Module 5 of 12 · Part A · Planning Process

Break Down the Work

A contract delivers scope in paragraphs of legal prose, and a project manager cannot schedule that prose, staff it, or price it until those paragraphs become named tasks. That translation produces the Work Breakdown Structure, the foundation of every plan.

Illustrated module guide · the complete walkthrough · companion to the Quick Reference
Where this fitsBehavior Establish ClarityOutcome 1 · Defined Scope & Aligned CommitmentsLifecycle Initiation & Planning
Recall · before you begin

In Module 4 you owned the project, you discovered what success means to this client, and you won the work. Karen Whitfield named three targets: dispatch never goes dark, she is never surprised in front of City Council, and Grace delivers the $1.4M fee at 20 percent profit. The fee is set, and $280,000 of it belongs to Design Development, so planning is where you decide how those hours get spent. Before you can plan, price, or protect a single hour of effort, what has to exist first?

Whatever you named, test it against the three targets above, because not one of them can be planned against until the work exists as work. The answer is the work, broken down. Effort cannot be estimated, assigned, or tracked until the scope is decomposed into tasks, the Work Breakdown Structure.
1

The problem

From contract paragraphs to assignable work

Finance established that a project can run on budget and still lose money once effort outruns earned value. A project manager cannot manage effort that was never planned, cannot plan work that was never named, and so planning starts with naming the work.

When the contract is signed, the scope lives in paragraphs of legal prose: “The Architect shall prepare Design Development Documents to fix and describe the size and character of the Project…” That sentence is a promise, and a promise cannot be assigned to a person, estimated in hours, or priced against a fee. The first act of planning is to translate contract language into work the team can actually run.

That translation answers planning’s first three questions, in order, and those three questions are exactly this module:

  1. 1
    What is the work? Decompose the scope into a Work Breakdown Structure: phases, deliverables, work packages, tasks.
  2. 2
    Which roles should do it? Soft-resource each task to the lowest level that can do it competently.
  3. 3
    How much does it cost? Budget the work: estimate hours per role, price it, roll it up against the fee.

Those three questions are the first four moves of a plan that has seven. Part A carries Steps 1 through 4, and Part B carries Steps 5 through 7.

The seven steps of the plan

  1. 1
    Set the scope boundary. What is in this phase, and what is not?
  2. 2
    Break down the work. What are the pieces?
  3. 3
    Soft resource the work. What kind of person does each piece?
  4. 4
    Build the budget. What does the plan cost, and what margin survives?
  5. 5
    Sequence and schedule. When does each piece happen?
  6. 6
    Hard resource the plan. Which named people, in which weeks?
  7. 7
    Draw the Earned Value Plan. How does the fee get earned?

Seven moves. Five artifacts. One plan. Steps 1 and 2 make the Work Breakdown Structure, Steps 3 and 4 make the budget, Step 5 makes the schedule, and Steps 6 and 7 make the Earned Value Plan and the S-curve.

A breakdown done right gives everything downstream, the schedule, the staffing, and the fee itself, something solid to stand on.

Next part

Part A answers What, Which role, and How much. Part B takes the breakdown built here and answers the last two questions, When (the schedule) and Who (staffing), using Logic-Based Planning.

?Pause & predict.

A PM reads the DD scope clause, agrees it is clear, and tells the team “let us get going on DD.” What did they skip, and what breaks three weeks later?

Whatever you named as the thing that breaks, you named a symptom of one cause. Most project managers say the same three things: nobody knows what is done, nobody owns anything, and the hours are gone. All three are the same failure. The breakdown never happened. “Do DD” cannot be named as work, handed to one role, estimated in hours, or checked off, so in week three there is nothing to check.
Planning Studio · Your lab for this module

Module 5 ends at a committed plan. Planning Studio 1 puts you on a live phase: Design Development at Oakhaven, $280,000 of Grace fee, a real scope, and a real roster. You will draw the scope boundary, build the WBS, and staff the budget, and everything you commit carries into Part B, where the same plan becomes a schedule, an Earned Value Plan, and the S-curve. One plan, five artifacts, built by you. Open Planning Studio 1 →

2

Steps 1 and 2 · What is the work?

The WBS hierarchy

What are the four levels, from billing phase to assignable task?

A Work Breakdown Structure is a hierarchy. A project manager decomposes the project in four levels, each level more concrete than the last, until the work reaches tasks small enough to hand to one person and to check off.

1

Major Project Phase

A billing phase of the contract.e.g. Schematic Design · Design Development · Construction Documents

↓
2

Project Deliverable

A physical thing the phase produces.e.g. Floor Plans · Building Elevations · Reflected Ceiling Plans · Roof Plan · Outline Specifications

↓
3

Work Package

A major component of a deliverable.e.g. Partition & room layout · Egress & code overlay · MEP coordination of the floor plan

↓
4

Task

An element assigned to a resource to complete.e.g. Draft partition types · Run egress capacity calc · Tag wall ratings · Coordinate column grid

The test for the bottom level is strict: a real task is one a project manager can name, hand to one role, estimate in hours, and know when it is done. “Floor plans” is a deliverable rather than a task, and “Draft dispatch-floor partition types and tag wall ratings” passes all four tests.

3

Steps 1 and 2 · worked example

Scope → WBS

How does a real Design Development scope decompose?

Consider a worked example, one real Design Development scope on the Oakhaven Public Safety Campus. The DD agreement contains a handful of scope statements, and a project manager takes each one and pulls it apart, level by level, until the decomposition reaches assignable tasks. Click a contractual scope statement to watch it decompose.

