Work Breakdown Structure in Project Management

In project management, work breakdown structure shows  the total scope of any project in diagram form. The Work Breakdown Structure is a tree structure, which shows a subdivision components in terms of size, duration, and responsibility for completing the project.

A Work Breakown Structure is used for breaking down a project into easily manageable components, or bites. The WBS provides the foundation for project planning, cost estimation, scheduling and resource allocation. This also allows for better estimating of cost, risk, and time because you can work from the smaller tasks back up to the level of the entire project.

The psychologists say our brains can normally comprehend around 7-9 items simultaneously. A project with thousands or even dozens of tasks goes way over our ability to grasp all at once. The solution is to divide and conquer. The WBS helps break thousands of tasks into chunks that we can understand and assimilate.

A $1,000,000,000  project can simply divide into a lot of $50,000 projects. All these $50,000-$50,000 projects will be WBS of one big project.