Project Management Tips and Techniques
Build the Project Workplan from the Work Breakdown Structure
Tom Mochal

Each month, Tom Mochal presents a set of project management tips and techniques for handling various aspects of planning and managing a project. Tom has developed a number of comprehensive, scalable methodologies, including a project management process called TenStep (www.TenStep.com). Tom also published a popular book called Lessons in Project Management. 

The first part of building a workplan from scratch is to create a work breakdown structure (WBS) that identifies all of the work activities in an inverted (upside down) tree structure. (See the Pipeline project management tip for November 2003.) The WBS is the basis for creating the rest of the project workplan. 

Create a Network Diagram

1. The first step in converting the Work Breakdown Structure into a network diagram is to look at all the detail activities (not the summary activities) and sequence them in chronological order. Remember to include all the activities that are not broken down further, regardless of what level they are at in the WBS. In the sequencing process, you determine the work that gets done first, second, third, etc. This step is the reason why it does not matter how you structure the initial WBS. As long as you discover all of the work in the WBS, the sequencing of the activities is done now.
    
2. When you have a rough sequence established, go through the work again. At this time look for the relationships and dependencies between the activities. Note whether one activity cannot start until another activity is finished. In many cases, two or more activities may need to be completed before another one can start. You identify the work that must be done sequentially and the work that can be done in parallel with other work. This step is very important and is the key to having a solid workplan to start the project.
    
3. If you have not been entering the activities into a project management software tool, you should do so now. (The larger the project, the more critical it is that you use an automated tool to help build the workplan.) Although the activities can be added in any order when entering them into the tool, it is easier to understand if you add the activities in chronological order. That is, the earlier activities should be listed first on the workplan and the later activities should be listed in the general order that they will be executed. As you enter the activities into your scheduling tool, you can also enter the dependencies, since these prior dependant activities should have already been entered into the tool. If you do not enter the activities in chronological order, you will need to put activities in first, and then specify the dependencies after all of the activities are entered. For each activity entered, you should also include the estimated work effort.
    
4. Now you should enter any date constraints. Date constraints are events that are outside of the control of the project team and must be managed around. They are not necessarily problems or risks, but they just need to be taken into account for the purposes of your workplan. Many constraints have date implications, but they do not need to be. For instance, a deliverable may need to be completed before the Board of Directors meeting on a certain date. Or, you may need to place an order with a vendor by a certain date.

Assign Resources

5. So far you have built the plan without specifying any resources. If you have exactly the resources you need at the right time, the final workplan would look pretty much like it does at this time. Obviously, that is never the case. So, care must be taken to assign the available resources to the right activities to make sure that the work gets done as efficiently as possible. If you have specific resources allocated to your project, you can assign them directly to the appropriate activities. If you do not have all your resources assigned, this allocation will need to be by a generic type of resource. For instance, if you have three 'programmers' assigned, you may need to assign them to the workplan as 'programmer1', 'programmer2' and 'programmer3'. 
    
6. If you are using a tool to do the initial scheduling of the project, go ahead and create an initial schedule now. Based on the effort hours, resources and constraints, the tool will calculate the overall timeline of the project.
    
7. Now check for resource constraints, to see if resources are over-allocated or under-allocated. (If you have a large project and are not using a tool, this will just about be impossible.) What you may find is that a resource may be allocated for 100 hours one week and 20 hours the next week. Smoothing out this workload is called resource leveling. 

Adjust Plan and Add Milestones 

8. After you have estimated the effort for each activity and assigned resources, you can again schedule the project and see how long it will take (duration). At this point, you have your first real draft of a workplan. If you have assigned a cost per hour to the resources, you can also see the project costs - at least in terms of labor.
    
9. Review the workplan and timeline to see if it makes sense. If it doesn't reflect what you need, make changes and reschedule. For instance, your workplan may show duration of ten months, but you may only have eight months to get it done. At this point, you can look at alternatives such as adding resources, working some overtime, removing some of the work activities, etc.
    
10. Determine when key deliverables will be completed and assign milestones to those events. A milestone is an activity with zero duration that is used to help manage the work at a high-level. If you (or your manager) run a report showing the project milestones, you should be able to quickly tell whether you are on schedule, ahead of schedule or behind schedule.
     
11. Once the workplan has been completed and the project is approved, save a current copy of the workplan as a baseline version. Later on, when the workplan is managed, the updated workplan can be compared against this original baseline version to determine variances.

Would you like to receive project management tips every week? Sign up for the weekly TenStep Project Management Tip of the Week at www.TenStep.com.