Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
A tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project into a hierarchy, in the order they need to be completed.
Explanation
A WBS decomposes a project into progressively smaller, assignable units:
Project
├── Milestone 1
│ ├── Task 1.1 → Owner
│ ├── Task 1.2 → Owner
│ └── Task 1.3 → Owner
├── Milestone 2
│ ├── Task 2.1 → Owner
│ └── Task 2.2 → Owner
After completing a WBS, you should have:
- Sets of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each milestone
- Team members assigned to each task
Assigning tasks
- Assign by role on the project
- For two team members in the same role, consider familiarity with the task
- Consider each teammate’s workload
- Confirm assignments are clear
Side benefit: assigning tasks creates a sense of personal responsibility.
Application
Build the WBS during course-3-project-planning Phase 1. It’s the skeleton of the project plan — it feeds the gantt-chart, the budget estimate, the critical-path-method analysis, and task-level effort estimates.
Defining tasks well (capstone tips from Course 6)
- Keep each task description short and clear (1–2 sentences)
- Consider dependencies — what must happen before this task can start
- Involve team members in breaking down tasks
- Estimate by time required; if a task is too big, split into subtasks
- Define tasks by what “done” looks like, then work backward
Connections
- gantt-chart — visual representation of the WBS in time
- critical-path-method — finds the longest path through the WBS
- dependency-types
- course-3-project-planning