Work Breakdown Structure
Understanding
One of the concepts of task management is Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). WBS is the process of breaking down tasks in a project into smaller components. This is to make the tasks more manageable.
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One way to start off the process is to do a top to bottom approach. The top being the major deliverables and the bottom being the smaller deliverables. One needs to first identify the major work components of the project. Next, you will need to break down the major work deliverables into smaller chunks of tasks. The lowest-level work components are called work packages. Work packages are tasks that can be scheduled, budgeted, assigned and controlled. Depending on the nature of the project, one can break down tasks via components, phasing, function, location and etcetera.
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Another way is to start from bottom to the top. When building the WBS chart, the first step would be listing down all the tasks that need to be done. Once the tasks have been listed out, start categorizing the tasks into bigger sub-groups. For example, the equipment and location for a movie shoot can be categorized under logistics. Small tasks leading to bigger deliverables which would lead to meeting the project objectives.
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Both methods are equally viable and do not affect the effectiveness of WBS. The method you choose to use is dependent on your working style and ethics.
Application
Our team used WBS to give us an overview of the major deliverables we need to complete. For project blissful sprouts, we had three major components : Volunteers, Logistics and PowerPoint slides. Under volunteers, we needed to recruit them, assign tasks to them and check their work. The task allocated to the volunteer is to translate our logbook from English to Chinese.
This task was mainly done remotely. Under logistics, we needed to make a list of items to buy, buy the items, pack the logistics and deliver them to the center. Under PowerPoints, we needed to plan the timeline of the event, research and create the slides and execute a dry run prior to the event.
By having the WBS, we were able to clearly map out the tasks that needed to be completed and assign them to team members to be done. WBS also served as a good indicator on how far in the project we were in and managed our time better
Values and Challenges
WBS was useful in allowing team members to have an overview of all the major deliverables for the project. It also allowed us to see what tasks needed to be completed and directed the flow of the preparation process. This ensured that time was used efficiently and that our efforts will not be wasted on meaningless tasks. WBS also allowed us to see the importance of each task, with the more important tasks/deliverables being at the top and the minor ones at the bottom.
However, one challenge of using WBS is that we did not fully utilize it. As our project was relatively small-scaled, there were not many tasks that could be broken down from the major deliverables. I think that WBS would be more effective for a larger project as my team struggled to break down our major deliverables into smaller sections.