Tools for WBS generation
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James BarnesMember for 19 years 1 month
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Good morning all,
I was wondering what tools you use for WBS generation on your projects. I have been considering trialling some mindmapping software as the visual style suits me and the hierachical structure seems to suit the discipline well. The tools I know of at the moment;
Excel; Of course we all use Excel for everything. Very flexible but I’m finding it a little overstructured for WBS layouts. I find it difficult to get an overview on the data.
Mindmapping Software; As I said above, seems to have a good hierachical style, while being visually scaleable and flexible. Freeware packages seem to suffer from lack of export options though.
Word; well, it’s Word ... what can’t it do?
Pen and paper; Keep it old school! The best probably for simple WBS structures that go deeper than they do wide. The structures I need to define will have rather too much width to deal with on one sheet of paper, beyond conceptualising levels
proprietary WBS generation software; I have no direct experience of these, but they look a bit like mindmapping packages written by accountants. If a package is going to be visual, it shouldn’t be so ugly. Probably has all the right output interfaces and organisational tools though. Perhaps I have overlooked the best ones?
The example I’m working on is the preparation effort for a maintenance shut down on an oil refinery and I need to maintain the top level structure handed down from the Head office bods. Anyone have any suggestions on software packages that they have used to write a complex WBS and the strengths / weaknesses of them?
I was wondering what tools you use for WBS generation on your projects. I have been considering trialling some mindmapping software as the visual style suits me and the hierachical structure seems to suit the discipline well. The tools I know of at the moment;
Excel; Of course we all use Excel for everything. Very flexible but I’m finding it a little overstructured for WBS layouts. I find it difficult to get an overview on the data.
Mindmapping Software; As I said above, seems to have a good hierachical style, while being visually scaleable and flexible. Freeware packages seem to suffer from lack of export options though.
Word; well, it’s Word ... what can’t it do?
Pen and paper; Keep it old school! The best probably for simple WBS structures that go deeper than they do wide. The structures I need to define will have rather too much width to deal with on one sheet of paper, beyond conceptualising levels
proprietary WBS generation software; I have no direct experience of these, but they look a bit like mindmapping packages written by accountants. If a package is going to be visual, it shouldn’t be so ugly. Probably has all the right output interfaces and organisational tools though. Perhaps I have overlooked the best ones?
The example I’m working on is the preparation effort for a maintenance shut down on an oil refinery and I need to maintain the top level structure handed down from the Head office bods. Anyone have any suggestions on software packages that they have used to write a complex WBS and the strengths / weaknesses of them?
8 replies
Oldest first- 0Andrew Dick ·James,
You made mention of the ’Old School’ pen & paper.
This combined with the planning and scheduling software WBS code fields or method of display is the method I use to good effect.
The pens, a different colour for each trade group of discipline on the project, or, different colour ’Post It Notes.
Then using the ’Affinity Diagram’ method, collate all of the results into the WBS structure that will be used.
Once I have all of the WBS elements defined I generally create a series of spreadsheet in the old faithful excel, to try and get the project team to create a WBS dictionary, (Not with much success though, as they see this as a ’Planning’ oversight function).
As for your top level structure which you have been handed, once you’ve finished the first or second round of the Affinity process you could put this structure up as the groupings for the Affinity groups created.
That’s what happens in my world
Andy - 0James Barnes ·Thanks for the advice...
Andrew,
I took a look at that affinity diagram thing... a quite interesting variation on traditional brainstorming techniques. I could certainly see using it to look at revamp projects within the overall turnaround and for high level scoping it could be very useful too. Might get a little messy for detailed decomposition though ... not sure I have a table big enough! I suppose the trick would be to form a high level one first then focus in on headers in turn.
Rav,
I thought P.Point was for dressing up lies for management consumption ;) really though, it’s a bit linear for WBS development isn’t it?
any other ideas / experience with specific WBS developement tools? - 0Paul Harris ·P2World is a software product designed to create a WBS or a PRINCE2 Product Breakdown Structure. A trial version may be downloaded from my web site.
The terminology may be switched for PRINCE2 to PMBOK compliant using Tools, Options, Models.
Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers & Consulting
www.eh.com.au
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