Work Breakdown Structure

Information

• In PLANTA project, work breakdown structure means a project plan in which tasks are structured hierarchically. Not to be confused with the project structure, which describes the division of a project into main and subprojects. This means that every project in PLANTA possesses its own work breakdown structure, regardless of whether it is a main or subproject.
• The parent tasks of a structured project plan are called summary tasks in PLANTA project.
• The work breakdown structure code (WBS code) marks single project tasks in accordance with their hierarchical structure.
• In PLANTA project, you can create a work breakdown structure in the Schedule and WBS modules.
  • The work breakdown structure is displayed graphically in the WBS module and in tabular form in the Schedule module. The handling when moving (structuring) the elements (tasks) is therefore different in both modules.

Create WBS in the Schedule module

Create work breakdown structure in the WBS module

• Open the WBS module by clicking on the tab of the same name in the Project panel.
• Create the required tasks. They will initially be positioned on one level here.
• Structure tasks by left-clicking on the left box margin and dragging the box to the required position.
  • When the boxes are moved, the specification in the node field, which visualizes the number of boxes per level, will be updated automatically.
• Click on the Generate WBS code button in the project header.
  • The WBS code is generated automatically for every task in the WBS code field in accordance with the structure. Thus, the WBS code is both an identifier for single elements in the schedule and an indicator of the hierarchical structure.

If you have created your project by copying the standard schedules, the tasks will already be structured. Of course, the structure can be changed.

Notes on Schedule and WBS

• After putting on tasks to another structure level, the changes are to be saved before the WBS code is refreshed (generated anew).
• If there are less than 10 tasks, the numeration of the codes is done by the 1, 2,... 9 schema, if there are more than 10 tasks, the numeration is done by the 01, 02,... 09, 10, ... schema.

Attention

• When working with structured schedules, PLANTA recommends that you use summary tasks as structuring elements only, i.e. you should not carry out effort or cost planning or enter durations on this level. This includes planning resources or reporting directly to the summary task. Instead, PLANTA recommends that you carry out the planning on the subtasks only.
  • Reason: Since the scheduling detects some parameters of the summary tasks from child tasks, there may be collisions between your own planned values and those detected by the date scheduling. As a result, there may be values on summary tasks that are incomprehensible at first sight.