Work Breakdown Structure Components

Multiple components make up a company's work breakdown structure.

Organizations

Organizations are companies, divisions, departments, or business units, in one or more locations, practicing one or more disciplines, that incur expenses or generate revenue for a larger company.

You can have up to a five-level organization code structure. The total length is up to 14 characters, including any delimiters.

WBS Levels: Projects, Phases and Tasks

You can configure a project with up to three levels of detail, each with its own numbering structure and attributes. You can use delimiters to further divide each of these levels.

Each level can have its own attributes, including:

• Contract value
• Organization
• Project Manager and principal
• Start and end dates
• User-defined field values

The default names for the three levels are project, phase, and task, but you can change them to meet your company's business requirements. For example:

Level	Default Label	Alternate Ex. 1	Alternate Ex. 2
One	Project	Client	Matter
Two	Phase	Engagement	Task
Three	Task	Event	Deliverable

WBS level values are hierarchical, meaning the level two (phase) number is one delimiter greater than the level one (project) number, and the level three (task) number is one delimiter greater than the level two (phase) number. You must have a project number to have a phase number, and a phase number to have a task number.

For example:

Project Number	9300.
Phase Number	9300.01
Task Number	9300.01.01

Each level has a minimum and maximum number of characters:

Level	Default Label	Maximum Length	Minimum Length
One	Project	30 characters, including two delimiters	3 characters
Two	Phase	7 characters, including one delimiter	1 character (if you use this level)
Three	Task	7 characters, including one delimiter	1 character (if you use this level)

You do not have to create a balanced WBS tree of projects, phases, and tasks for any given project.

Projects

Projects are your firm's individual jobs.

Phases and Tasks

You can further divide, organize, and track a project's work using delimiters and/or using phases and tasks.

Phases and tasks allow you to break out the individual segments of a project. Phases and tasks are used typically for internal purposes.

Delimiters

A delimiter is a divider, such as a period or semi-colon, that separates one segment of a number from another. You can use delimiters in your project numbers, phase numbers, and/or task numbers.

• Project delimiters — These delimiters are used to create up to two additional levels of structure for your project.
• Phase or task delimiters — These delimiters are used to create a structure below the phase and task level to capture more detail.

Valid delimiters are:

• . (period)
• : (colon)
• - (dash)