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12 votes

What to do with work not on the board?

TL;DR If the work matters, make it visible. If it doesn't, then treat it as muda and trim it as non-essential waste. You truly cannot have it both ways. "No Invisible Work, Ever!" CodeGnome'...
Todd A. Jacobs's user avatar
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12 votes
Accepted

What to do with work not on the board?

You can have a technical leader. You can have him do work off the charts. You can hide this work from others that don't "need to know". You can reduce that person's capacity to make planning more ...
nvoigt's user avatar
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5 votes
Accepted

WBS and agile approach

No, the WBS is not outdated, obsolete, deprecated, nor useless. The WBS is just a decomposition of WHAT you want to deliver. Building a WBS is not a one-shot task, but it is an interactive and ...
lfalcon's user avatar
  • 106
4 votes

Work Breakdown Structure - Help on identifiying deliverables, workpackages, etc.,

The first thing you need to do is remove those phases. They are straight from the PMBoK and are process groups, not phases. Trying to organize your work around that will yield nothing useful. In ...
David Espina's user avatar
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3 votes

How do I make a Gantt Chart where the project execution phase in the WBS is modified to implement Scrum?

Why are you attempting to produce a Gantt chart? I suggest that you read the Scrum Guide as this will provide a background into relevant Scrum artifacts. I expect the real reason is that the ...
Gary's user avatar
  • 61
3 votes

Work Breakdown Structure - Help on identifiying deliverables, workpackages, etc.,

Deliverables depend entirely on what you are building. You may find it best to start by stating the end result of the project then work backwards to find the interim deliverables. In the case of a ...
Iain9688's user avatar
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3 votes

How can a project manager create a plan without having specifications for the product defined at the beginning of the project?

How does a project manager manage planning without the specifications of the product at the beginning of the project With difficulties. Without knowing the specifications, you need to make ...
Bogdan's user avatar
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2 votes

How long should a work breakdown structure take to create?

The complexity of your product the project is creating dictates how the complexity of your WBS. Can you imagine what the WBS of a fighter aircraft looks like? However, one person would not be ...
David Espina's user avatar
  • 37.2k
2 votes

WBS and agile approach

I agree that the by strict definition of a WBS and its use lends itself to best be used in the waterfall methodologies...however like mentioned above some of its principles can be applied to managing ...
Mike Rowe's user avatar
2 votes

Should we break each smallest possible thing as a separate story?

I've some considerations about this question. I would try not to explicitly define in the Story the complete list of pages, one by one. Guess the pages are forty, instead of four. So my approach would ...
axel's user avatar
  • 389
2 votes
Accepted

What is ""action-oriented" WBS Item?

In the context of the rest of the section, it is saying that you should focus on the outcome desired, not the action needed to get there. For example, I might say that I should have infrastructure ...
Daniel's user avatar
  • 16.9k
2 votes

What to do with work not on the board?

From the Scrum Guide: Scrum is a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products. Everything in Scrum is centered around the development, delivery, and maintenance of ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
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2 votes

Backlog - Is this to (i) List outstanding 'user stories' or (ii) List outstanding 'tasks' or (iii) Can one be used for both purposes?

The Scrum Guide does not say that a backlog item has to be in the form of a user story. You may write the backlog item the way you like, or more precisely the way the team prefers it to be.
HarrySolsem's user avatar
2 votes

Backlog - Is this to (i) List outstanding 'user stories' or (ii) List outstanding 'tasks' or (iii) Can one be used for both purposes?

Backlog should contain all workable items According to Scrum Guide: Product Backlog is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team. So in my opinion the Backlog should contain all ...
Yaroslav Stavnichiy's user avatar
2 votes

Do you update your Work Breakdown Structure document once requirements have been defined?

I think there is a frame mismatch here, and I don't think the question can be authoritatively answered unless the frames are clarified. My discussion below is very explicitly not to challenge or ...
MCW's user avatar
  • 8,738
2 votes

How can a project manager create a plan without having specifications for the product defined at the beginning of the project?

There are a few options. One option would be rolling-wave planning. Perhaps some aspects of the project, such as the end date, are known and can be laid out. You may be able to plan enough work to ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
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1 vote

Project management: WBS dictionary

Who is evaluating your WBS Dictionary? If your WBS Dictionary is a deliverable that requires "acceptance" from the buyer, then you need to meet the requirements of that buyer. If you are only ...
David Espina's user avatar
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1 vote
Accepted

Combining WBS structure types; deliverable oriented and task oriented

A product oriented WBS would have products on top, broken down to its manageable sized components, and then activities below it. I define the work package to be the lowest level of product; the ...
David Espina's user avatar
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1 vote

What should I learn to become a software project manager?

I am a software project manager. When I started my journey in project management career, I took this course in course. It was really helpful to build the foundation for Sprints, dividing the work etc: ...
Jen.Zen's user avatar
  • 21
1 vote

WBS and PERT diagram

Your network diagram should show all leaf level WBS elements in the sequence as indicated in your work logic. So milestones would be included. You may not show the phase necessarily but if you ...
David Espina's user avatar
  • 37.2k
1 vote
Accepted

WBS and PERT diagram

Early versions of PERT diagrams had "PERT Events" that were all milestones or gates with task information embedded in the arrows. This has changed over the years but most PERT charts I have seen "in ...
SBWorks's user avatar
  • 2,569
1 vote
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Accurate estimation using work break down structure (WBS)

I would like to say that it is better to replace Work Breakdown Structure with a Requirements Breakdown Structure. So you can copy and past your Requirements Breakdown Structure from Requirements ...
Kostiantyn's user avatar
1 vote

Project Gantt Chart tasks breakdown question

There is no single right answer to this question - it depends entirely on the level of control that you need or want, and the level of reporting and monitoring that is required. As a rule of thumb, ...
Iain9688's user avatar
  • 6,868
1 vote

WBS and agile approach

You can split your customer business goals -> on Epics, Epics -> on User Stories or Features. And think about it as about WBS. But there are significantly important things to take into account: You ...
Anton Nepomnyaschih's user avatar
1 vote
Accepted

WBS and Project Planning

Even Agile can have some initial planning and artifacts produced. I described it here. So, it's totally ok, if your roadmap starts with "Onboarding and initial backlog creation" phase/sprint/milestone....
Anton Nepomnyaschih's user avatar
1 vote

WBS Common Work/Deliverable

Either works. "A" looks more logical and would likely be easier for other stakeholders to consume but "B" is fine, too. In "B", your dev task is acting like a hammock activity. What is most ...
David Espina's user avatar
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1 vote

WBS Common Work/Deliverable

There isn't a lot of information in your question, so I'm having to make some assumptions, but I think your second diagram is correct. If the Deliver Customer processing module depends on "develop ...
MCW's user avatar
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1 vote
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How to model extended period of 'searching for product' tasks in MS-Project?

Have a single task "Acquire 200 items" with a 2-month duration You can have a single task named "Acquire 200 items" with a 2-month duration. If, for example, at the end of one month you have acquired ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
1 vote

Should we break each smallest possible thing as a separate story?

Depends on the size of the story. If it is < 2 h per page than you should be pragmatic and merge them based on different criteria. If it is more than a day then separated stories makes sense.
Pragmatism's user avatar
1 vote

How do I make a Gantt Chart where the project execution phase in the WBS is modified to implement Scrum?

You are not going to like this; the answer is you cannot. A Scrum project can ally to a release plan but a Gantt chart is the antithesis of Scrum.
Venture2099's user avatar
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