Hasta La Ideas

I enjoy leading a project. Setting the goal, defining scope, and then using my favorite piece of the planning process: creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Before you get to who’s going to do what and the schedule, the WBS allows you to take a project and break it into smaller, more manageable pieces. You end up with an organized, visual display of the main pieces of your project.

How it works: Once you define your final date for the project, your next step is to define the scope or magnitude of that project. How big is it? What will the project include? If your goal is to have a wedding by June 30, 2009, your scope might include dinner, invitations, decorations, entertainment, and a ceremony.

To further define the scope, a WBS offers a system to map out the work in detail. A simple way to think about it is by asking: What are the key deliverables — tangible and intangible things — that will result from the project? What will it take to get the project done?

A WBS also includes a logical list of tasks, that when completed, roll up to the deliverable. For example, the entertainment deliverable for the wedding event above might look like this:

1.0 Entertainment
– 1.1 Research bands.
– 1.2 Select band.
– 1.3 Create preferred song list.

The beauty of the WBS is that it can be used for relatively small projects (like organizing your garage), as well as large projects (like developing a piece of software).

You can create a WBS in most of the project software tools out there, or you can create one of your own on paper or in a document program like Word. On the work front, a WBS can be part of your project planning for anything from an office move to building a bridge. The more complex the project is, the more useful the WBS is to ensure that the main pieces of the project puzzle are captured.

Do you use WBSs on your projects? Let us know your experience in the comments area.