Create WBS process in PMBOK6. Enjoy this video of my free online PMP Exam Preparation training course and prepare to sit and pass the PMP certification exam from PMI. This PMP training video is based on PMBOK6 (PMBOK Guide) and covers the process of creating the Work Breakdown Structure, which is under Scope Management knowledge area.
hello and welcome back to my PMP series we are now on the create work breakdown structure process and this is where we subdivide the project deliverables that we’ve defined back then in the define stroke process and we break it down into smaller easier to manage components now why are they easier to manage because you can take the whole lump sum work and break it into smaller may be task oriented or nature of work oriented so for example plumbing work electrical work each would be separate and IT work would be separate so you could break it down as you wish and then assign a team lead to work on each part separately so this this makes it easier for the team lead to focus on their own tasks now if you’re doing it using software like Microsoft Project or Primavera or any other tool then when you break it down into these smaller pieces you can assign now this is outside of the scope of PMP but you know each piece of these could be assigned or you know authority to that specific team lead to make changes in it and whenever there’s a problem on the project you can pinpoint where exactly the project problem is happening by looking at which of these tasks or boxes on the WBS is lighting up as red or depending what your software does so for example if you had let’s say delay in one of the tasks or one of the activities then you can probably have a negative float at that point and the negative float could trigger a red color in one of these boxes so in a way it allows you to be able to drill down into which part of your project is really having a problem rather than looking at the whole project as one piece it makes it easier to manage this is a hierarchy it comes from the top to the bottom and you know it goes from the whole project with a smaller pieces let me show you what it looks like this is what it looks like here you can see at the very top at the very top here this is the whole project right there and it’s being divided into one two three four four pieces right there and these four pieces represent all of the work so if we complete all these four pieces which are marked 1.1 here and you know goes to 1.2 1.3 1.4 if all these four pieces are completed then that project is considered completed now you could further break these down into smaller packages and mind you this is what we call them we call them work packages but not all of them are work packages I’ll explain that until in a little bit but just imagine you took this 1.1 year that’s the first one the first box and you divided it into four parts so you see that you have one point one point one notice how the name carries through because the upper one was one point one then the second one is going to be one point one point one let me just highlight let me just highlight these things here highlight so you had one point one you have one point one here then you have one point one point one one point one point two and you can see that the name carries through you keep the one point one now the one point one point two that we see here when it’s broken down below you’ll see that it has one point one point two but it has a point one and one point one point two and it adds a point two and once these areas are completed once these two are completed then this one is complete and once all four are completed then one point one point one is completed now we have a total mess on our screen let’s clean it up a little bit and then let’s go back to drawing so if this and this are completed then this one is completed this and this are completed and this is completed this and this are completed this is completed this one here on the right one point one point four is not broken down that is what we call a work package so that’s the work package right there and the other six that you see below one point one point one one point one point two all these are called work packages because they are not further broken down so the ones that are at the very end of the chain that are not further broken down we call these work packages so this is a work package work package work package and incidentally this this this these are all work packages all the ones that I marked are work packages and that’s because you don’t see them broken down into smaller pieces whereas if you look at the one on the left one point one point one that one is broken down into two pieces therefore we just call this one a node okay so this is a WBS node that’s one that we show here it’s a node and it’s broken down into the work packages the numbering sequence carries through you could have a name sequence so it can be for example action dot electrical construction plumbing so you could have a name sequence you know name dot this dot that according to what the packages are the sequence the way they go down or it can be just numbers like you see here starting from one at the very top and then going down to one point one and then you see if you follow the sequence here one to one point one to one point one point one to one point one point one point one like that so that’s how they sequence down completing the lower level completes the upper level and one more thing about the WBS is that what you see here is the intended scope of work so whatever you don’t see you should not be expecting it to happen all right that’s the expectation is that this represents all of the scope of work that I intend to get done on the project all right let me see what was on the previous screen here I’m not sure if I missed anything the yeah there’s one thing that I left out here or I didn’t discuss and that’s the concept of decomposition so here a decomposition that’s a keyword that you need to know for the exam when we break down the scope of work into smaller pieces that process is called decomposition alright so remember the word decomposition later on when we break down the scope of work or when we break down each work package into its own activities that’s also going to be called decomposition so now what we have is the WBS has been created previously that we have the scope statement so that’s the scope statement that’s the WBS and each time DBS is going to end up with work packages at the lowest level now every work package let me take you back to the previous screen every work package that you create every work package here you can see that it has a small writing on it right you see that small writing that is on it for example this one says current system audio so there’s only so much information that you can put into any of these boxes the details of what goes into that WBS typically sits in what we call the WBS dictionary the WBS dictionary this one here these are the details so I’m going to