Project Management for Scholarly Researchers

5 Research Work Breakdown Structure

DOI: 10.1201/9781003212911-5

5.1 Introduction

Projects are more manageable and controllable when broken into their component parts. This is what work breakdown structure (WBS) provides. See Badiru (2010), Troxler and Blank (1989), and references therein for qualitative and quantitative aspects of WBS.

WBS represents a family tree hierarchy of project operations required to accomplish project objectives. It is particularly useful for purposes of planning, scheduling, and control. Tasks that are contained in the WBS collectively describe the overall project. The tasks may involve physical products (e.g., steam generators), services (e.g., testing), and data (e.g., reports, sales data). The WBS serves to describe ...