I have been studying project management and I have learned about a powerful project management tool called a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS for short). This is a tool for breaking a project up into smaller pieces to make it more manageable and to identify all the work required to complete the project.

I think a WBS is an important tool for project managers to use. It can also be a tool we can use in our personal lives.

How to use a WBS

A Work Breakdown Structure is a diagram you create to break down a large task or project into smaller pieces. You start by writing down the name of your project or task. Next, you identify the different tasks you must perform to complete your project.

After breaking up your project into separate tasks, you repeat this process for each task. You keep doing this until your project has been broken down into several levels of much smaller and more achievable tasks.

Depending on the project or task, you can have multiple levels of tasks as you break down individual tasks into smaller pieces. For example, lets take the task of cleaning your house. This is a large project that requires a lot of work.

To create a WBS for this project, start with breaking the work of cleaning your house into a set of tasks. The result could be a list like the following:

• Clean the living room
• Clean the upstairs bathroom
• Clean the main floor bathroom
• Clean the master bedroom
• Clean the guest bedroom

Now you have a set of smaller tasks that are more manageable than the large project of cleaning your house, but you are not done yet. You can repeat the process of breaking down large tasks into smaller pieces by breaking the task of cleaning each room into additional smaller tasks.

For example, the task of cleaning the living room could be broken down as follows:

• Vacuum the floor
• Dust the furniture
• Dust the drapes

You can repeat this process for each of the rooms in your house, identifying the individual tasks to clean each room. Once you have broken down your house cleaning project into these smaller tasks, you are ready to begin the actual work of cleaning your house.

Once you have completed your WBS, the next step is delegation and scheduling.

Delegation

Once you have created your Work Breakdown Structure, you will have several tasks to perform. You can delegate these tasks to other people to divide up the work between your team, or in the case of cleaning your house, between the members of your family.

The power of a WBS is that it gives you small chunks of work that are easier to do than the larger more overwhelming project or task that you started with. Smaller tasks are easier to delegate and to complete.

Scheduling Your Tasks

What if you don’t have a team or live alone? A WBS still has value even when you are flying solo.

For example, continuing with the example of cleaning your house, a WBS gives you tasks you can schedule. Instead of having to clean your entire house in a single day, you can schedule the individual tasks throughout the week.

For example, you could divide up the work of cleaning your house across the weekend, doing some tasks on Saturday and other tasks on Sunday.

Conclusion

A Work Breakdown Structure is an important tool in project management. It helps you break down large projects into more manageable and achievable pieces. It can also help you to identify all the work required to complete your project.

Creating a WBS makes large tasks seem less overwhelming. Breaking down your large projects and tasks can also allow you to delegate the work and to get the work done sooner than if you did everything yourself.

A Work Breakdown Structure is primarily a project management tool, but I recommend you also use it on your personal goals and projects as well. Even if you don’t have someone to delegate to, you can break up your large personal projects and tasks and spread them out over the week or the month to make them more manageable.