WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE

Project no: Department: Prepared by: Date:

No

Task

Start

Finish

Duration

Owner

Where necessary make the document available electronically to all stakeholders centrally.

Template comment

Project no

Add code number.

Department

Name of the department that is responsible for the work breakdown structure (WBS).

Prepared by

Name of the person who has prepared the WBS list.

Date

Add date of recording the product specifications.

Work breakdown structure

This is just a list of all tasks that go to make up the schedule.

No

Reference number for each identified task.

Task

Add a description of the task.

Start

Record the start date of the task.

Finish

Record the end date of the task.

Duration

The length of time the task will take. The unit of time chosen should be identical across the project and reflect the ability of the Project Team to manage it e.g. there is little point in using hours if it is not possible to manage at this level. Days are typical. Be wary that typical project management software views a week as 5 working days and not 7 (but this can be changed usually). The length of time a task will take will depend upon the amount of resource that can be attached to it (although some tasks will not be completed any earlier no matter how much resource is applied)

Owner

This is the person (or initials) who will have the responsibility for making sure that the task is completed. Note this is not necessarily the person who will actually carry out the task.

The success of a project is a shared effort. Clearly defining who is responsible is very important. The project schedule may be very detailed down to individual tasks. These tasks may have attached to them individuals whose job it is to actually carry out the operation. In practice this may not always be the best approach for several reasons e.g. holidays, illness and inexperience may necessitate changing personnel. If every individual involved in a project were at project team meetings the whole process would soon become unwieldy. If the plan clearly distinguishes department activity a representative should be on the project team. That member can then be given the accountability to delegate for all activities within that department.

Responsibility can be delegated but accountability can not.

The project schedule is just the combination of all the work breakdown structures with allowance made for interdependencies between the tasks.

Each department should produce a list of the activities (tasks) that are required to uphold its part of the overall plan. It may be an idea to record these separately but they may change so regularly in practice that it rapidly becomes a farce to keep the Project Notebook up to date. In practice, there is little point in filing these separately as they will be held as part of the overall project schedule. The list serves as a starting point for each department in brainstorming their task input.

The work breakdown structure list is the starting point for producing the final schedule which takes into account the effort available and interdependencies between tasks.