Work Breakdown Structure

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The Importance of Work Breakdown Structure for GIS Project Management Deniz Kilic, Pinar Balci (d.l.kilic.@students.uu.nl, p.balci@students.uu.nl ) SUMMARY The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in the context of Geographic Information System (GIS) projects’ management by discussing its contributions to GIS project management. According to the undertaking studies, many organizations that have GIS project failures, do not realize the importance of WBS and consider creating a WBS as a waste of time or do not know how to perform it effectively (Somers, 1998). That leads many GIS projects implementation may easily cause time delays, run over its budget and not providing any measurable benefits.…show more content…
According to Halli (1993) the project success may be attributed specifically to use of a work break down structure. A poorly developed or nonexistent WBS can be led to failures and mistakes during the project (Brotherton, Fried, & Norman, 2008). What is Work Breakdown Structure? According to the Project Management Institute (2008) the work breakdown structure is a tool for accomplishing project objectives and to create the required deliverables: ‘The work breakdown structure (WBS) is a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables, with each descending level of the WBS representing an increasingly detailed definition of the project work. The WBS organizes and defines the total scope of the project, and represents the work specified in the current approved project scope statement. ’ The role of WBS in project management processes and the structure of WBS is well and clear described in this…show more content…
Therefore, WBS is a foundational building block to planning, executing, monitoring and controlling processes used to manage project scope, schedule and budget (Brotherton et al., 2008; Devi & Reddy, 2012). Why is WBS needed for project management? According to Brotherton et al. (2008) the WBS is an essential part of a project’s lifecycle and timeline. A WBS is a tool for organizing and building realistic schedules and cost estimates, and reporting, tracking and controlling when the project executes (U.S. Department of Energy, 2007). Hence, there are many reasons why WBS is needed for project management. The first reason is that WBS helps to define and organize the scope statement of the project more accurately and specifically (Devi & Reddy, 2012).The hierarchical structure of WBS breaks the project deliverables into more specific and measurable components, and shows the control points and project
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