Transcript Project Task Planning 1 - Arizona State University

Project Task Planning 1
Concepts and Definitions
Work Breakdown Structures
Concepts
First, some terms:
 Deliverables: Things you produce and deliver to a stakeholder
 Activities: Major work groupings whose completion result in the
completion of a deliverable
 Tasks: Smaller units of work from which activities are composed
 Milestone: measurable achievement on a project; typically the
completion of an activity or the completion of a deliverable.
 Work package: Leaf nodes of a work breakdown structure; these
represent the atomic units of work from that WBS’ perspective
• Subprojects may decompose a work package in a separate WBS
Second, notice what terms are not on here:
• Schedule, Dependency, Time, Resources
• These are not today’s game
Work Breakdown Structures
What are WBSs for?
 Before worrying about what to do first (or next), a project manager
must first have a tool for organizing the scope of work.
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This dictates team composition, phases of work, reporting structure, …
 An excellent “macro-”level tool
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This is big picture, “get your arms around it” organizational stuff
Therefore, this tool is useful early in a project or in a phase.
Approaches to Developing WBSs:
Course Technology, 1999
 Deliverables driven: Remain focused on decomposing by deliverable to
ensure better estimating and tracking.
 Guidelines: Some organizations (DOD), provide guidelines for
preparing WBSs
 Analogy approach: It often helps to review WBSs of similar projects
 Top-down approach: Start with the largest items of the project and
keep breaking them down
 Bottom-up approach: Start with the detailed tasks and roll them up
Work Breakdown Structure
A work breakdown structure (WBS) is an outcome-oriented
analysis of the work involved in a project that defines the
total scope of the project
 Provides the basis for planning and managing project schedules,
costs, and changes
 Does not show interdependencies or sequencing
 Captures the total scope of the project
 Note the tree-like, taxonomical categorization of work
 Can be organized many ways - this one by Deliverable
Course Technology, 1999
More WBS Examples
Intranet WBS
Organized by
 Phase
Course Technology, 1999
Intranet
Project
Intranet WBS
Organized by
Function 
UI
Design
Middle
ware
Application
Dev
Database
Schema
Systems
Arch
Security
Arch
Deployment
ECommerce
Message
Service
Even More WBS Examples
Activities
Build software
Intranet WBS
Organized by
Lifecycle Phase

«break down into»
System planning (1.0)
System design (2.0)
Review specification(1.1)
Top-level design (2.1)
Review budget (1.2)
Prototyping (2.2)
Review schedule(1.3)
User interface (2.3)
Develop plan (1.4)
Detailed design (2.4)
Coding (3.0)
1.0 Concept
1.1 Evaluate current systems
1.2 Define Requirements
1.2.1 Define user requirements
1.2.2 Define content requirements
1.2.3 Define system requirements
1.2.4 Define server owner requirements
1.3 Define specific functionality
1.4 Define risks and risk management approach
1.5 Develop project plan
1.6 Brief web development team
2.0 Web Site Design
3.0 Web Site Development
4.0 Roll Out
5.0 Support
Course Technology, 1999
WBS Tabular
Organization

Testing(4.0) Delivery (5.0)
Tasks
«roll up into»
A Bad WBS Example
WBS Top 10 Best Practices*
1. The top element of the WBS is the overall deliverable of the project, and all
stakeholders agree with it.
2. 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.
3. The WBS elements are defined in terms of outcomes or results. (Outcomes are the
desired ends of the project, and can be predicted accurately).
4. The WBS encompasses everything that will ultimately comprise the project
deliverable, and all deliverables in the project are included.
5. Each WBS element contains the following two items:
1. the scope of work, including any “deliverables,”
2. the name of the person responsible for the scope of work.
6.
7.
8.
9.
There is no overlap in scope definition between two elements of a WBS.
The WBS is not a project plan or schedule, and it is not a chronological listing.
The WBS is not an organizational hierarchy.
The WBS has been decomposed and it is no longer possible to define planned
outcomes–the only details remaining are actions.
10. The WBS is not an exhaustive list of work. It is a comprehensive
classification of scope.
*Abridged from M.D. Taylor, http://www.pmhut.com/wbs-checklist
Pros and Cons of WBSs
Benefits:
 Organized, hierarchical structure of tasks
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Leads to traceability
Easier to plan task categories
Easy to track task categories at various levels
Accountability can be assigned at various levels
 Tool support
• There are a lot of WBS/PM tools available to you
• RC/Jazz WorkItem hierarchies can be organized likewise
Drawbacks:
 Horizontal task dependencies not identified
 Does not provide a calendar or other type view of
concurrent tasks
 These drawbacks are really common misuses of WBSs!