Work Breakdown Structure

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A WBS is a tool used to define and group a project's discrete work elements in a way that helps organize and define the total work-scope of the project.

The WBS uses a tree structure that illustrates the subdivision of effort required to achieve an objective; for example, a program, project or contract. The WBS is developed by starting with the end-objective and successively subdividing this objective into manageable components, in terms of size, duration and responsibility (e.g., systems, subsystems, components, tasks, subtasks and work packages). It also includes all the necessary steps to achieve the objective.

Conversely, the WBS permits summing up subordinate costs for works, materials, etc., into their successively higher-level “parent” tasks (branches).

When used with QDV7, every task (leaf) of the WBS contains the primary products of the project, providing for each one the cost, in terms of materials, workforce and subcontracting, as well as possibly for technical details such as weight, surface area, width, etc. A well-designed WBS makes it easy to assign each project activity to one, and only one, terminal element of the WBS.

Up to 8 levels are allowed. Task maximum count: 4095.

All the costs and prices are expressed in the estimate currency selected in the Currencies Sheet.

Terminology: IT versus Costing

Level	IT: network of nodes	Costing: set of tasks to carry out	Note
–	Tree	WBS
0	Root	Objective
1 thru 7	Branch	Package, Chapter, Sub chapter	Ends with a (sub) total row
1 thru 7	Branch	Set, Task, Sub task
2 thru 7	Leaf	Terminal element (unit task or sub-task)	Called Section of Minutes when broken down into Minutes