Work Breakdown Structure Best Practices

0:00 are you new to creating a work breakdown structure in projects well in this video I'm going to share with you the dos and don'ts of a work breakdown structure along with best practices so you can be successful okay if you have never created a WBS don't worry I have you covered because I actually have another video that talks solely to this so I'm going to suggest strongly stay here finish watching this video because it's going to give you best practices and dos and don'ts and then when you're done watching this video you can go to the link underneath this video in order to bring you to how to create your WBS which is a definite must watch as well know the benefits you may already know the benefits of having a work breakdown structure but it's really important that

0:46 we just reiterate them here so again we're all on the same page so the benefit of a work breakdown structure is it allows for you to take a look at your overall deliverable and break them out into manageable chunks by doing that the other benefit is it allows you to start seeing the um areas that you're going to have to put project tasks around that you're going to have to assign to your team members so they can execute on that and be owners of those particular I call them buckets another benefit of understanding and breaking things down not only from an understanding and a project plan perspective is you start to identify risks because you're putting more information around what it is that you're doing and how potentially it's

1:32 going to look because you're breaking it down in more manageable chunks in those buckets so those are the key benefits of doing a WBS which is a work breakdown structure real quick I just want to let you know I'm going to share with you a little bit later on in this video how you can get your hands on this so stay tuned one of the key best practices for work breakdown structure is you need to have your team collaborate on it this is going to be important and there's quite a few reasons for it so why is it that you need to have your team collaborate on it because when you break down your project deliverable into manageable chunks what comes to the surface are the activities that your team is going to have to execute and if they help you in the creation of that then they're the

2:18 ones who are going to be probably the first ones to say hey that falls under my jurisdiction that should be something that I take care of so you start to automatically build in accountability and when you also collaborate with your team it's a great brainstorming activity to really make sure that you're looking at everything that you're supposed to be looking at because don't forget with the work breakdown structure you have your different levels and those levels go from the concept and idea to more of highlevel buckets and within those buckets there's some major Milestones or deliverables or activities that have to have happen and underneath that are some tactical tasks so by having your team collaborate on that in essence they're now helping you create the plan that

3:05 they're going to be accountable for that's gold you cannot pay for that and if you give it to them pre-made they're not going to accept it but if you have them build it with you then I'm letting you know the Buy in is 100% now if you don't know how to do this guess what I have you covered in my online project management course called slay project management I actually walk you through how to look at a WBS the levels of a WBS and how to collaborate with your team on it at the kickoff meeting so definitely check it out the link is underneath this video another best practice is to ensure it's aligned with your project scope this is really important because again when you're breaking everything down you

3:51 need to have all the information to understand what it is that you're breaking down so if you're just creating it oh I got to deliver on this and doing it yeah you're going to definitely get some benefit but to really lock it down so that it's tight is you need to incorporate it with your scope statement why because your scope statement is not just a statement it also has your ins and outs and I promise you the detail that you have in your ins and outs in your scope statement is going to give you that additional information that's going to really give you a robust work breakdown structure when you start breaking it down in the level ones twos and threes super super super important to tie that in use verbs for level four

4:36 so when you're at level fours you're now at a point where you're at the Tactical tasks so you want to have each tactic to have its own sort of line item and within that you want to put verbs associated with it so for example you may have a approval let's say a training plan and that training plan is just a level two within that level three you're going to have to develop a whole bunch of things and your level four is a tactic that tactic could be create the outline of your training plan that word create is what's you're going to ensure that you're actually at a tactical level so that's a really good best practice to incorporate into all of your level four

5:21 items in your work breakdown structure and our last best practice which to me is the best best practice of them all is you want to transfer all of your findings in from your WBS your work breakdown structure that you collaborated with your team to your project plan that's the beauty of this tool is that you're not duplicating efforts it flows so nicely that when you finally get down to your level four items it really is tactical tasks that should be transferred into your project plan whatever choice of project plan you choose to use but that to me just makes it super easy very simple and all you have to do at this point is confirm with the team responsibility and due date and

6:07 then transfer that into a schedule and you have a great project plan definite must that's why we use work breakdown structures as project managers remember earlier in this video I told you about some additional things I was going to give you to help you be awesome at projects well here it is and guess what it is for you it's free and it's under this video so go check it out make sure you watch this next video it's a step-by-step guide on how to write a project plan on that note if you could like this video If You Could subscribe we would love to see you in this awesome community and until next time see you