Work Breakdown Structure: Break Your Project into Manageable Units of Work
Eric Verzuh · 2015
The secret of successful project management is to break a project into small, meaningful, manageable units of work. To ensure that the work packages are of correct size, the chapter presents some thumb rules: the 8/80 rule, the reporting period rule, and the “if it is useful” rule. There are three steps that provide a guideline to developing a useful work breakdown structure (WBS): begin at the top, name all the tasks required to produce deliverables, and how to organize the WBS. Work packages must add up to a summary task, so that each summary task and work package can be named as an activity that produces a product. Project management offers a process, completion criteria, for setting quality standards for completion of the product. If a project employs contractors or vendors to do some of the work, it is better to make a WBS part of the bid requirement.