A work breakdown structure is a key project deliverable that organizes the team’s work into manageable sections. This is a foundational tool that will help you to plan, manage, and evaluate large projects. The goal of a WBS is to make a large project more manageable.
The basic steps to design and use the work, breakdown structure: The following general steps explain the procedure for designing and using the WBS –
- Using information from the action plan, list the task breakdown in successively finer levels of detail. Continue until all meaningful tasks or work package have been identified and each task or package can be individually planned, scheduled, monitored, and controlled.
- For each such work package, identify the data relevant to the WBS (e.g., vendors, durations, equipment, materials, and special specifications.
- All work package information should be reviewed with the individuals or organizations that have responsibility for doing or supporting the work in order to verify the WBS’s accuracy.
- The WBS provides the foundation for project planning, cost estimation, scheduling and resource allocation, not to mention risk management.
For the purpose of pricing a proposed or determining profit and Info, the project budget should consist of four elements. These are –
a) An indirect cost budget for the project, which’ includes general and administrative overhead cost;
b) Marketing cost;
c) Potential penalty charges; and
d) Other expenses not attributable to particular tasks.
Similarly, schedule information and milestone (significant) events can be aggregated into a project master schedule, As a project is carried out, step by step, the PM can continually examine actual resources use, by work element, work package, task, and so on up to the full project level.
Finally, the project schedule may be subjected to the same comparisons as the project budget.
