Work Breakdown Structure

This week's video is about the work breakdown structure and the debate about how much detail we need to include. Is the WBS just a big to-do list? Or, is the WBS a list of verifiable business outcomes that we decompose from the scope definition which is also a verifiable business outcome.

There are lots of people walking around who favor the to-do list approach. The idea is that if somehow we can manage to list everything everybody should do, we'll have a successful project. This approach leads to monstrous work breakdown structures. They don't require much thought to assemble and they are quickly irrelevant but they make a very impressive thump, when we toss them on to an executive's desk. These monster WBS are also very difficult or impossible to maintain because at this micro level of detail many many things change each week. Most project managers don't spend the time to keep the to-do list current and so three weeks into the project the schedule and plan are largely irrelevant.

The decomposition approach which is a core technique in our achievement driven project management methodology (ADPM™) takes a lot more thinking. The sponsor and the project manager need to actually decide what outcome they want from each assignment in the project. This goes hand-in-hand with the philosophy of holding people accountable for their end results rather than micromanaging. The resulting ADPM work breakdown structures are much smaller, much easier to maintain and give us unambiguous checkpoints for project tracking.

Add your comments about this critically important project management issue.

Regards,

Dick Billows, PMP, GCA