In this week’s lecture, we learned about the term Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which a hierarchical breakdown of tasks performed for the project.
I have not yet had the opportunity to work in industry, but I did take part in many projects at NJIT. One of the projects was my capstone project, AudiQ. Unknowingly, we applied the broke down the project into categories, like the mountain bike example. My team and I broke the project into four parts: internal database, external database, GUI of the game, and sound production. Within each component, it was broken down into further categories. For example, GUI of the game was broken down into Speech-In-Noise section, Pitch Discrimination section, and the sound localization sections.
Find a medical device or project you worked on and share how you would break down or broken the project into tasks. Would you break down the project into categories, phases, by department or all? Is one hierarchal breakdown better than the other or do you need a combination of all types of breakdown?
Developing a new product in the medical device industry is a long, complex process due to the regulations of regulatory bodies such as the FDA. Because of this, there is a ton of work and a lot of deliverables that need to be completed in order to finish the project. Using a WBS is a great way to make sure all of the devlierables are completed in an order that makes sense, and also to ensure each individual on the project knows what their responsibilities are. The new product development process is generally broken down by phases such as the planning phase, design phase, validate phase, and finalize phase (or something similar). In each of these phases, there are specific milestones that need to be hit to keep the project on track, and these deliverables are assigned to each member of the project team.
From my experience, at my company the WBS is integrated into the project's Gantt Chart. The highest level of the Gantt Chart will consist of the product development phases (Planning, Design and Development, etc.), which are each broken down into more specific deliverables which are necessary in order to complete the phase. By breaking down a broad project phase as far as possible into more specific tasks, it becomes easier to estimate the duration of the project. For example, I worked on a project that required creating around 300 component specifications. Listing out each and every component in the WBS would be cumbersome and difficult to manage, so we organized the components into categories (connectors, tubing, packaging, etc.). The completion of all the specifications within a category was considered 1 task. Then those tasks were each broken down further into 4 sub-tasks - 1. writing up the draft, 2. peer review, 3. submitting the specs into our document control system, and 4. time needed for all the approvers to sign off on the new spec. Determining the time it would take to complete the entirety of the design and development phase, or even just to complete 1 component category, would have been difficult, but we could realistically predict how long each of the 4 sub-tasks will take and add them up within the hierarchal organization of the WBS.
One of the most powerful tools for this exercise is the work breakdown structure (WBS) which is a hierarchical decomposition of the scope of work.We want to be sure the WBS includes all the product and project work, including the project management work.Work breakdown structure by the name implies breaking work down into parts but it doesn’t actually involve breaking down work; rather breaking down deliverables.A good project plan provides the following:A road-map for the team ,Project timescale ,The requirements ,Validation of the estimated cost ,Identifying any obstacles ,Sign of expected problems
Project work breakdown structures are often used by project managers and teams to identify potential risks in a given project. As the project is divided into branches, if there is any branch that is not defined up to the mark, it represents a scope definition risk. Such risks should be reviewed as the project executes.
WBS is a good practice for managing a company's workforce. It is basically taking a task, breaking it down into smaller tasks and then assigning these tasks to workers. My capstone was building a lower arm prosthetic. I was in charge of electronics, another member was in charge of CAD, and another member was in charge of making a fake skin-like covering. By splitting up these jobs, each person could become a "master" in each subject matter. Especially since we each had minimal experience with each of these duties/functions it would have either been impossible or yielded a much worse final product if we had all shared these responsibilities because no one would have been held accountable for any deliverable and we wouldn't have been really becoming great at any of these things but rather just been scratching the surface of instrumentation, CAD, and fake-skin casting. We would have just been "jacks of all trades", and therefore masters of nothing.
A project I was involved in while working in a lab on campus was divided into three separate categories to construct a work breakdown structure. The goal of this project was to develop a wireless motion capture system using inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors to track angular rotations of a user’s lower extremity while walking to move an avatar in real-time on a user interface. Therefore, the project was divided into three categories, which consisted of programming the microcontroller, software development for the user interface, and assembly of the electrical components and casings. This categorization was beneficial in distinguishing the tasks required to complete each category and served as a beneficial reference to develop a network diagram of the tasks listed. Since this was a research project for academia, the categorization was effective in determining the workload required to complete each distinct component of the project. On the contrary, if a similar project were to be conducted in industry, then a breakdown by phases or departments would be more suitable.
