Importance of WBS for a Project and Project Manager

WBS means Work Breakdown Structure, where we break the work in small doable work units to the extent when the requirements of every work unit can be understood easily. This level of work unit is called 'Work Package'. These may further be divided to a level, when these become assignable to one resource. Eventually it grows in a tree like structure where each leaf is a reasonably small and manageable work items. WBS is an essential part of Project Management and Execution. Project Managers uses it for managing the project efficiently. Good Project Managers keep breaking the work in smaller units till they feel a control over the requirements and find the small assignable units of work. And as they get comfortable with requirements, they can estimate the efforts reasonably. This division further help them in task planning and assignment, and network diagram also. The general structure of WBS is like

  • S. No. 
    • Feature
      • Sub Feature
        • Sub feature (Generally can be divided from 2 to 5 levels)
          • Task (Not very common, mostly we go till sub-features in WBS)
  • S. No
    • Feature
      • Sub Feature
  • ..... 

There are a few points which we should consider while defining the WBS, these are: