Work Breakdown Structure Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Work Breakdown Structure - Assignment Example The time frame for completing all activities at the terminal ends must be within the confines of one reporting period. If the activity may spill over to the next period, then it should be further subdivided. It is possible to contract out the terminal elements of work as single units of activities. For instance, all the activities in the above WBS can be contracted to specific individuals or groups. The terminal elements should represent work activities that realistically are not possible to break further (Miller 98). The Tree Structure Format was employed in developing the work breakdown structure. This is the commonly used format in presenting the WBS. The major advantage over other methods is that it is easy to understand just by taking a quick glance (Miller 109). Users can quickly be able to view the flow of work and what they are expected to do. The downside is that it may be difficult to create compared to others such as the Tabular Format. In project management, certain activities or whole project may spiral out of control and take longer than usual to complete. This may occur due to lack of proper planning of the scope of the project ahead of its implementation. This is referred to as the scope creep. IT projects are highly susceptible to scope creep. For example, FoxMeyer Drug, a large pharmaceutical company experienced scope creep on trying to install a multimillion IT system that would manage all critical operations. The scope of the project experienced a continuous growth until the costs became prohibitive (Schwalbe 209). The IT system also experienced billing errors. The cause of scope creep in this case was the lack of a clearly defined scope of work. There were no elaborate work limits during the initial stages of the project. Product testing could also have helped eliminate failures in the new system which resulted to errors (Schwalbe 210). Northrop Grumman, a manufacturing company experienced scope creep during implementation