Work breakdown structure tools

Work breakdown structure tools help you in depicting your project in a form of tree-like structure of interrelated elements, showing how the bigger work elements of the project are subdivided into smaller ones, and how project resources are allocated among them (work, time and budget). There are different software products that can be used as those tools, let’s consider some of them.

For example, Excel solution allows you to create multi-level spreadsheets of project phases, sub-phases and smaller elements like tasks, along with describing them with any number of attributes (columns). You can use standard spreadsheet settings, or find special template Excel addition. Managing WBS in MS Excel can be problematic due to issues of sharing Excel file between multiple users because of outdated technology used, so concurrent work of several users may cause errors. 

Another possible solution is using Word templates that can be downloaded from official and many unofficial web-sites. The main problem of template Word based solutions is inability to share them between several users concurrently. 

WBS MS Project is the most suitable for professional project managers. Creating a WBS in MS Project (WBS in MS Project) is a complex process that requires mastering this complicated product along with possessing appropriate project management qualification. Moreover this product is not nearly a free work breakdown structure tool or even a cheap one, but quite expensive and powerful program. That’s why composing work breakdown structure in Microsoft project that has very complicated and rich functionality is rather solution fitting requirements and budgets of big companies. In other words installing Microsoft Project system is very expensive and extremely excessive for small business.

Appropriate WBS enterprise-wide software is CentriQS that rises above many other WBS tools because of its easiness in installation, use and configuration, along with powerful collaborative features that allow this proven software to become more and more popular every day. It is not a free tool, but well-supported commercial software with trial version (30 days). This is not WBS tool open source solution, but ready client-server program that has shared Task Tree view for breaking down projects into hierarchies of project stages and tasks along with setting appropriate goals and outputs.