Process centric work breakdown structure for easing Software Project management challenges: Business case analysis example

Abstract

Software Project management involves coordinating various aspects of a project in order to bring forth a positive result. There have been increasing challenges faced by Project Managers. The major challenges of project management include unrealistic deadlines, communication deficit, uncertain dependencies, failure to manage risk, not well-defined vision and goals, and invisibility of the final product. Meeting these challenges is very difficult and in many cases they are not met which eventually leads to the project failure. This situation is even worse where project dispersion is higher. Different studies reveal that an IT project is more likely to be unsuccessful than successful and 7 out of 10 IT projects fail in some respect. The process centric work breakdown structure (WBS) can play a very vital role in this regard to improve the situations significantly. Instead of hierarchical work breakdown structures as a tree, the process centric WBS takes whole software production process and splits whole process into smaller process units which take right set of inputs with the right set of standar, put right set of practices in place that eventualy produce the work products with expected standards and quality. This process centric work breakdown structure helps project Managers plan, estimate, monitor and control the project activities in greater accuracy and efficiency. In this article, Business Case Analysis phase of software projects has been taken as an example to demonstrate how process centric WBS can help for easing project management challenges.