So how do you build a WBS with work packages that are just right?Įach project is unique, so don’t expect the same approach to work for every project you manage. Too-small work packages, on the other hand, carry all the disadvantages of micromanagement: excessive communication, unending status reporting, lost productivity, and so on. Moreover, your team could reassure you for weeks that a large chunk of work is running smoothly, only to beg for a schedule-busting extension just when you thought they’d be done. Large work packages can be so vague that team members aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do. Like Goldilocks, you have to find the right size for the work packages-not too big, not too small, but just right. Moreover, if tasks have strayed off course, you can take corrective action before things get out of hand. Shorter tasks give you frequent checkpoints for tracking costs, effort, and completion dates. (You’ll learn how to determine the appropriate size for a work package in the next section.) Productivity drops when team members keep switching to new assignments, and your temptation to micromanage increases. On the other hand, don’t go overboard by dissecting work into miniscule assignments. Also, team members are more likely to understand their individual assignments, which makes them happy and helps keep the project on track. The project manager can clearly determine who’s responsible for what. When work is broken down into discrete tasks, it’s easier to identify the skills needed to complete the assignment. It also gently guides team members away from doing things outside the project’s scope.Īssign work to resources. Because the WBS spells out exactly what’s needed to achieve the project’s objectives, it acts as a checklist for the work on the project team’s plate. Smaller tasks are not only less intimidating, they make it much easier to figure out how many people you need to perform each portion of work, how long it’ll take, and how much it’ll cost. (When you copy an indented list of tasks from Word or Outlook, Project 2010 automatically transforms them into a hierarchy of summary tasks and subtasks.) Finally, you’ll learn how to create documents that describe and support your project’s work packages. If you love working in Microsoft Word, or if teams submit individual Word documents for their portions of the project, you can also build a WBS in Word and transfer the results into Project. If you’re working alone, you can empty your brain into Project, or you can just as easily transcribe the results of collaborative WBS sessions. The fastest way to create a WBS is to construct it directly in Project, and this chapter shows you several ways to do just that. The rest of the chapter helps you get your WBS into Microsoft Project so you can move on to constructing a project schedule as described in Chapter 6. Equally important, you’ll learn how to tell when the WBS is broken down enough. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to create a WBS that successfully communicates the work within a project. The hordes of tiny capillaries that deliver blood to every part of your body correspond to the individual tasks (called work packages) at the bottom of the WBS, which are the smallest chunks of work that you assign to people to complete the project. The structure of a WBS is much like the system of blood vessels in your body, with the aorta representing the entire project and the smaller blood vessels as progressively smaller chunks of the overall work at each level ( summary tasks). The movie example in the previous paragraph is actually a simple WBS. If you’re new to managing projects, don’t panic-you’ve built a WBS before. Carving up the project’s work into a hierarchy of progressively smaller chunks until you get to bite-sized pieces is the first step toward figuring out how and when everything will get done. That’s where a WBS ( work breakdown structure) comes in. In cases like these, cost, delivery dates, and other objectives are important. And that new product may make a profit only if you keep costs below $100,000 and get it on store shelves before Thanksgiving. For example, missing the April 15 tax deadline can cost you hundreds of dollars in penalties. But for more complex projects-like doing your taxes or launching a new product line-identifying the work involved is key to planning how and when to get it done. You just call your friends, pick a movie, get tickets, and buy popcorn without a formal plan. When you organize a simple activity like seeing a movie with friends, you probably don’t bother writing out the steps. Chapter 4. Breaking Work into Task-Sized Chunks
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