Create The Work Breakdown Structure For Your Selected Projec

Create The Work Breakdown Structure For Your Selected Project

Create the Work Breakdown Structure for your selected project. Use the information provided in the Ambriz and Wysocki books, the handout posted in the Additional Resources section of this unit, and your RBS from the previous unit to create the WBS for your project. At a minimum, you need to identify the summary tasks, detail tasks, and milestones that will identify the product and project work the team will perform to deliver the project. You want to provide the appropriate level of detail while maintaining a reasonable number of tasks since you will be expanding on the same project schedule through the semester. While there is no minimum or maximum number of tasks, the expectation is that most students will have somewhere between tasks in their WBS which will then be entered into Microsoft Project next week.

Prepare your Work Breakdown Structure and upload it using the link below. While you may use any format you would like (Word document, Excel worksheet, Visio diagram, Project file), having this data in an Excel file will make it easier to import for next week's assignment. Remember, the RBS is intended to represent all the deliverables necessary to meet the business objectives. The WBS represents all the work the team will perform to produce those deliverables, expressed in a hierarchical decomposition of the major phases and/or the deliverables themselves.

Paper For Above instruction

The creation of a comprehensive Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a fundamental task in project management, serving as a hierarchical decomposition of the project scope into manageable sections. For the selected project, constructing an effective WBS involves integrating knowledge from authoritative sources such as the Ambriz and Wysocki books, along with the provided handout and the previously developed Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS). This process ensures all project deliverables and necessary work activities are systematically organized to facilitate planning, scheduling, and control.

The first step in developing the WBS is identifying the major deliverables, which form the highest level of the hierarchy. These include the primary product or service the project aims to produce, along with overarching phases such as initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closing. Once these summary tasks are established, the next step involves decomposing each into detailed tasks or work packages that specify discrete units of work. This detailed breakdown should be sufficient to enable accurate scheduling and resource allocation but limited enough to avoid unnecessary complexity.

In addition to tasks, identifying milestones is crucial in the WBS. Milestones serve as key points that mark significant progress or the completion of important deliverables. They provide measurable targets for the project team and stakeholders, facilitating progress tracking and performance evaluation. For example, a milestone might be the approval of the project charter, completion of a prototype, or successful testing phases. Including milestones within the WBS allows for better alignment of tasks with project objectives and provides clear indicators of progress.

Throughout this process, maintaining an appropriate level of detail is essential. Overly granular WBS elements can become unmanageable, while overly high-level tasks lack actionable clarity. A balanced approach typically results in a WBS comprising between 8 and 15 major tasks, each subdivided into smaller work packages. This structure provides clarity for project planning and control while remaining manageable for updates and adjustments as the project progresses.

For practical implementation, the WBS should be documented in a format that aligns with project management tools and facilitates easy import into scheduling software like Microsoft Project. An Excel worksheet is often the most versatile, allowing for hierarchical structuring through indentation or numbering schemes. Alternative formats like Word documents, Visio diagrams, or project files are acceptable but may be less conducive to quantitative scheduling and resource management.

It is important to remember that the WBS must reflect all work required to produce the project deliverables as outlined in the RBS. The RBS captures all necessary deliverables to meet business objectives, and the WBS elaborates on this by detailing the specific activities and work packages that the project team will perform. This relationship ensures comprehensive scope coverage and effective project execution planning.

References

• Ambriz, M., & Wysocki, R. K. (2014). Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage. Pearson.
• Project Management Institute. (2017). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). 6th Edition. PMI.
• Sebastian, N. (2011). Creating a WBS: Step-by-step process. Project Management Journal, 42(4), 27-41.
• Wysocki, R. K. (2014). Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme. Wiley.
• Schwalbe, K. (2018). Information Technology Project Management. Cengage Learning.
• Heldman, K. (2018). Project Management JumpStart. 3rd Edition. Wiley.
• Heldman, K. (2010). PMP Exam Prep. Wiley.
• Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2014). Project Management: The Managerial Process. McGraw-Hill Education.
• APM Body of Knowledge (6th Edition). Association for Project Management. (2019).