WBS or Work Breakdown Structure is a business or corporation technique used in companies and organizations to execute projects. This is a commonly used technique for planning and organizing the tasks and steps included in a project.
Project managers use this technique in order to foresee the results and effects of a project after a certain time in future along with estimating the costs of the project, duration to complete the project and possible delays and obstacles that could make the project go longer on the time line. Moreover, this technique also helps to create Gantt schedule too for the project management purposes.
Importance of work breakdown structure:
- WBS helps to create detailed steps plan for project execution:
As you know that WBS is a technique in which the steps or tasks included in a project are broken down separately. This means that when each step is defined and explained in a separate way, this will help the team leader and members to understand the requirements of the entire project and the needs of each task too. - WBS helps the team members to schedule the duration and costs for the project:
When the WBS system is implemented in a project; this explains that the project isn’t a small one but it is an important one. When the project is important, the most critical element is the time which explains the needs and requirements of finishing the project on time. WBS helps the project leader to define a timeline to complete each part or step of the project on time and as this is done before starting the project, it can also help the members to eliminate any possible delays and hurdles in the future. - WBS helps in creating accountability and performance review:
WBS explains each step in a separate and different way along with mentioning the worker who is in charge of each particular part of the project. This helps the top management and team leader to keep accountability of his team members along with providing him help to examine and review the performance of each employee in order to remove any problems and errors.
Here is preview of a Free Sample The Work Breakdown Structure Template created using MS Word,
Application of Work Breakdown Structure in Business:
As we have discussed and explained above that work breakdown structure is a technique that is mainly used in project management. This also explains that the implication of this technique is only in projects by the top level management and the project supervisors. This is kind of an expensive system to work on and it requires weeks of hard work to be done on the process in order to define and explain the steps and tasks involved in the project.
This means that most of the time, only the big companies or global corporations with enough funds to be used in this purpose apply this technique for the execution of huge projects. This doesn’t mean that small businesses or short term projects can’t use this technique but it’s just require more than enough money which can be a problem in case of a short or small project.
Here is download link for this The Work Breakdown Structure Template,