How to Explain a Work Breakdown Structure with a $20 Bill

As a habitual ignorer of my dad’s advice, I rarely carry cash on me. I fully expect to swipe my way through life. That being said, I wish I could count on only one hand the number of times I rolled up to a toll booth jammed between a line of cars thinking, “Well, haven’t I gotten myself into a pickle?”

And this leads me to my recent pickle...

My new pup sheds more than expected. So off to the car wash I went, assuming I could swipe my way to a fur-free interior. You guessed it – no card swiper in sight. The minimum cost to use the vacuum was $2. The machine accepted $1s, $5s, and quarters. Crisis averted, however, because after my last toll booth fail I stored a secret $20 bill in the car. I should’ve been home free! There had to be a change machine, right?

Change machine – yes. Functional change machine – no. Ok, someone would eventually arrive with change, right?

First person – no change. Five minutes later, second person – two 10’s. Third person about 5-10 minutes later – two 5’s for a 10.

Ok, I had a $5 bill. The machine accepted $5's but didn’t give change. I only needed $2 worth of vacuum time, so didn’t want to waste the extra $3. Back to the drawing board!

After another 10 minutes I received $5 worth of combined dollar bills, coins, and what appeared to be an arcade token. I waited nearly a half hour, but I was now set! I had my $2 and was about to vacuum my car to perfection!

In normal Stephanie fashion, my mind began wandering on how the situation could apply to other areas of life. Instantly I thought about work breakdown structures (WBS) and why investing time in creating them is a necessity to any project. (**A WBS is used to break down a deliverable into smaller tasks or components.)

How does not having correct change at a car wash relate to a WBS, you ask?

Let’s say we’re implementing a new diabetic management program. We’ll want to break the required work down so we can create a timeline and project plan. A common project component may be Build Education – and that’s meant to cover all of the work required for staff development to communicate the upcoming changes, develop the education materials, distribute them, and achieve competency sign-off.

That being said, can we realistically create an accurate timeline with just “Build Education”? I could give a time estimate, but most likely I’d be guessing and potentially committing my team to something we may not be able to accomplish on time. Build Education is essentially my $20 bill.

So how can we break that down? We may split it out into Communication Planning and Education Planning. This would be my two $10's.

We could further break down Education Planning into Create Job Aids and Create eLearn for competency sign-off. These are my two $5's.

Create eLearn could be further broken down into Assign available resource with access to/skills to use the recording program, Script out eLearn, Create test questions, Record eLearn, and Import completed eLearn into the organization’s learning management system (LMS). These are the $5 worth of combined dollar bills and coins! This is the level of detail we need to assign resources, calculate work effort requirements, and then create timelines.

Too often we try to time stamp the highest-level task – in this example, Build Education. But that’s like trying to vacuum my car by paying with a $20 bill. I’ll eventually get the job completed, but it’s going to take a lot more time and effort than if I had properly planned it out and arrived with two dollar bills in hand.

And that is how to explain the benefits of a WBS with a $20 bill!

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