEMENT (Con’d) 4. Scope Reporting - Cost, Schedule, Technical performance status - S curves - Earned value - Variance or exception reports 5. Control...
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...offsite 2 day training session has given a preliminary go-ahead. The budget of the project will determine any important factors that will impact the training project. The company of AER has given the opportunity for all workers to get the training required. The budget of the 2-day training session project will recover any expenses that occur before the initiation, during processes, and until completion of the project. Resources The first step of the project is to develop a budget. The budget management process involves the project manager in developing all the cost, estimates, and the total amount of money resources necessary for the implementation of all the activities. All the tasks and events are defined and stated in the WBS and Schedule in the lower section of the memorandum. Budget Development Budget development should cover the capital, and the operating expenses to ensure the success of the project completion. The project manager needs to gather all the funding requirements and then send a formal request to the sponsor. The sponsor needs to look first in the feasibility study, business case, and project charter before making any final decision. For developing a budget project sheet, there are a few estimation methods, like the cost baseline measurement, and the cost aggregation. The budget development is the initiation of the project that will measure all the tasks with cost and time. The process will be evaluated with decisions of the participants. The milestones...
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...John A. monlop Date Project Management (MAN4583) Final Project Professor: Dr. Emad Rahu, PMP Part I Project Charter Project __________________ Date ___________ Scope Overview Business Case Milestone Schedule and Deliverables Milestone | Completion Date | Stakeholder | Acceptance Criteria | Current State | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Future State | | | | Ultimate Goal | | | | Risks and Assumptions Project Risks and Assumptions | Risk Owner | Contingency Plans | 1. | | | 2. | | | 3. | | | 4. | | | Stakeholders Stakeholders | Interest in Project | Primary: | | Others: | | Resources Required * Funding _____________ * People ______________ * Equipment ___________ * Other _______________ Team Operating Principles * _________________ * _________________ * _________________ Lessons Learned * ________________ * ________________ * ________________ Commitment Sponsor | Department / Organization | Signature | | | | Project Manager | Department / Organization | Signature | | | | Core Team Members | Department/ Organization | Signature | | | | | | | | | | Part II Budget: Using either a Microsoft Word Table or an Excel Spreadsheet, create a detailed budget for this project. The numbers you use for this budget should be realistic. For example, if you are going to have to rent folding chairs, conduct...
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