pause for a second I’m going to open a word document I’m going to show you a WBS that is being prepared in Microsoft Word and show you what the WBS dictionary is okay so I have opened the word document this is the WBS in Word format WBA structure as it states here and all of the details about who this document is prepared by and and some version control but when you get down here see this is a WBS right there that’s a WBS and you can see that these are created with Microsoft Word if you click on any of these you can go ahead and maybe edit it you know make changes to it as you wish so you know I’m not a big fan of doing it like this unless you’re creating a very small document a very small WBS because it can be complicated later on when you need to insert another piece into this WBS lower than this on the next page what you see here is a table and on this table on the left you’ll see the work ID is 1.0 1.1 and so on these correspond to the boxes that you see are 1.1 1.2 and they are here not all of them but because it’s just a demo but you’ll see that every one of these boxes is here and you have lots of details that you could put about every box things like you know the work name the description completion criteria who is the customer and so on so there’s a lot of details you could put about every WDS and that’s what’s called a WBS dictionary if you were using software you just need to double click on your WBS and something pops up like Microsoft Project something will pop up let me show you what it looks like what a WBS looks like on software so what I’m going to do is I’m going to share with you this you know program this is a free program if you use in it by yourself it’s called open proj [Music] so I’m going to go ahead and create a project here so it’s gonna ask me what’s the name of this project so this is just project WBS and this is me add forward scheduled okay you don’t need to know this for PNP it’s just here for demo so I’m going to call this one crime I’m just gonna create the whole project here whole project and I’m going to create below that WBS one skip a couple of steps and then create WBS – couple of steps WB s3 right WB s 3 and leave couple of steps and then create activity one 51 52 53 or activity for activity 536 notice that the activities don’t need to follow through in a sequence but you cannot repeat the name of an activity like the activity under a WBS doesn’t need to carry any naming convention you can call it whatever typically activities are named as you know verb noun so it’s like to do something you know paint the wall something like that so what I’m going to do now is I’m gonna take this and this is how this one software works I’m going to end and let me just move I’m going to move these out and so that makes the whole project the master and these are below and I’m going to take these two activities move them out take these two activities move them out and these two here in the bottom move them out indent and I can shrink now the WB SS right and all I have to do is click this here on the left and voila we have a WBS structure all right now obviously I can go and subdivide these and so on but I’m just showing you what it looks like on a software and as compared to what it would look like in Microsoft Word now if this is what we’re working with and you double click here you can’t double click on it won’t work but if you were here and you double clicked on this see that pop up that you get that’s the WBS dictionary that explains you know all the details you can even put notes here if you want my notes are here right and you can once you put your note close it now you see the note shows up here if I click it if I know at some point see my notes are here so that’s that’s part of the WBS dictionary clicking it and getting all these details budget duration so on priority resources it’s nice free software by the way so that’s the WBS dictionary a lot of people are not familiar with the WBS dictionary so I thought that would be helpful so scope statements done WBS is done you know the work packages at the lowest point of the WBS and then we have the WBS dictionary and the only thing that is left is that we need to discuss the planning packages all right planning package that is shown here as well as the control account so planning package and control accounts because these could show up on the exam and you need to know what they are what I’m going to do is I’m going to take you back to the previous slide so let’s say this is our WBS and let’s assume we were building a tower and we know at some point we have to do landscaping after the tower is completed so the outside of it and we thought that it would be helpful to put a small amount not a small amount let’s say we want to put $100,000 on the side so we put $100,000 here and for that $900,000 that we put on the side that’s going to be used for the landscaping forget that it says project management let’s say that’s the landscaping outside right is going to be called a control account it’s $100,000 control account that we are going to use for landscaping so I can tell you that the planning package here if I draw one is going to be for landscaping right so we’re going to use this for landscaping and L yes landscaping but I don’t really know what the landscaping is going to be alright it might be a lot of green stopped being planted around it could be just some brick walkways but you know it’s not very clear to us and it’s not a priority at the moment so we leave it as a planning package right so this one down at the bottom this here down here is the planning package whereas the one at the top is called the control account later on when we get to that point where the landscaping needs to be done that’s when we might you know tender this landscaping and see what we get from contractors and they will bid on different models they will give us different designs for how the landscaping could be done we try to match it as close as as close as possible to the hundred thousand dollar budget that we have and once we have an agreement we give the job to someone at that point that planning package can now be detailed into the work that needs to happen which is the work package so the planning package is a temporary holding package for work that needs to be done later on that is not yet clear we don’t really know what needs to be done on it but we put a budget for it that’s the control account right we put a small budget that’s the control account and we hold it so that later on the last the control account here we hold it on till later on once we know what needs to happen then that planning package which is this landscaping can then be detailed out to become the work package which then gets executed so hopefully that helps that I think this brings us to the very end of the create wbs on our next video I will see you to discuss validate scope and the topic after that which is control scope alright so see you on the next video stay safe bye-bye
