Work Breakdown Structure Overview
A work breakdown structure (WBS) divides each of your projects into distinct, manageable work elements in a way that balances management needs with the need to collect an appropriate and effective level of project data.
A well-planned WBS is integral to successful project proposals, planning, scheduling, budgeting, and reporting.
Your Vision work breakdown structure impacts the following:
- The value that you receive from the data 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
Four Key Components
Four key components make up the Vision WBS. Together they provide a comprehensive tracking and reporting system for cost and revenue information. Before you begin to set up your firm's work breakdown structure, your firm must understand how each of the four components work together to provide a structure that gathers and reports information to meet your firm’s internal and external reporting needs.
The four components are:
- The organizational (or profit center) structure.
- The project structure.
- The labor code structure for labor cost.
- The chart of accounts structure for expenses.
Vision project plans can also have a WBS. Since plans can be converted to projects, it is important to understand how the planning WBS and the project WBS relate to each other.
In addition to the key components of the WBS, Vision includes other codes, such as client numbers, whose structure you must plan before you start to use Vision. Because Vision is an integrated system, you should consider your WBS structure when you structure other Vision numbers.
Implementation Decisions
At the firm-wide level, you specify the following during installation and setup:
- Maximum number of WBS levels that can be used for any
project (up to three)
When you install Vision, the default WBS has only one level: Project. Use the Key Formats utilities (Utilities > Key Formats) for phases, or phases and tasks, to activate one or both of those levels by specifying the lengths of the phase and task numbers.
- Labels to use for each level
- Format of the values for each level, including maximum lengths and number of delimiters
- The use of leading zeros to force the uniformity of project number length
Considerations in Planning the WBS
Keep these considerations in mind when planning your work breakdown structure (WBS):
- Contract stipulations — You must consider your firm's contractual obligations for billing and reporting when planning your WBS. For example, if the contract requires that you create separate invoices for expense and labor, or that you bill labor and expense at separate times (monthly for labor, weekly for expense), then you must use project delimiters in your WBS structure to track a project's expense and labor separately.
- Organization structure of your company — You must consider your company structure and the way different departments or offices work together. For example, if your firm 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 WBS levels with the appropriate office for costing and revenue purposes.
- Applications that you use — Your information needs may change depending on the Vision applications that you use.
- Needs of various roles within your company — Different groups within your company, such as marketing, project management and project planning, and accounting and finance, have different needs for project information. You must consider the information each group needs when planning your WBS.
- 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, firm-wide and by organization. External reporting needs include billing and progress reports for clients.
Who Plans the Work Breakdown Structure?
The Vision work breakdown structure (WBS) is an important tool for many people throughout your firm, from the marketing professional trying to win a new job, to the project manager planning a project, to the accounting professional making sure 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 firm-wide work breakdown structure. You may also want a marketing perspective represented.
Terminology
The Vision default term for work done by your firm is "project." You can use another term, such as case or job, to refer to a project. Use the Labels tab in Configuration > General > System Settings or the Info Center Designer to tailor this and other standard labels throughout Vision to meet your firm's needs.
Transaction Recording and WBS Levels
All transactions are recorded at the lowest level available for an individual WBS. For example, transactions are recorded at the task level for a project with three-levels of WBS (project, phase, and task).
Reporting and WBS Levels
You can run reports on any level of the WBS. For example, you can run a report at the phase level for a project with three levels of WBS.
Related Topics
- Accounting and the WBS
If your firm uses the Accounting or Time and Expense applications, a well-planned WBS can help ensure that proper pieces of the project, such as what portion of a project an employee worked on, and for how long, are tracked and measured. - Marketing and the WBS
Marketing professionals want to generate proposals that leverage data from past projects, such as project descriptions and the credentials of people who worked on the account or project. Your WBS should support these needs. - Planning and the WBS
When you create project plans, you create a planning WBS for each particular project plan. You do not need to use the firmwide WBS structure. - Diagram of Work Breakdown Structure Components
If you are new to Vision, it may be helpful to review the work breakdown structure before you continue. - Work Breakdown Structure Components
Multiple components make up a company's work breakdown structure. - Changing Default Number Formats
If you decide to change the default structure of certain numbers or codes in Vision, use the Key Format utility to make these changes. You can change the length of the code, specify a delimiter, and specify a delimiter position. - Comparing Uses for WBS Components
Before you decide whether or not your firm should use phases, phases and tasks, delimiters, labor codes, or some combination of the three, you must understand the differences between these components.