CIS 3250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Work Breakdown Structure

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Computing and Information Science
• Course: CIS 3250
• Professor: Stacey Scott

Document Summary

Key traits to a project: common goal/purpose, overhead costs. Why do proje(cid:272)ts (cid:862)fail(cid:863) or (cid:271)e(cid:272)o(cid:373)e (cid:862)(cid:272)halle(cid:374)ged(cid:863): gone overbudget, gone overtime, clients not satisfied. Typical projects start with a statement of work (sow) from the client: e. g. assignment / project instructions from your professor, e. g. formal contract from a client with an appendix called (cid:862) tate(cid:373)e(cid:374)t of work(cid:863) Sow is a narrative description of the work required for the project: details are typically negotiated before work begins, or sow is intentionally worded to be flexible. Internally, the sow is decomposed and organized into a work breakdown structure (wbs) Work breakdown structure (wbs) (cid:862)a deli(cid:448)era(cid:271)le-oriented grouping of project elements which organizes and defines the total s(cid:272)ope of the proje(cid:272)t(cid:863) Wbs helps scope the project by: determining the specific task that must be completed, choosing appropriate groupings for these activities. Identifying dependencies (and hence influencing ordering of tasks) Wbs helps with task assignments and scheduling.