How do you use Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to plan and organize your project tasks?
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The first step in creating a WBS is to identify the main deliverables of your project. These are the outcomes or products that your project aims to produce. You can use the project charter, scope statement, or stakeholder requirements as sources of information. Write down the project deliverables in a hierarchical format, starting with the project name at the top level and the major deliverables at the second level.
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Think of this phase as creating Epics in Agile processes. Each deliverable is an epic or a theme which represents the tasks for that particular phase.
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There are different ways to set up a WBS. It could be to group activities against a work package or deliverable. Or it could be grouped by a work location or department. Some companies like to standardise their WBS for all projects which can be a restriction
The next step is to decompose each deliverable into smaller and more specific tasks. These are the activities or work packages that need to be done to complete the deliverable. You can use brainstorming, expert judgment, or historical data to generate the tasks. Write down the tasks under each deliverable, creating a third level in the hierarchy. You can continue to decompose the tasks into subtasks until you reach a level of detail that is sufficient for planning and control.
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As epics are comprised of user stories in agile processes, this phase is just doing that. We are dividing the deliverables into smaller, more manageable work packages.
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To facilitate this step, it is important to understand the user's need and the impact that the deliverables will have on the final product, managing to visualize the important points in which it can be divided to create simple and high-impact tasks and understand the possible existing risks.
The third step is to assign codes and labels to each task in the WBS. This helps you to identify, organize, and track the tasks throughout the project. You can use a numbering system, such as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, or a naming system, such as A, B, C, to code the tasks. You can also use descriptive labels, such as design, development, testing, to name the tasks. Make sure that the codes and labels are consistent and clear for all the tasks.
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Ideally your requirements specification should be numbered to uniquely ID each requirement. This helps with configuration management and change control. This should migrate to the scope and WBS. This allows you to maintain control of delivery of the requirements right through to the individual taks being identified by what requirement they are delivering. Then if anything changes in relation to an individual task it can be immediately traced back to its source requirement.
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Whatever method is selected, it should be easily referenced. I have found that color coding tasks or task categories is very helpful from a visual perspective. I also recommend utilizing a flexible tool that makes this easy, such as Notion.
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Assigning labels, codes, colors or any sort of visual reference is always helpful and scientifically proven to be more appealing to the human mind. They also play an important role in managing and tracking the components of the deliverabels in each phase.
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Along with above, categorizing the each task as simple/medium/complex/v complex would also help in effective planning, estimation and costing.
The final step is to review and validate the WBS to ensure that it covers the entire scope of the project and meets the quality standards. To check the quality of your WBS, you must make sure that it is complete and comprehensive with no gaps or overlaps in the tasks, consistent and logical with a clear relationship between the tasks and deliverables, measurable and manageable with each task having a specific output, duration, and resource allocation, as well as adaptable and flexible with the ability to accommodate changes and updates. Additionally, you should involve your project team, stakeholders, and sponsors in reviewing and validating the WBS to get their feedback and approval. By following these steps, you can use a WBS to plan and organize your project tasks effectively and efficiently. This will help you clarify the scope, estimate cost and time, allocate resources, and monitor progress of your project.
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If you are unable to or do not involve the project team and other stakeholders in the generation of the WBS, they must be involved in generating the activity/task list. The eventual activities required must reflect what needs to be done to deliver the benefits of the project especially if the WBS falls short.
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I have found it incredibly beneficial to utilize linked databases in a tool like Notion to create a WBS. For example, my team stores all projects in a "Projects" database which is bi-directionality linked to a "Customers" database. this makes it very easy to see what projects are happening for any given customer, and what customer a project applies to. You can take this levels deeper, as some tasks can be applied to multiple related projects as well.
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