After making a preliminary scope statement and some high level planning, most contracts can be signed and actual production can start. The direction of the project is clear but more details are needed to efficiently control the work. For this I get the project team together and make a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), it’s a detailed scope description where you try to put everything into that’s needed to finish the project. I found a few fun ways to do this:
- Make a mind map. You can use a tool like Freemind for this. A mind map has a tree structure just like that of a WBS. Most mind mapping tools are made for brainstorming so they allow you to work fast.
- Work with Post-Its. Sit together at a fairly big clean table or whiteboard and group the elements of work in columns of Post-Its. Use at least 2 colors, a color to write group names on and a color for work elements. Take a picture of the whole thing after you’re done.
- Use SCRUM user stories to find and define the tasks. SCRUM is a methodology for agile software development, but most of it can be applied to just about any industry. SCRUM calls a collection of tasks a project backlog, which are derived from user stories. This video I found at Agile Software Development explains everything you need to know in about 8min.
Most of the projects I manage are a bit too complex to make a WBS on a presales budget but if it’s possible for you to do this exercise up front it’s an excellent basis for estimates. You need the full team for this unless you’re a complete domain expert yourself.
Tags: agile, integration, mindmap, planning, scope, scrum, tools, WBS
Mind mapping tools can be used to create WBS with the Graphical WBS Method. But there are also tools that allow you to do the same using the Indented Outline Method. Any project management software must have this feature using one method or the other. This step is a very important one in managing a project.
Cool tip Lucian! Outlines can be used just as well.
Hey Bert, I will be happy to explain to you how a product backlog can be used as a powerful tool. I’ll be around in a few weeks.
That would be excellent, I’m just getting to know SCRUM, and very interested in your experiences.
Here is a great tool for creating a WBS, allocating the tasks to individuals or roles and for time tracking against those tasks: http://www.e-lm.com
We’ve been using between a number of companies and especially for team members that are off-site.
Cool tips. But we work in a distributed team, so we don’t sit down together very often. We use a tool called Wrike. The best thing about it is that it allows to overlap WBSs from different projects.
Thanks for the tip Kent!
[...] creating a fairly detailed WBS [...]
ProjectPlan.com has just been released which has an easy way to break down and allocate tasks.
http://www.altica.co.uk/project-planning-software