November 2004

The workshop that was of special interest recently was a Work Breakdown Structure session held with a team of 15 people for a little more than half a day. We started at 11.00am, served a working lunch and finished at 5:00 p.m.

Once again, a wide range of people from the Systems organisation and the User community needed to agree on a plan of action and the sequence of events necessary to complete a major project that encompasses three distinct User groups.

The Project Manager needed the team to complete three levels of conversation:

• First, everyone had to agree on the Key Deliverables for the project.
• Then, for each Key Deliverable a set of Work Packages were defined.
• Finally, for each Work Package, the specific Tasks required to complete them were noted. The task definition was recorded on sticky pads and displayed on “wallpaper” so that everyone in the room could see the whole picture, literally!

Once all the tasks had been identified in breakout sessions, the team reviewed the entire effort, identified dependencies, noted priorities and estimated timeframes for completion.

The Project Manager agreed to take all of the output from the session and transpose the “wallpaper” into a formal document. To give you an idea of the scope, there were about 60 Work Packages identified. The team left both pleased with what had been accomplished and concerned about the workload that lies ahead.