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When many subteams within an overall project team each have individual responsibilities, the outline can be a little unwieldy because it doesn't visually separate activities according to functional lines. A combination tree diagram and outline WBS. The tree diagram WBS (see the following figure) does a magnificent job of separating functional activities. Its major shortcoming is that to convey high levels of task detail, the tree diagram would be huge. It might get too big for a single piece of paper or single computer screen, and hence would have to be plotted on a large wall chart. Even then, all the tasks and subtasks of all the players in all of the functional departments would necessitate constructing a large and complex chart indeed. Such a chart is actually a hybrid of the detailed outline and the tree diagram. Nevertheless, many project managers have resorted to this technique. By constructing both an outline and tree diagram WBS and then combining the two, however large and unwieldy the combination gets, you end up with a single document that assures the totality of the entire project. Here's an example of a segment of an outline and tree outline WBS combined. More Complexity, More Help With this potential level of detail for the project you have been assigned to manage, it is important to get help when first laying out your plan. Even relatively small projects of short duration may necessitate accomplishing a variety of tasks and subtasks. Eventually, each subtask requires an estimate of labor hours: How long will it take for somebody to complete it, and what will it cost? (See next lesson.) You will need to determine how many staff hours, staff days, staff weeks, and so on will be necessary, based on the plan that you have laid out. From there, you will run into issues concerning what staff you will be able to recruit, how many hours your staff members will be available and at what cost per hour or per day. Preparing your WBS also gives you an indicator of what project resources may be required beyond human resources. These could include computer equipment, other tools, office or plant space and facilities, and so on. If the tasks and subtasks that you plot out reveal that project staff will be traveling in pursuit of the desired outcome, then you have to figure in auto and airfare costs, room and board, and other associated travel expenses. If certain portions of the project will be farmed out to subcontractors or subliminal staff, there will be associated costs as well. TIP Think of the WBS as your initial planning tool for meeting the project objective(s) on the way to that final, singular, sweet triumph. What Should We Deliver? Completing project milestones, usually conveyed in the form of a project deliverable, represents your most salient indicators that you are on target for completing the project successfully. Deliverables can take many, many forms. Many deliverables are actually related to project reporting themselves. These could include, but are not limited to, the following: ● A list of deliverables. One of your deliverables may be a compendium of all other deliverables! ● A quality assurance plan. If your team is empowered to design something that requires exact specifications, perhaps some new engineering procedure, product, or service offering, how will you assure requisite levels of quality? ● A schedule. A schedule can be a deliverable, particularly when your project has multiple phases and you are only in the first phase or the preliminary part of the first phase. It then becomes understood that as you get into the project you will have a more precise understanding of what can be delivered and when, and hence the schedule itself can become a much-anticipated deliverable. ● The overall budget, estimates, your work plan, cost benefit analysis, and other documentation can all be deliverables as well. Plain English Cost benefit analysis A determination of whether to proceed based on the monetary time and resources required for the proposed solution versus the desirability of the outcome(s). Another type of deliverable has to do with acquisition and procurement. A government agency or a large contractor could empower a project manager and project management team to develop requests for proposals (RFPs), invitations to bid or requests for estimates as project deliverables. Once the proposals or bids come in, proposal evaluation procedures have to be in place. The following are examples: ● Software evaluation plans ● Maintenance plans ● Hardware and equipment evaluation plans ● Assessment tools The wide variety of other deliverables might include: ● Business guidelines ● Lexicon or dictionary ● Buy-versus-make analysis ● A phase out plan ● Training procedures ● Product prototype ● Implementation plans ● Reporting forms ● Application ● Product specifications ● Close out procedures ● Documentation ● Code ● Experimental Design ● Test results ● Process models It's Results That Count In preparing the WBS and associated deliverables, focus on results and not activities. The plan that you lay out and eventually develop becomes the operating bible for the project team. One project manager on a new software project requested that team-member programmers develop a certain number of lines of code per day in one phase of a project. He felt that this would be a useful indicator of the level of productivity of his individual project team members. In their efforts to be productive members of the project team, the programmers developed scads of new lines of code each day. The resulting program, however, was fraught with errors and was insufficient for completing that phase of the project. It put the overall project drastically behind schedule and behind budget. Rather than making task and subtask assignments related to the number of lines of new code developed, the tasks and subtasks should have reflected code that accomplished a specific, observable capability. Then, project programmers would have concentrated on code efficiency and potency, as opposed to volume. TIP Remember the old adage that sometimes, it's quality, not quantity, that counts. Supporting Tools Undoubtedly, when laying out your plan, you will have many starts and stops, erasures, redirections, and second thoughts. If you are lucky enough to have a white board, where you can simply write down your current thoughts to