Organize the Work

Once activities are identified and documented, use the sticky notes to develop a hierarchy that shows the overall project in a logical structure. Major deliverables are commonly used for the first level below the project objective, but there are other possible organizing principles for project work:

  • By organizational function (marketing, R&D, manufacturing)

  • By discipline (carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical, painting)

  • By skill set (programming, accounting, marketing)

  • By geography (Stuttgart, Bangalore, Topeka, Taipei, Bogota)

  • By life-cycle phase (analyze, design, build, test, deploy)

When your WBS is organized in a tree structure, test each lower level for aggregation; ensure that the decomposition is equivalent to the work ...

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