Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) , How student to know about WBS

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) , 

How student to know about WBS

Many students underestimate this activity. They think that this is an individual activity that is totally under their control; hence, there is no need for wasting time on this somehow “superficial” and “mechanical” activity. As it was stated before, if you do not know how you are going to do your project, it is highly likely to fail doing it.

At the first step, the plan seems to be very vague to you. At this stage, do not worry about the details. Simply, think about the major steps that you should take and make a list that depicts those major steps, which should be taken. Look at the following example to find out how it can be done. As you can realize these may slightly be different in your case, however, the main theme remains similar. This task – making a list by breaking down the whole job into specific manageable tasks – is called Work Breakdown and the result of which is called Work Breakdown Structure or simply (WBS).

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) sample

- Preparing Problem Statement

- Understanding general requirements

- Meeting with my supervisor

- Literature Review

- Implementation

- Testing

- Writing Project report

- Preparing Presentation

Now, this list needs two important things, which should be addedto it in order to make it a plan: timing and resourcing. By timing, I mean, you have to say when the task is expected to be started and when it is expected to be accomplished (finished). By resourcing, I mean the human beings and any material/ equipment that any specific task of the above list needs to have in order to be done. In fact, in your specific project, the main human resource of the project is you. However, sometimes you need other resources such as your supervisor. In terms of material/equipment you may need a computer (which you normally have one) and in some cases specific devices or software that should be obtained before the task is started.

Having these items ready, it is good to know that there are two major approaches with adding these details to your plan and applying the required changes: top-down approach and bottom-up approach. As the names imply, and as you might have heard about these approaches in other courses/modules, if we follow the former approach we start from top task in the list and will apply resources and timings one by one until we reach to the end of the list. Whereas if we follow the latter approach, we should start from the last task and assign resources and timings to task backwardly.

There are different reasons for having these two approaches, which discussing them is beyond the scope of this book. However, if you are interested in having more details you can consult thebibliography section at the end of the book. Nevertheless, in your case the bottom-up approach is the better choice than the top-down. The main reason for this is that the delivery time of your project is very restricted and normally bound to the specific university timetable for the assessment schedules. Hence, some major dates are not under your control and you are obliged to stick with a predefined university/school plan.

Let us apply the approach on the mentioned example. All you need is to have pen and paper, or a word processor, and a calendar. We assume that the project should be done within a semester. For the sake of simplicity, we assume the semester starts at October 1, and ends at January 27. Again, suppose you should submit your project by January 15 and you should be ready to present your project on January 22. Having this information, let us prepare a schedule based on which you can conduct your project.