5 Why is it important to have the project team members becom

5. Why is it important to have the project team members become involved in the development of the WBS? Provide an example (from your personal experience or otherwise) in which the team was involved in creating the WBS. Was this a success or failure? Explain why or why not

Solution

A work breakdown structure (WBS) in project management and systems engineering, is a tool used to define and group a project\'s discrete work elements in a way that helps organize and define the total work scope of the project.

The WBS provides the project manager and team with the necessary framework of tasks going forward to create detailed cost estimates and also to provide major input to project task scheduling at the most detailed and accurate level possible. By going through the WBS motions, the project manager and team will have a pretty good idea whether or not they’ve captured all the necessary tasks, based on the project requirements, that are going to need to happen to get the job done.

Four key benefits to developing a WBS are:

#1 - WBS forces the team to create detailed steps
The WBS forces the project manager, team members, and customers to delineate the steps required to build and deliver the product or service. The exercise alone encourages a dialogue that will help clarify ambiguities, bring out assumptions, narrow the scope of the project, and raise critical issues early on.

#2 - WBS lays the groundwork for schedule and budget
It lays the groundwork for developing an effective schedule and good budget plans. A well-defined WBS enables resources to be allocated to specific tasks, helps in generating a meaningful schedule, and makes calculating a reliable budget easier.

#3 - WBS creates accountability
The level of detail in a WBS makes it easier to hold people accountable for completing their tasks. With a defined WBS, people cannot hide under the “cover of broadness.” A well-defined task can be assigned to a specific individual, who is then responsible for its completion.

#4 - WBS creation breeds commitment
The process of developing and completing a WBS breeds excitement and commitment. Although the project manager will often develop the high-level WBS, he will seek the participation of his core team to flesh out the extreme detail of the WBS. This participation will spark involvement in the project.

The downsides (sort of)
Of course, developing a WBS is not easy. It can be a painstaking process. And it can take quite a bit of time. A large WBS (one that identifies several thousand activities) can take many, many hours to develop. For another, it requires effort. There is a knowledge transfer and exercise of brainpower. The larger the scope of the project, the larger the WBS will be. More people must provide input and then approve the portion they are responsible to perform. Finally, the WBS requires continual refinement. The first iteration is rarely right and as the project changes, so does the WBS.

To start out, the project manager (myself) and subject matter experts (assistant manager) determined the main deliverables for the project. Once this is completed, we had a team meeting and start decomposing the deliverables we have identified, breaking them down to successively smaller chunks of work.

\"How small?\" you may ask. That varies with project type and management style, but some sort of predetermined “rule” should govern the size and scope of the smallest chunks of work. We used a two weeks rule, where nothing is broken down any smaller than it would take two weeks to complete. Another method is 8/80 rule, where no chunk would take less than 8 hours or longer than 80 hours to complete.

Regarding the format for WBS design, some people create tables or lists for their work breakdown structures, but most use graphics to display the project components as a hierarchical tree structure or diagram. We used our own tables and tracking sheets to monitor performance.

It was hugely successful as every team member knew each others deliverables and timeline so they were aware that if there is any delay in work it will get noticed immediately.