have them stored to disc and printed later, then you know that this is a valuable tool indeed. Many people simply use stick-em pads, which now come in various dimensions as large as three inches by five inches. An event or task can be confined to one stick-em note with associated subtasks on that same note or an attached note. These can then be moved around at will, as you are plotting out your plan. Stick-em pads can even be used in combination with a white board. Simply stick them in place (or the best place you can determine at the moment). If you don't have a white board, you can also use a copying machine to take a snapshot of your current thinking. To further ease your burden, you can use colors. These could include different colored stick-em notes, colored dots, or magic markers, flares, and highlighters. Each event or task could be a different color, or like subtasks could be a uniform color. The options are unlimited and are basically your choice. Many project managers find it useful and convenient to use colors to track the responsibilities of individual project team members. For example, everything that Scott is responsible for will be in orange. Many project managers also find it convenient to number tasks and subtasks. CAUTION Keep it simple when numbering tasks or subtasks. You don't want to end up with outline structures such as 1–1.2.34. This ends up being more confusing than not having them numbered at all. Bounce Your Plan Off of Others After you've laid out what you feel is a comprehensive plan that will accomplish the mission, bounce it off others, even those that for one reason or another were not available to participate in its construction. ● You want people to give it a critical eye. ● You want to have them play devil's advocate. ● You want them to challenge you. ● You want them to question you as to why you went left instead of right. Maybe they immediately see something that you flat-out missed. Maybe they can suggest a way to combine several subtasks into one. CAUTION You don't want to fall so in love with your WBS that you can't accept the input of others, or worse, never even see the flaws. The more involved your project is, the easier it is to miss something. In the next lesson, we add flesh and blood to your WBS, and focus on assigning staff, timeframes, and a budget to your WBS. The 30-Second Recap ● Regardless of how worthy your project and how brilliant your plan, keeping others informed along the way, as necessary, is your prime directive. ● Carefully scoping out the project and laying out an effective project plan minimizes the potential for surprises, indicates what needs to be done, provides clarity, and offers direction. ● The work breakdown structure (WBS) is a primary planning tool in plotting your path. ● The WBS lists each task, each associated subtask, milestones, and deliverables and can be used to plot assignments and schedules and to maintain focus on the budget. ● You don't want to fall so in love with your WBS that you can't accept the input of others and miss major flaws. Lesson 5. Assembling Your Plan In this lesson, you learn how to further refine your work breakdown structure (WBS), whether your labor should be part of the WBS, the importance of reintegrating project staff as the project winds down, and distinctions between the WBS and other planning tools. The Critical Path for Completing the WBS Before a project was assigned to you, an authorizing party or committee determined that it needed to be executed. They allocated resources to the project. At the least, initially this included costs of your services. They may have also formally or informally made assignments of plant, equipment, and human resources to the project. Plain English Critical path The longest complete path of a project. At some point you were summoned. You discussed the desired objective, how long the project will take, the key events in pursuit of the final objective, and whether or not the project should have distinct phases. Perhaps a feasibility study was already done. Maybe there were notes and other documents that enabled you to get a running start as to what you would be required to do. Often, your initial assignment is to define your own role and present your definition to the authorizing party or committee. Once the decision was made to launch the project, and once you were given the formal go-ahead, laying out your plan, developing the WBS, and presentation to your superiors became the order of the day, such as that depicted in the chart shown in the figure below. Laying out the plan. The basic activities involved to complete the WBS are as follows: ● Identify the events or task and subtasks associated with them. They are paramount to achieving the desired objective. ● Plot them using an outline, a tree diagram, or combination thereof to determine the most efficient sequence. ● Estimate the level of effort required (usually in terms of person days) and start and stop times for each task and subtask. ● Identify supporting resources and when they can be available, how long they are available, and when and how they must be returned. ● Establish a budget for the entire project, for phases if applicable, and possibly for specific events or tasks. ● Assign target dates for the completion of events or tasks known as milestones. ● Establish a roster of deliverables, many of which are presented in accordance with achieving or are analogous to milestones. ● Obtain approval of your plan from the authorizing party. See the chart in the figure below. Laying out your plan. The Chicken or the Egg? Preparation of your work breakdown structure (WBS) and the actual commencement of project activities is a chicken-versus-egg issue. For example, many experts advise that you first identify staffing resources and then proceed with the work breakdown structure. Following that approach, the opportunity to allocate staff as necessary comes first, followed closely by budget allocations. CAUTION Until you plot exactly what needs to be done, you can't allocate staff hours. Some experts advise creating the WBS independently of staff allocations. First, you identify what needs to be done, and then you assemble the requisite staff resources based on the plan that you've devised. I recommend the latter, because it is a more pure approach to laying out and assembling your plan—you identify needs first and then allocate appropriate staff resources.