Work Breakdown

Use work breakdown structure as the project backbone

The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) centralizes the planning of tasks, timelines, and resources. Coordinating these three core areas is one of the essential challenges of project management. The widely adopted top-down planning method in task management suffers from a significant drawback: it demands detailed planning of all tasks simply to identify resource availability by specific deadlines. This makes any plan adjustments both time-consuming and complex. CONTACT Elements Work Breakdown solves this planning dilemma. Learn how to leverage the WBS as the backbone of your project – and how to achieve your goals with focus, using project templates, a shared view, and an incremental approach.

Benefits

Create work breakdown structures from best-practice project templates
Link project and product structure logically
Allow management, planning, and specialists to work with a shared view
Connect the work breakdown structure with results as well as resource and quality planning

Create work breakdown structure from templates

Many corporate projects share similar structures. Establish these as best-practice templates, and create new projects from modular elements. This way, your WBS is generated quickly, efficiently, and is easily customizable. Even within these templates, you can link tasks without fixed deadlines. These are only defined during the detailed planning of specific projects. Checklists, deliverables, and documents can also be integrated directly into the project template, establishing a solid foundation for planning and execution.

Link project and product structure logically

Traditional top-down planning of tasks and milestones demands early detailed specifications and complicates plan changes. CONTACT's Elements Work Breakdown solves this problem: Project management, planning teams, and specialists work collaboratively on work packages with clearly structured, transparent project views. Project managers embed status requirements and deliverables within the project structure and initially assign tasks to roles. Documents can be integrated as templates into contextual process information. During detailed planning, assignments are made to specialists who integrate completed deliverables into the project structure and traceably complete their tasks. This way, project management can focus on achieving objectives without having to track individual activities.

Connect the work breakdown structure with results as well as resource and quality planning

The project structure is foundational for workflow, schedule, and resource planning. Link tasks chronologically within the structure, visualize the process in a Gantt chart, and have project deadlines automatically calculated. These tasks also serve as the basis for your resource planning. Requirements can be predefined within templates. Responsibility for work packages can be organized incrementally: Project management assigns tasks in an early phase – for instance, within the template – to roles such as Development or QA Lead. These roles are later replaced by specific individuals who see all their assigned tasks in a personalized task list. This approach facilitates the successful planning of complex projects: from the Work Breakdown Structure, through work packages and deliverables, all the way to the final project goal.

Connect the work breakdown structure with results as well as resource and quality planning

The project structure is foundational for workflow, schedule, and resource planning. Link tasks chronologically within the structure, visualize the process in a Gantt chart, and have project deadlines automatically calculated. These tasks also serve as the basis for your resource planning. Requirements can be predefined within templates. Responsibility for work packages can be organized incrementally: Project management assigns tasks in an early phase – for instance, within the template – to roles such as Development or QA Lead. These roles are later replaced by specific individuals who see all their assigned tasks in a personalized task list. This approach facilitates the successful planning of complex projects: from the Work Breakdown Structure, through work packages and deliverables, all the way to the final project goal.