What is a WBS?

In this article we will review what a WBS is and how it relates to your project.

WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure. This is a term in project management that relates to how the work of a project is broken down into smaller pieces that make a project more manageable and easier to track when monitoring scope, cost, and schedule.

Within your inscope project the WBS is broken down by parent and child scope elements as shown below.

Each scope element will have its own unique WBS indicator located on the left of your project screen in the WBS column. This WBS allows you to be able to quickly locate elements for review, client call out, or monitoring.

Parent elements will be whole numbers such as 1,2,3, etc.

Where as child elements will be represented by their parent elements number followed by a decimal place for the unique id of child element it represents, such as child elements of parent #2 would be 2.1,2.2,2.3, etc.

This is allows you to more easily track child elements and quickly reference what parent element they are related to.

Using a WBS as a reference is a great way to minimize confusion with scope elements with similar names or types and allow for easier tracking of scope, cost, and schedule.