Cost and Value Management

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Cost and value management

Discuss the importance of work packages to support the creation and use of the WBS

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) refers to a logical arrangement or organization of tasks of a project in hierarchical manner or structure. It outlines how work in the project will be managed and performed.

According to (RayR.VenkataramanandJeffreyK.Pinto, 2008) work breakdown structure creates an outlines that;

i. Project planning is facilitated

ii. A basis for determining resources required to accomplish project objectives

iii. A mechanism that will generate project status report and its schedule.

iv. Assignment of specific task to particular individuals responsible for each work elements of the project is facilitated.

v. A mechanism for following of the project`s cost, schedule and its performance.

vi. Does estimates of the cost of the project costs and budgeting of the project.

Since Work Breakdown Structure is hierarchical then it involves top breakdown of project activities down to specific deliverables of the project finally finishing with work packages. A work package refers to the lowest level of the structure with those tasks that are elemental hence representing activities of which budget and duration can be assigned.

Thus the amount of time, cost and effort used is high, this will depict that the number of available work packages is high and vice versa. Work packages represents task that takes short duration with a discrete start of a project and its end point.

Therefore the main aim of the work packages in creation of the work breakdown structure is that work packages serve as a control point method used in reporting and monitoring performance which checks whether the accomplished task of the project was done to the agreed terms and in terms of time and budget. Hence it provides the project manager with an easy task in assigning...