Project scope management is the part of project management that focuses on defining and controlling what work is or isn’t included in a project. Within that branch of project management, the project scope process goes through the act of creating a work breakdown structure. The work breakdown structure (WBS) is a deliverable-oriented grouping of the work involved in a project that defines its total scope. It represents 100% of what's needed to be done to complete the project with each element represented being a deliverable. When going through the breakdown structure, a project manager has the choice of several different approaches they can take when pursuing this objective. These approaches are: the analogy approach, the top-down approach, the bottom-up approach, and the mind-mapping approach.
Types:
Analogy Approach: The process of using similar project’s WBS as a starting point
Top-Down Approach: Starts with the largest items of the project and break them into subordinate items
Bottom-Up Approach: The team first identify as many specific tasks related to the project as possible
Mind-Mapping: A graphic technique that outlines concepts related to a central idea
In this blog we will be talking about the analogy approach, the benefits and potential pitfalls of this approach, give an example of how an analogy approach can be used within a company and how the agile method can be effective in project scope management.
While each approach has its benefits depending on the situation and the company initiating the process, in most people’s opinion, the analogy approach is the easiest to do. Analogy approach can easily be defined as using a similar project’s work breakdown structure as a starting point. It’s a reference point from another project group or company that a project manager can use to help form their project. For example, let’s say that you’re starting a WBS for your company and you know that the project that your team will be undertaking was done previously in a similar fashion by one of your organization’s suppliers. You could ask that supplier if they would allow you to have a copy of their WBS, so that you could get a sense of what the project might look like. Also you have the case of you working at a consulting firm where you deal with similar issues often. There’s a strong possibility that you have documentation with the basics frameworks of those issues set up already within your organization. The analogy approach allows you to use information that has already been proven useful to your advantage in order for you to set up your teams’ project. With that being said, there will most likely guidelines set up by your company that will tell you how they would want a specific WBS done. For instance, Microsoft Project 2016 comes with several templates based on past WBS projects that can help project managers in the WBS development. Whenever guidelines are given for a WBS it is very important to follow them.
Benefits and Issues of the Analogy Approach WBS
Pros
It’s the fastest way to complete a Work Breakdown Structure
It’s beneficial for brainstorming new projects and finding deliverable
Improves cross-project consistency
Improves budget and time estimates
Improves resource allocations
Less time used having to start a WBS from scratch
Teams can compare their ideas to similar projects (i.e. websites)
Potential Issues
Ensuring that previous WBS is similar and understood by the team
Ensuring the previous WBS is accurate and updated
Reviews the previous WBS critically and making sure it is appropriate for the new project
Agile and Project Scope Management
When looking at methodology would be more beneficial to use in scope management. It is important to 1) know what method your company prefers to use and 2) know which one would be more beneficial for your specific project. For instance with the agile method it would be more beneficial to use this method when you know that the scope of your project could change often due to it being a more adaptable method compared to the waterfall method. Agile also allows for your to assess changes such as scope creep while in the middle of the project allowing for replanning before heading into the next iteration
Examples of the Analogy Approach
Flight Website
Scenario: You're on the project management team for a smaller flight company who is trying to revamp their company website to be more user friendly. When it came to the work breakdown structure of the project scope management process of the development your team decided to use the agile approach. While doing some research you were able to get in touch with your organization’s parent company and were able to ask the project management department if you could get a copy of the WBS for the website. Once you received the WBS information you and your team went over the guidelines that your company placed in relation to the creating WBS plans. With that baseline set your team did some research comparing information with other company websites to determine what were the functional requirements for the website
Comparisons:
All the websites have their date selector on the left side
There’s a frequent flyer and customer login on each home page
The majority of the homepages have their navigation bar at the top of the page
There’s a page that has flight packages and/or special offers
There’s a travel support/ contact page on each home page
Functions to include:
Travel date selector
Member login
Packages/ Deals
Flight Calendar
Results: After all the research and meeting, you and your team decided on the four main things that needed to be focused on during this part of the project development process. The teams proceeds to plan the development of the project following the guidelines of the WBS plan that was drawn up and the project is expected to be completed on time
Conclusion
As you can see from the information above, the analogy approach to the work breakdown structure is the easiest and probably the most frequently used. Although this approach does have its issues the benefits seem to easily outweigh them and provides project managers with a great option to decide what work to do within the project. Being able to have a reference point based on something that was done previously can help to prevent many small errors that your team may come across as well as help to provide you with ideas to improve your project. Also being able to compare your ideas with other organizations and teams can help create better, more efficient and innovative project ideas, while relieving some of the mental stress that could come with having to make these decisions from nothing. Using this approach in my opinion is most often the best option. “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.”
Work Cited
Schwalbe, Kathy. Information Technology Project Management. Boston, MA: Course Technology, 2019. Print.