Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Building the WBS

The WBS is a hierarchical description of all work that must be done to complete the project as defined in the RBS. Recognize that the RBS documents in detail the deliverables needed to produce the expected business value as described in the POS. The WBS is a further decomposition of the RBS components and describes in detail how those components will be created. In other words it defines the work of the project. Several processes can be used to create this hierarchy. They are described in this section.

The Requirements Breakdown Structure (RBS) is the input to constructing the WBS. If the RBS is complete, then a traditional approach to project management can be taken and the complete WBS developed. This chapter describes how to build a complete WBS. However, in most cases the RBS will not be complete, and therefore, the WBS will not be complete, and some other project management approach will have to be taken. Those are discussed later in Chapters 10, 11, and 12, which consider all of the exceptions.

Using the RBS to Build the WBS

One of the major benefits of the RBS is that it can dramatically reduce the work and improve the effectiveness of the WBS. Figure 5-2 is the RBS graphical depiction first introduced in Chapter 4.

Figure 5-2: The RBS

The RBS is linked directly ...