Getting It Right

Project management for non-project managers: making sure your WBS will work

Last time you learned that a work breakdown (WBS) is just a fancy way of saying ‘Break big, scary tasks into small, manageable pieces so they don’t eat your soul.’

They’re not just for big corporate projects. It’s how wedding planners avoid disasters, how freelancers juggle multiple clients, and how anyone can make overwhelming work manageable. Think of WBS like organizing your grocery list by aisles instead of randomly throwing things in the cart.

You also learned the decomposition technique for breaking things down into smaller bits. Maybe you tried it out on your own project. If you haven’t already take a moment and think how you would.

But how will you check your work? How do you know if you’ve defined all the work you need to, have nothing extra, and all of it is usable? In project management jargon it’s called necessary and sufficient. The point is to create all of the structure that will support a successful project, and not a jot more.

Validation

Validation is checking the quality and completeness of your work breakdown. Try these simple checks if you think you’re close:

• Estimated – Do you know how long it’s going to take (duration), and how much its going to cost? If yes, you can move on. If not, break it down some more.
• Concrete – Is the description of the work specific? Can you imagine a thing in the real world that’s being done or created? “Write report”, “Weld frame”, “Pitch client” all have a thing that goes with the words: a report, a bicycle frame, a client.

35 or so years ago, at the very beginning of my programming career, I and my colleagues were sent to an IBM seminar. This was before Project Management™ and SMART™ Goals had really caught on. I learned that a good “verb/noun” pair was a great way to make work concrete. I’ve used it above, because that bit of learning has served me well for many years.

• Unique – Is what’s being manufactured, produced, or created found in only one place in your WBS? Eliminate duplication and redundancy.
• Realistic and Measurable – Can each deliverable be tracked and measured? In the bicycle building example, the tubing is either cut to length or not, it’s either welded or not, it’s either painted or not. If you’re building multiples, you can count how many have been built versus how many you planned to build. Can you measure how done you are?
• Assignable – Can every work package can be given to a person or a team? Will they know what to do, and will you be able to tell then they are done?

What about SMART Goals?

I tend to shy away from SMART Goals, not just because I’m a grumpy old man (I am), or because I don’t think they’re useful (I do), but because everyone seems to have their own version of them. If you go back to George T. Doran’s original 1981 Harvard Business Review article, however, they map nicely onto what you’ve just learned, and they’re useful and understandable:

Specific == Concrete
Measurable == Estimated
Assignable == Assignable
Relevant == Realistic and Unique
Timebound == not yet. This usually means having a deadline, but we can do better:

Bear with me on this one. I prefer the WBS approach over a strictly SMART Goal framework because you can separate scheduling (the assignment of start and end dates) from estimating (determining cost and duration). These are two very different functions that are hard to do well at the same time.

Knowing when something is supposed end and also when it’s supposed to start can be very useful, especially when managing larger projects. This is the project management approach, but timebound doesn’t come until the next step. For now, knowing the cost in terms of both time and money is a really good start.

But if SMART Goals alone work for you, that’s okay too. If the SMART framework is clearly defined, well understood, and consistently applied within your team, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Effort versus Duration

I’ve played a little fast and loose with the definition of duration, but you should be aware there’s a difference between duration and effort. It becomes important when you have start figuring out ways to make a schedule shorter. Never longer. Always shorter for some reason.

Some tasks can’t be shortened. Adding more resources and people will make the task take even longer. There are lots of reasons for this, and it’s true for most jobs that require cognitive ability, creativity, or deep thought. We’ve known this since the 1970s when Frederick P. Brooks published “The Mythical Man-Month”.

Let’s say I have six cords of wood (256 square feet) and it takes me a day per cord to chop the wood. If my buddy comes over for the weekend we could probably get through it in three days. Two if we get up early and chop for twelve hours a day.

If I have two friends (a stretch, I know), and we’re all handy with an ax, the three of us should be able to get through a winter’s worth of wood in two days, and still have the evening for a few refreshing adult beverages and each other’s company. I can even add people on the second day, or maybe somebody leaves early. How long it takes to do the work is directly proportional to the effort put in.

Chopping 6 cords of wood always six person-days of effort, but the duration will depend on how many friends I have. Six days if no-one answers the phone, three days if I can find one, two days if there are three of us.

Why Its Important:

This math (dividing the work among several people) only works if the work is simple, physical, and straight-forward. Imagine, however, I have 60 lines of code to write. Or I’m an architect designing a six-story building. Or I’m a author writing a 600-page work of fiction.

Yes, multiple people can and do work on like projects every day, but they can’t come and go. They can’t be added half-way through the project and be expected to be up-to-speed on Day One. Leaving early means that they take knowledge with them, knowledge that now has to be recreated by someone else. There’s a cost of managing and coordinating these kinds of projects.

This is the different between physical and intellectual labour. It’s the difference between half a loaf of bread and half a baby.

When estimating, think carefully about how you want to divide up the work.

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Now you’ve learned how to check that your work breakdown. Go ahead and apply these checks to your WBS, or someone else’s if that’s what you have.

If you have any tips or tricks for making a WBS better, or pitfalls you’ve learned to avoid, please share them in the comments.