Learning Activity 11-15: Creating a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

GOALS

The goal of this activity is to provide experience in brainstorming activities and in breaking them down and organizing them into a logical work structure.

MATERIALS

• Handout 11-5: Project Case Study (already distributed)

• Post-It notes

• flipchart paper.

TIME

• for the two-day version of the workshop, 20 minutes; for the one-day version, approximately seven or eight minutes

INSTRUCTIONS

For the two-day version of the workshop, teams should be expected to break down the case study into at least 20 activities. Using Post-It notes and flipchart paper, they should arrange the activities either by project phase or by major component.

For the one-day class, ask the teams to create a WBS either for one of the project phases or for just one of the components , depending on their choice of approach.

Have each team explain its approach and quickly enumerate the activities making up their WBS.