Managing Projects Large and Small: The Fundamental Skills to Deliver on budget and on Time by Harvard Business School Press

Author:Harvard Business School Press
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2009-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

An Extended Example

Now that the basic concepts for the work breakdown structure have been described, let’s see how one company put it to use in a project named Project Phoenix, whose goal was to install three Web servers and move key databases to a new data center.This case illustrates one approach to specifying tasks and related subtasks and the assignment of time estimates to each. For the sake of simplicity, cost and skill requirements have not been included.

Table 5-1 indicates the major tasks of the project and how each was broken down and described in greater detail. As shown, every major task is specified as one or more Level 1 subtasks, and most are further specified as Level 2 subtasks. Each subtask is assigned an estimated time duration, the total of which is 22 days. This does not mean that the total time needed to complete the project is 22 days, since some tasks can be completed in parallel. For instance, a team member could alert the data center about the arrival of new equipment at the same time that another completes a purchase order and sends it to the equipment vendor.

Note: Appendix A at the end of this book contains a work breakdown structure worksheet like the one shown in table 5-1.You can use it to specify the many tasks in your project.

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