ITPEC FE Subject A October 2024 Question 41
Which of the following is an appropriate purpose for using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in a software development project?
Explanation
Hierarchically detail activities into a manageable scale — a WBS is the scope-decomposition tool, not a scheduling or cost tool.
A Work Breakdown Structure splits the whole project scope top-down: deliverables, then sub-deliverables, then work packages. Decomposition stops when each work package is small enough to estimate, assign to one owner and track. Because the WBS covers 100% of the scope, work that is not in it is not in the project.
Answer (b)
Why not others:
- •(a) — ordering activities and finding the critical path is done with an arrow diagram (PERT/CPM), which takes the WBS activities as its input
- •(c) — trading duration against cost to minimise total cost is crashing (time-cost trade-off analysis)
- •(d) — horizontal bars showing start, end and current progress are a Gantt chart
Key rule: WBS answers what work there is, a network diagram answers in what order, a Gantt chart answers when — match the tool to the question it answers.
Project Management · AI-written, may contain errors
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