In this blog, we will discuss the different approaches that people will have to creating a Work Breakdown Structure, otherwise known as a WBS. Now assuming that you know a little something about Agile now, you may or may not know what a WBS is or what it is used for. I will first go through a little bit of detail about it and then we will get into the details of some approaches to create this very important document.
A WBS is a tool that is used in project management to help understand how the project is being broken down. It is mostly a visual tool that helps people visualize the hierarchical structure of a project. This helps everybody in the project by stressing what needs to be done first and building off of that. All of the tasks and steps that need to be done should be outlined in the WBS clearly for everyone to understand. This is what makes it very important to choose an approach to building the WBS that works best for you, your team, and the project. I will go over 4 different approaches and what makes each of them different from one another.
The first approach that we will go over is the analogy approach. You probably know what an analogy is, it is when you compare a situation or thing to a different situation or thing to better understand and get a grasp of what is happening. This is pretty much exactly what happens with this approach in creating a WBS. The analogy approach is pretty much using another project’s WBS to help you format and write the WBS for the project that you are working on. Say you work at a company that is working on a project of a certain type and you learn that one of the other companies that is connected to you had already completed a project of the same type pretty recently. You might reach out to them to see if you can get your hands on the WBS that they used so that you can get a good starting point for your own project. Now obviously your WBS should not be identical to the other one that you are looking at but you can definitely use it to draw some inspiration. This approach works really well if there is a way to get your hands on a successful project WBS because it allows you not to go in blind to a project and truly understand how you might complete this project.
The next few approaches that we will look at will not have you look at other projects WBS but you will be creating these all on your own but don't worry! It's not as hard as you may think and there are many tools to help you on the way. The second approach we are discussing is the top-down approach and just like the name entails, we will be breaking the project down from the top and working our way down from there. The way that we will start building our WBS is to take the largest items of the project and break them down continuously until you get a pretty detailed list of items that must be completed. This type of approach is more suited for project managers that have pretty good insight into the technical work that will go into this project because without that, it would be hard to create a WBS that is detailed enough for your team to truly understand what they have to do.
The next approach that we are talking about is the bottom-up approach. This one is kind of similar to the top-down approach but is the opposite way. This process starts by listing off pretty specific tasks that will have to be done for this project. Then you will group these tasks into more generalized groups that help you see which tasks are related. You also might end up seeing that a certain group of tasks also fits under another higher up group of tasks. You keep doing this until everything is categorized into useful categories. This will be done with the team so that everyone can get involved and you will get more done faster by including the entire team in this process. This also has an added benefit of creating some team chemistry, as everyone will be working together and feeling some type of ownership over the project. The bottom-up approach is more beneficial for an entirely new project that has not really been done or worked on before.
The last approach that we will be going over today will be mind-mapping. This one is a little different from the ones that we have covered so far but is most similar to the top-down approach. Mind-mapping starts by having one central idea and branching out from that idea continuously until you have a fully-fledged out project. Here is an example of a mind-map that is using "Remodel the kitchen" as the central idea:
(Example mind-map) https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/the- best-mind-maps-for-project-managers
As you can see, this is a pretty helpful tool to help get an understanding of what ideas and tasks should be put under what parts of the project. During the creation of the map, your team should be constantly thinking about different branches from the central idea and further branches from those main branches. This allows the team to be able to see the whole project in a great visual aid that is very easy to understand. Kind of like the bottom-up approach, this allows all of the team members to get involved and feel like they are participating in the creation of this project in a way they might not have without it. You can also combine this idea with both the top-down and bottom-up approaches.
There are multiple ways that you can go about creating a WBS and it's not as daunting of a task as it may seem up front. Make no mistake, creating a good, fully fledged WBS is not an easy task but with the help of one or more of these approaches it becomes slightly easier. And when it comes down to selecting an approach to use, make sure to take into consideration the team that you have, the project that you are required to build, and any other important factors so that you can make the best choice for you and your team!
Sources:
Schwalbe, Kathy. Information Technology Project Management. Available from: Yuzu, (9th Edition). Cengage Learning US, 2023.
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