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Planning a Work Breakdown Structure

A work breakdown structure (WBS) divides each of your projects into distinct, manageable work elements in a way that balances management requirements with the need to collect an appropriate and effective level of project data.

In Vantagepoint, you can create up to three WBS levels for your project where WBS 1 is the project level, WBS 2 is the phase level, and WBS 3 is the task level. If you use different terms for your WBS levels, you can rename the WBS levels in Settings > Labels and Lists. A well-planned WBS is key to successful project proposals, planning, scheduling, budgeting, and reporting. In most cases, the WBS options in Vantagepoint enable you to duplicate the project structure you are already using.

Video: See related video

Your Vantagepoint work breakdown structure impacts the following:
  • The value that you receive from the data that you store
  • The ability to leverage past work to generate new business
  • The ability to improve job performance based on past experience
  • The ease and quality of knowledge sharing among groups in your company
  • The quality of service and level of reporting and billing customization that you can provide to your clients

For these reasons, even if you are satisfied with your existing WBS, it is important to understand the Vantagepoint WBS capabilities to make sure that you take full advantage of them.

Implementation Decisions

At the enterprise-wide level, specify the following during installation and setup:
  • Maximum number of work breakdown structure levels that can be used for any project (up to three)
  • Labels to use for each level
  • Format of the values for each level, including maximum lengths and number of delimiters

Considerations in Planning the Work Breakdown Structure

Keep these considerations in mind when planning your work breakdown structure:

  • Contract stipulations: Consider your enterprise's contractual obligations for billing and reporting when planning your work breakdown structure. For example, if your contracts require that you create separate invoices for expense and labor, or that you bill labor and expense at separate times (for example, monthly for labor, weekly for expense), then you must use project delimiters in your work breakdown structure to track a project's expense and labor separately.
  • Organization structure of your company : Think about your company structure and the way in which different departments or offices work together. For example, if your enterprise has multiple business units that must track costs and expenses individually, and that will collaborate on the same project, you could configure organization codes to represent each office, and then associate the appropriate work breakdown structure levels with the appropriate office for costing and revenue purposes.
  • Applications that you use : Your information needs may change depending on the Vantagepoint applications that you use.
  • Needs of various roles within your company : Different groups within your company, such as marketing, project management, and accounting and finance, have different needs for project information. You should consider the information each group needs when planning your work breakdown structure.
  • Internal and external reporting needs: Internal reporting needs include project reporting and budgeting data; marketing and other indirect cost data; information on employee utilization; and general ledger reporting data, enterprise-wide and by organization. External reporting needs include billing and progress reports for clients.

Related Management Structures

The project WBS is integrated with and supported by these other important management structures:
  • Organizational (or profit center) structure
  • Labor code structure for labor cost
  • Chart of accounts structure

Because the WBS is interlinked with these separate structures, you do not need to build support for organizational, labor cost, or accounting reporting into the WBS itself. You can create a simplified structure that is focused on project management, without sacrificing your ability to view project data from an organizational, labor cost, or accounting perspective.

Who Plans the Work Breakdown Structure?

The Vantagepoint work breakdown structure is an important tool for many people throughout your enterprise, from the marketing professional trying to win a new job, to the project manager planning a project, to the accounting professional making sure that the client is properly billed for the work done.

Because the needs of the accounting professional are often precise and dependent on the data collected and managed by the project manager, it is important that an accounting representative and a project management representative are involved when planning your enterprise-wide work breakdown structure. You may also want someone to provide a marketing perspective.

Transaction Entry and Work Breakdown Structure Levels

All transactions are recorded at the lowest level available for a given branch of the WBS. For example, for a WBS branch that uses the project, phase, and task levels, transactions are recorded at the task level.

Reporting and WBS Levels

You can run reports at any level of the WBS. For example, you can run a project report at the phase level (the second level) for a project with a three-level WBS.

Video

Title Description

Work Breakdown Structure Basics

Learn how to set up a work breakdown structure that reflects the project numbering system that you currently use.