Module 1: Research Strategy and Planning

4.5 Employing the WBS in your project planning and management

As noted earlier, there are three major ways in which the WBS can be enhanced. First, you can use the breakdown to clarify how much time needs to be allowed for the project activities. This is particularly valuable in identifying bottlenecks (like the ethics approval delays) that will need to be factored in to your planning. Second, you can clarify the various activities that are interdependent and which need to be carefully planned to allow for the delays that occur while you await the completion of prior tasks. Third, you can estimate how many people (and who) need to be involved in particular activities. This assists with your planning for casual support or research assistance. Each of these options is briefly illustrated in this sub-topic.

4.5.1 Using the WBS to assist with time management

The WBS construction allows for clear depictions of the time required to complete each task. ‘Gantt charts’ operate from these concepts, showing the duration of the tasks and when they occur, along with the times that need to be allowed for waiting. They can reflect all the activities to be done. Figure 3 illustrates a Gantt chart for a small portion of the WBS outlined in Figure 2.

4.5.2 Identifying interdependent tasks

The WBS will identify various tasks across a range of different activities. As the various elements are identified and listed, it will become apparent that many are interdependent. They will rely on other tasks or project outcomes to enable their progress or completion. The WBS highlights these interdependencies to the research teams and assists in communicating and coordinating their efforts. The research supervisor will also be more conscious of monitoring progress as these interlinking outcomes are clearly identified. If a critical element is likely to hold other activities up, additional resources might be allocated, or careful oversight might be necessary. This can be simply identified by listing the prerequisite tasks for the different elements. The visible depiction of dependencies also alerts the research team to those elements which can impact on the research group's effectiveness.

The WBS also allows the team to identify milestones and highlight those to the team. Milestones will vary according to the project, but they generally signal the achievement of a deliverable or major outcome. This is a time for celebration, evaluation, and reporting.

4.5.3 Clarifying responsibilities and workloads using the WBS

Once the research tasks are clarified, responsibility needs to be allocated for the task and its management. This is readily done using the WBS, as the table below illustrates. The research team can have a clear understanding of who is responsible and who else will be assisting in that task or process. The sample below offers you an illustration of how that might appear.

A particular advantage of WBS is the realistic costing of research personnel. In many research projects there is a tendency to underestimate the time a project or task will take. High peak demands at particular times in the project may also be under-considered. The WBS ensures that the project is considered in sufficient detail to guard against cost blowouts. This will enable careful management of the various resources and ensure that the project progresses in an efficient manner.