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Title

The Requirements Breakdown Structure: A Practical Tool for Effective Project Management

Author

Robert K. Wysocki, Ph.D.

Price

$15.95

Pages

63

ISBN

1-933788-26-7

Executive Summary

Few would argue that to completely and clearly document requirements at the beginning of a project has never really happened. A few cowboys would claim to have done so and launched into project planning under that assumption. Later, to their dismay, they are deluged with scope change requests from the client.

“What happened? I thought we had all of this settled. You told us you were satisfied and that we had done an exemplary job of gathering and documenting your requirements.”

The problem is not with the process. The problem is that the world is not a static place. It never has been and never will be. So why should we expect our requirements document to stand still while we do this project? There must be better ways. And there are! In this white paper we are going to establish the Requirements Breakdown Structure (RBS) as the foundation of all great project management. We will show how the RBS can be used to help the project team decide which among the five major choices of project management strategies we should pick, the strengths and weaknesses of each relative to our project, and under what circumstances we should use each one. This strategy we choose then becomes the infrastructure on which the project plan is built. The status of the RBS relative to its completeness becomes the measure of progress towards the solution.