3 Tools to Make Work Breakdown Structure

Bert — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:37:24 +0000

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.

Shorter Project Charters

Bert — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:17:27 +0000

A project charter is the document that provides ownership (and authority) to the PM for a project, after someone hands that to you or when you write it up yourself and get it signed, you are the owner of the project on behalf of your company.

The point is, you start out with it and maintain it during the course of the project. I never get project charters handed to me in my current work situation, I always write them myself. And I like them short.

According to what I understand from the PMBOK there are 3 things that are absolutely essential for a good project charter, and those are:

a business case
the projects constraints
the assumptions (or dependencies)

Looking at only those 3 things that’s not much is it? Some of the things I always add are:

high level in scope
high level out of scope
communication plan, list of major project stakeholders with their coordinates and roles
general terms and conditions in the mother language of the sponsor, for legal purposes

I made a mindmap exercise in Freemind a long time ago by looking at some example project charters I got my hands on, the combination I came up with looked a bit like this:

But that’s too long to maintain if you have a high number of relatively short projects to manage.

Today my actual essentials look more like this:

Here’s the big mindmap:

project charter comparison PDF download

Freemind source file (.mm)

I want to share the whole exercise with you, so here you go, source and everything in a variety of formats.

Heymans.org » mindmap

3 Tools to Make Work Breakdown Structure

Shorter Project Charters