Breaking Work into Task-Sized Chunks - Identifying the Work to Be Done

Knowing the high-level tasks that make up your project is important, but big chunks like Build Bridge, Hire New Staff, and Plan Grand Opening Party don’t help when you’re trying to estimate costs, line up resources, schedule work, or track progress. You need to get much more specific about the actual work all this is going to take. The point of a WBS is to break down the work into small enough pieces so you can do the following:

• Improve estimates. 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. 
  
• Keep the team focused. 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. And it also gently guides team members away from doing things outside the scope of the project

• Assign work to resources. When the work is broken down into discrete tasks, it’s easier to identify the skills needed to complete the assignment. The project manager can clearly determine who’s responsible for what. Also, team members are more likely to understand their individual assignments, which makes them happy, and helps keep the project on track.

  On the other hand, don’t go overboard by dissecting work into miniscule assignments. Productivity drops when team members keep switching to new assignments while your temptation to micro-manage increases. (You’ll learn how to determine the appropriate size for a work package in the next section.)

1. Keep the project on track. Shorter tasks give you frequent checkpoints for tracking costs, effort, and completion dates. Moreover, if tasks have strayed off course, you can take corrective action before things get too far out of hand.

Note:  In the PMI project management methodology, introduced briefly in Chapter 1, a WBS is the result of the scope definition process. The starting point is a scope statement (page 47), in which you define the boundaries of the project—what’s within the scope of the project and, just as important, what isn’t within the scope. For example, knowing whether the cleaning service you hire takes on teenagers’ rooms could be essential to success. For many projects, especially those performed for government agencies, the WBS is a contractually binding document, making the correct inclusion and exclusion of work essential.

Next: Breaking Down Work >>
 

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