Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success

Benefits of Source-Organized Work Breakdown Structures

The practice of producing source-organized WBSs may take some getting used to, especially in IT shops that traditionally rush through planning activities or historically prefer a generic, plate-organized WBS. But for the shop that embraces this practice, rewards are not long in coming. Many benefits are to be gained; several of the most tangible and distinct are listed next.

• Organized scope. WBSs, by default, organize work. Most of the time they do this in a very general way—by generic project phase, for example. But basing the layout of the WBS on the way in which requirement groups can be addressed will move the process from benign organization into proactive design. From there, activity ...