What is a Work Breakdown Structure - WBS? PM in Under 5

The Work Breakdown Structure (or WBS) is one of the most basic and most important of your Project Management toolset.

So, what is a Work Breakdown Structure?

In the video, it says we have a video about Network Charts.
In fact, we have two videos; one for each of the main conventions:
I hope you enjoy them!

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And do take a look at our article, 'The Secret to creating a WBS with a Mind Map'

Please:
Give us a like

[danielsullivan]

This is this guy is like the blue's clues of project management.

[zxehybq]

5 years later and this video is still relevant. Thank you so much Mike! :D

[citedamas]

Great Presentation, Great value in just 6.44 mins, Sir you've just put to shame many lecturers.

[robertgilaard]

The best explanation so far in my humble opinion

[strahinjacokic]

I love the <rant></rant> reference!

[flystraight]

Automatically loved this guy.
I like the little humour added to the knowledge.
Thx very much for your videos.

[ManjotSingh-jxjq]

The way you explained WBS is very effective.

[AlergicToSnow]

I’ve tried both the UK and US approach. I agree the UK version works a bit better if your responsibility as a PM is only to deliver the solution. I find the US approach is a far better method if your responsibility is to your stakeholders and project sponsor who are only interested in what, when and how much, and not how. I report on the progress of the deliverables. My stakeholders trust me to figure out the how. They are only really interested in when they will get their solution and how much it will end up costing. They are only mildly interested in what it takes to deliver those results and mostly only to understand why it costs what it does.

[LenisMercy]

Mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive

[danielsosinski]

Your delivery makes it so easy to understand, thank you

[AnjumEmanuel]

Great video Mike, thanks for all the work you do for the project management community, keep it up 👏😊

[leighton]

Thumbs up - Wanted to understand WBS better and this explains it well. Thank you.

[Onlinepmcourses]

Two Important Additions:

2. Viewer, David Cian commented (see below) to remind me of something I had forgotten (thank you, David).
I like to give proper credit for ideas, models, and frameworks.
David reminded me of something I must have forgotten over 20 years ago. Of two things, actually:
2. MECE actually stands for (p82 in my copy) Mutually Exclusive (of each other) Collectively Exhaustive (in terms of the whole).

[mariusvanvuuren]

A great summary. I liked the callout for creating a workstream for Project Management as part of the project schedule. This is useful to also inform Project Manager's capacity.

[lesmathisen]

You are preaching to the choir Dr. Clayton. I've have been pushing the idea of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Product Breakdown Structure as separate deliverables in my organization for a while now with limited success. Continue to fight the good fight.

[frankturley]

Excellent overview of a WBS. Thanks Mike

[ankushpatil]

Systematic explanation for each topic.
It feels like my manager is taking Sunday classes for project management.. ♥

[petzipoyau]

This video has helped me so so so so much I'm also sending the link to my professor as well for other students who struggled like I did grasping the concepts. Some of the books just do a bad job of making it simple and applying real world mechanics to the ideas

[thomasflewellyn]

Thank you. I'm taking a PMI course by Andrew Ramdayal. He is awesome. But you filled in a gap in my learning on this subject and I appreciate you. Cheers!

[supriyo]

Very crisp and concise descriptions, I am enjoying all the videos I saw so far. Thank you! I would like to add, in your "rant" if you and mention the PMI way of doing the WBS, that will be nice.