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?