Effective Software Project Management

Other Approaches

The deployment of project work across geographic or organizational boundaries often suggests a WBS that parallels the organization. The project manager would not choose to use this approach but rather would use it out of necessity. In other words, the project manager had no other reasonable choice. These approaches offer no real advantages and tend to create more problems than they solve. I list them here only because they are additional approaches to building the WBS.

Geographic

If project work is geographically dispersed (the U.S. space program, for example), it may make sense from a coordination and communications perspective to partition the project work first by geographic location and then by some other approach at each location.

Departmental

On the other hand, departmental boundaries and politics being what they are, you may benefit from partitioning the project first by department and then within department by whatever approach makes sense. You benefit from this structure in that a major portion of the project work is under the organizational control of a single manager. Resource allocation is simplified this way. On the other hand, you add increased needs for communication and coordination across organizational boundaries in this approach.

Business Function

Finally, breaking the project down first by business process and then by some other method for each process may make sense. This has the same advantages and disadvantages as the departmental approach, ...