Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

When planning a project, a simple way of discovering the tasks to be performed by starting at the higher level and then breaking things down one level at a time.

For example a software project will start with requirements, design, etc. The Design is of the architecture, verification, etc. The architecture is of user-interface, database manager, etc. And so on.

This hierarchy can be shown in a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

When you have got down to allocable units, you can then assign people and resources to each task and link these tasks together in an Activity Network.

See also: