Techniques to Manage Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

This blog recaps a section of our recent webinar, to watch the entire presentation, visit Techniques to Manage Work Breakdown Structures.

Streamline Your Program Management: Techniques to Manage Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

In aerospace and defense program management, success hinges on coordinating complex, interconnected projects while maintaining clear visibility across your entire program. When managing multiple systems and stakeholders, your work breakdown structure becomes the foundation that either strengthens or undermines your project’s success.

In this webinar, Cary Bryczek, Director of Aerospace & Defense Solutions at Jama Software, demonstrates how to incorporate MIL-STD-881F work breakdown structures into Jama Connect^® as part of your systems engineering processes.

Whether you’re managing space systems, information systems, or strategic missile programs, this webinar will show you how to streamline your program management with techniques to manage your WBS.

Key Takeaways:

MIL-STD-881F fundamentals: Understanding the Department of Defense Standard Practice and how it improves acquisition communication
Real-world implementation: See how MIL-STD-881F work breakdown structures can be incorporated into Jama Connect, including a live demonstration.
Cross-functional alignment: Strategies to coordinate teams and manage interdependencies across complex defense programs
Commodity-specific insights: How WBS elements apply to space systems, information systems, launch systems, and strategic missile systems
Communication enhancement: Best practices for developing uniform WBS processes that improve stakeholder alignment and regulatory compliance.

Webinar Preview, Click HERE to Watch The Entire Presentation

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

Cary Bryczek: So, here’s a quick look at what we will cover today, and in the end we’ll have a Q&A of course. So, we’ll talk about some strategies for a work breakdown structure construction, obviously we’ll talk about what WBS is used for, we’ll look at a WBS hierarchy, and the product breakdown structure, talk about the differences, we’ll see a live example in Jama Connect, and we’ll finish up with maybe some possible extensions that you might use in Jama Connect through integration. So, what is a work breakdown structure? I went out there and did some research. Project management institute talks about a work breakdown structure being, that it defines a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the objectives.

Really, when you see these kinds of definitions, the important parts are the deliverable-oriented and the work. So, it’s not like a task list, it’s what you’re doing to produce the product or the system that you’re building. The Defense Acquisition University defines a WBS as a product-oriented family tree of hardware, software, services, data, and facilities. So, the theme really is this product-oriented and a tree composition of the work breakdown structures. And it’s not only composed of the product pieces itself, but the services and the data and the facilities and the results of the systems engineering efforts. So, it’s the effort plus the product itself. Who uses work breakdown structures? Really, they’re required or strongly recommended in various industries and government sectors, especially where project management, cost control, and systems engineering are critical.

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Bryczek: With aerospace and defense contractors, they are required to submit a WBS as part of their proposals and their contracts. They are used for cost estimation, scheduling, and risk management. Construction and engineering firms, WBS is essential for managing large infrastructure projects. It’s often required by clients or even regulatory bodies. IT software development, project management professionals, so there’s a lot of people that are project management professionals that are using a WBS as part of their repertoire to deliver good projects, or even consult with organizations to deliver good project management practices.

WBS has lots of standards and guidelines to assist practitioners. So, in many cases, following the specific guidance within the documents is mandatory. Here I’ve just highlighted some notable guidelines, MIL-STD-881 is required for all ACAT programs, NASA also has a very prescriptive method to implement WBS, PMI has published books, and has lots of references available online for practitioners. The European, I didn’t capture this one, but the European Cooperation for Space Standardization, the ECSS group, in Europe, they provide detailed guidance as well on work breakdown structures through their management standards. And they reference principles from ISO 9000, and it really aligns their standards and their product assurance through a harmonized way to do work breakdown structures.

So, what’s the purpose of a WBS? It’s an assistant mechanism for any stakeholder really, in the development of a clear vision of the end products, or the outcomes to be produced by the product. So, it’s a framework for all of the deliverables throughout the life cycle. So, the WBS extends the product breakdown structure because it’s capturing all of the work that’s necessary for the project by adding in the non-product work. So, if you’re constructing a bicycle, well, I have to draft the CAD model, I have to review it, I have to do a lot of these things that are not necessarily part of the bicycle, a component, but these are part of the engineering activities. So, a work breakdown structure is not a to-do list, it’s not a schedule or an estimate, and it’s not really a tool to even make your life harder.

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Bryczek: So, it supports very large projects so that you can eliminate risk, and also it will help you with the scope creep as well. So, you don’t want to do more work than what’s on that WBS, so it really helps people understand the scope of the kinds of activities that they’re producing because it is deliverable based. So, the benefits, it helps prevent work from slipping through the cracks, it helps people understand where the pieces fit into the overall project management plan. So, if you’re a software developer and you’re writing this one piece of the software requirement spec, or the software system spec, now you know why your deliverable is due, when, and how it fits in with the overall structure. It facilitates that communication and cooperation across the whole team, it also helps you prevent changes, that WBS is kind of like, this is the guide path for everything that you do. And it helps get team buy-in and helps build the team. it helps people get their mind around the project itself.

So, what do we have to do to create the statement of the work breakdown structure? So, a work breakdown structure is, first, you go through this process of identifying the system or the project end item to be structured. So, you’re trying to understand that scope, what is it that we’re building? And then, you take that product and you successively subdivide it into increasingly detailed and manageable subsidiary work products or elements. So, you’re taking this product, this bicycle, and you’re decomposing it. I have a frame, I have the front wheel, I have the rear wheel, I have the brakes… And then, what you’re going to do is take that product breakdown structure that’s been subdivided, and now use that to determine what the work breakdown structure is. So, you’re going to focus on these outcomes and identify these deliverables. So, the focus is supposed to be on the outcomes, not the activities needed to reach them.

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Techniques to Manage Work Breakdown Structures

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Cary Bryczek

Cary is the Director of Solutions Architecture for Aerospace and Defense with a focus on the specialized business and technical needs unique to this market. She helps lead the company in Systems Engineering and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) domain. She has over 25 years of experience leading Systems Engineering in the A&D industry with roles at the US Government, Lockheed Martin, PTC, and Jama Software. She is a member of the International Counsel on Systems Engineering and member of the Women in Aerospace organization. Outside of work she enjoys playing jazz guitar and gardening around her farm which sometimes requires the operation of tractors and UAVs.

[Webinar Recap] Streamline Your Program Management: Techniques to Manage Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)