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Each month, Tom Mochal, President of TenStep, Inc. presents project management tips and techniques for planning and managing a project. TenStep, Inc. has a comprehensive, scalable project management process called TenStep (www.TenStep.com), as well as a project lifecycle process called LifecycleStep (www.LifecycleStep.com). Tom has also published a popular book called Lessons in Project Management that can be purchased at www.TenStep.com. Pipeline readers receive 20% off any TenStep or LifecycleStep purchase by entering the coupon code of "Pipeline" in their purchase.
It might surprise you to know the number of people that use yellow sticky pads and a blank wall to create the first draft of the Work Breakdown Structure. This technique is very easy. You first get the appropriate people into the same room. These are the project team members and clients who have the expertise to build the WBS. Typically you start off by writing the names of the major deliverables on yellow sticky sheets - one deliverable per sheet. Make sure the attendees agree on the major deliverables to begin with. If any of the deliverables are very large, you can create new sticky sheets that describe the deliverable at a lower level, or individual work products. These are arranged under the higher-level deliverable. The deliverable needs to be identified at a level low enough that you understand what it takes to build it. In general two levels should be enough. One level is typical.
Next, for each deliverable, describe the activities that must take place to complete it. Each activity goes on a separate sticky sheet. Again, these are arranged under the specific deliverable they refer to. If you have a sense for the order that the activities need to be completed, you can arrange the sticky sheets sequentially. However, this is not important at this point. The important thing is to identify all the work.
Look at the activities that are required to build each deliverable (or work product) and estimate the work associated with each activity. If the effort associated with an activity is larger than your estimating threshold, identify the more detailed activities that make up the higher level one. Each of these activities is represented by new sticky sheets under the higher-level activity (which now becomes a summary activity). Continue with this process until the work required to complete all of the deliverables are defined, as best you know today. The levels of activities will not be the same for each deliverable. Some simple deliverables may meet the threshold criteria in one or two levels. Others may take three or four, or more.
The advantage of this approach is that your team can visually see the work and they can help ensure all the work is identified to complete the project. The yellow sticky sheets also give you the ability to easily move things around. If you add an activity and then decide to remove it, you just pick up the sticky sheet. Likewise, if a deliverable or group of activities is in the wrong place, you just move the sticky sheets to where they need to be.
When you are all done, you can enter the summary and detailed work activities into your workplan management tool.
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