Step 1. Identify products and activities
The project manager identifies all the
products, tasks and activities that need to be completed before the project can be finished. It may be necessary for
the project manager to liaise with the customer and the work team to fully understand the objectives of the project and
to break down each one into its constituent parts.
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Step 2. Create a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
The WBS aims to identify all of the projects
tasks that need to be completed and organises them in a hierarchal format, where smaller sub-tasks contribute to the
completion of a larger task at a higher level.
A typical WBS would consist of:
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Project
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Task
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Sub-Task
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Work Package
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Effort
Once a WBS is complete, project milestones
(key deliverables) can be identified and may be used for project tracking.
Tip: Many software packages such as MS
Project can structure WBS information and automatically generate useful graphical representations.
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Step 3. Estimate resources, effort and duration
For each task in the WBS the effort and
duration should be estimated and the overall resources required to complete the project calculated.
Typically a ‘bottom-up’ approach is used to
estimate the effort required for each task in the WBS in terms of person hours or person days.
In order to create a schedule of tasks and
estimate total project budget, it is necessary to estimate the resources (people, equipment, services, etc.) required
to complete each task.
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Step 4. Create a schedule
Tasks should be organised into a coherent sequence, including parallel activities, and mapped against time
and resources, to produce a schedule of tasks to be completed by individuals during the lifetime of the project. |
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