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Unit 3: Work Breakdown Structure

3.5.2 Verb-type Approaches Notes

There are two verb-type approaches:
(a) Design-build-test-implement: The design-build-test-implement approach is commonly
used in those projects that involve a methodology. Application systems development is
an obvious situation. Using our bicycle example again, a variation on the classic waterfall
categories could be used. The categories are design, build, test, and implement.
Remember, the WBS activities at the lowest levels of granularity must always be expressed
in verb form. After all, we are talking about work, and that implies action, which, in turn,
implies verbs.
(b) Objectives: The objectives approach is similar to the design-build-test-implement approach
and is used when progress reports at various stages of project completion are prepared for
senior management. Reporting project completion by objectives gives a good indication
of the deliverables that have been produced by the project team. Objectives will almost
always relate to business value and will be well received by senior management and the
customer as well. There is a caveat, however. This approach can cause some difficulty
because objectives often overlap. Their boundaries can be fuzzy.

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Caution You’ll have to give more attention to eliminating redundancies and discovering
gaps in the defined work.

3.5.3 Organizational Approaches

The deployment of project work across geographic or organizational boundaries often suggests
a WBS that parallels the organization. The project manager would not choose to use this approach
but rather would use it out of necessity. In other words, the project manager had no other
reasonable choice. These approaches offer no real advantages and tend to create more problems
than they solve. We list them here only because they are additional approaches to building the
WBS.
(a) Geographic: If project work is geographically dispersed (our space program, for example),
it may make sense from a coordination and communications perspective to partition the
project work first by geographic location and then by some other approach at each location.
(b) Departmental: On the other hand, departmental boundaries and politics being what they
are, we may benefit from partitioning the project first by department and then within
department by whatever approach makes sense. We benefit from this structure in that a
major portion of the project work is under the organizational control of a single manager.
Resource allocation is simplified this way. On the other hand, we add increased needs for
communication and coordination across organizational boundaries in this approach.
(c) Business Process: The final approach involves breaking the project down first by business
process, then by some other method for each process may make sense. This has the same
advantages and disadvantages as the departmental approach but the added complication
that integration of the deliverables from each process can be more difficult than in the
former case.

Did u know? What are organizational boundaries?

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