What is Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Project Management

What is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?
A work-breakdown structure (WBS) means breaking down of task or activities into tree structure formats. It breaks down the task into components that can be grouped together in terms of function, area of business, systems, subsystems or work packages.

Each sub structure in WBS represents a group of task representing certain similar characteristics or function.
The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK 5) defines the work-breakdown structure as a “A hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables.”

Why do we need a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?
1) Breaking down of project scope into deliverable groups
2) Grouping of task that represents certain function, systems or work packages
3) Easy to assign resources relating to that work packages
4) Identify the project milestone
5) Estimating Time and Cost

How to Construct Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?
Understand the project scope and breakdown the overall scope into high level plan of delivery. Say for example, in a construction project, the overall project can be broken down into 4 major high level plan
1) Designing
2) Procurement
3) Construction
4) Commissioning

Overall Project ID, we call it L0 or Level 0. The next level is L1 – Level 1 which is the overall high level breakdown of work package.

Then we go down further to the next level to define L2

Likewise we create all the levels.

How to Create WBS Code?
It is important to set WBS Code in order to easily identify the unique WBS in the project. This is required at the time of recording cost, assigning resources etc to the unique WBS.
Unique way to number a WBS will be:
1. Set Project Unique No / ID
2. For L1 (1st Hierarchy) = Project ID + L1 ID unique id
3. For L2 (2nd Hierarchy) = Project ID + L1 ID + L2 unique id
4. For L3 (3rd Hierarchy) = Project ID + L1 ID + LD ID + L3 unique id

Each id represents the structure of the ID in the entire project. So when an ID looks like
341.1.2
That means 341 is the project id followed by 1 which is L1 and No. 2 is the Unique ID of L2

Likewise: 341.1.2.3 represents 341 Project ID + 1 represents L1 + 2 Represents L2 + 3 unique ID

CONCLUSION:
How effectively Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is designed will determine the success of the project. It provides the foundation of all project management.

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