Selected scope: pick one below.
In the workbook

2026 Project Budgeting Spreadsheet: the phase tabs (SD, DD, CD…) are level 1, and the rows added inside each tab are the deliverables, work packages, and tasks. A clean WBS is what makes the spreadsheet a working budget.

?Pause & predict.

Two PMs decompose the same DD scope. One stops at “Floor Plans, 200 hours.” The other breaks Floor Plans into six work packages with tasks. Whose budget will leadership trust, and whose project can be tracked in week three?

You answered that one immediately, and the speed is the finding. Every project manager knows which of the two they would trust, which means the standard was never the problem. “Floor Plans, 200 hrs” is a guess nobody can check, and six work packages with named tasks is an estimate you can defend and a project you can measure, task by task, as it runs. The gap is not knowing. It is doing it on Monday when the fee is signed and the team wants to start.
Planning Studio · Step 1 · Set the scope boundary

You just watched the DD scope decompose. Now do it under pressure: the Studio deals you 19 candidate work packages for Oakhaven DD, of which 14 belong and 5 carry the scope of other phases (permit-set detailing, program re-validation, massing studies, bid addenda, submittal review). Every wrong “in” spends part of the $280,000 fee. Get the boundary clean and the Studio hands you the full structure, the same 9 deliverables, 14 work packages, and 40 tasks in the project’s filed WBS. Work Step 1 →

4

Step 3 · Which roles?

Soft-resource it

How low can a task be assigned and still be done right?

With tasks in hand, a project manager decides which role each one belongs to, a role, not yet a named person. That is soft-resourcing. The rule is precise: the work shall go to the lowest skill level that can complete it competently and responsibly, and therefore at the lowest cost.

“Lowest” means the lowest competent level rather than the cheapest available body. A Principal redlining partition types burns margin for no added value, and a Design Intern sealing a code plan is malpractice rather than economy. The right level is the floor at which the work is still done right. A task placed below that floor fails on quality, and a task placed above it leaks margin.

Consider one DD task, draft the dispatch-floor plans & partition types, estimated at 40 hours. Soft-resource it to different roles and watch the cost:

Role rate
Task cost
vs. a Principal
Planning Studio · The roster is the rate mix

Oakhaven’s DD roster is eight roles, from the Principal in Charge at $310/hr to Design Professionals at $115. In the Studio the principle of this section appears in dollars: the same task assigned one level up can nearly triple its cost. The Studio watches your mix. Zero QC Peer Reviewer hours means the 3.9 peer review never happens. Project Manager effort under ~8% means the phase carries no management effort. Principal time over ~10% of cost raises a question about who should hold the work.

?Pause & predict.

$224,000 buys every hour on this phase. Eight roles are available, from the Principal in Charge down to the Design Professionals. Before you read the worked example: which role takes the largest share of the hours, and which role is most likely to end up with zero?

Whatever pair you named, hold it against the figure in the next section rather than against instinct. Most project managers name a production role for the largest share, and the worked package agrees: the Architect and the Design Professional together carry 76 of its 90 hours. The role most likely to end up at zero is the QC Peer Reviewer, because review hours are the easiest hours to promise and the first hours to spend somewhere else.
5

Step 4 · How much?

Budget it

How does a task become a cost?

Budgeting a task is a short, repeatable chain that runs from the task to its cost. The task and the role are already established, so the next step is to estimate the hours, price them at the role rate, and arrive at the cost of the work. Repeat the chain for every task, roll the tasks up to a work package, the packages up to a deliverable, and the deliverables up to the phase, then hold the total against the fee.

Task→Role→Est. hours→× rate = cost→Roll up vs. fee
Oakhaven DD · “Dispatch floor plans” work package Principal · select approach & QA the package4 hrs × $310$1,240 Project Manager · direct the work, coordinate MEP10 hrs × $150$1,500 Architect · develop the plans & partition types40 hrs × $155$6,200 Design Professional · draft, tag, and dimension36 hrs × $115$4,140 Work-package cost$13,080 Blended across four roles, not four Principals. Each task sits at its competent floor, so the margin is built in.
This figure makes the “Task → Role → hours → cost” chain concrete for one work package. Repeated for every work package and summed to the phase, it shows the margin on the work before a line is drawn.
Do it now

The module’s Quick Reference is a live Budget Builder, seeded with this Oakhaven phase and priced on the 2026 Grace rate card. Change a role or move hours and watch the margin move.

Planning Studio · Step 4 · Build the budget

The chain you just read runs live in Step 4: $280,000 fee, 20% target profit, so $224,000 is all the labor you may buy. Enter hours per role and the dashboard prices every keystroke: cost, margin, and team loading. The floor is firm, and the Studio will not let you commit below 15% margin, because a phase that starts with the margin already spent has no room left to absorb anything. If the starting point is unclear, “Suggest a starting mix” seeds a defensible distribution built from PSMJ’s 10% project-management rule, 2 to 5% quality effort from cost-of-quality research, and AIA/Deltek staffing ratios, then compare your final answer against the plan Grace filed in BST. Work Step 4 →

6

The close

The foundation everything stands on

Three questions, answered in order, turn contract language into a plan: What is the work (the WBS), which roles do it (soft-resource), and how much it costs (the budget). Without the breakdown there is nothing to schedule, nothing to staff, and nothing to defend.

A project manager cannot manage what has never been broken down.

With the work broken down, soft-resourced, and budgeted, the team finally holds the raw material for the rest of planning. Part B picks it up from here, sequencing the tasks into a schedule and resourcing the plan onto real people, using Logic-Based Planning for design.

Apply on your project

Take one active project’s current phase. Pull one contractual scope clause and decompose it on paper: phase → deliverable → work package → three tasks you could hand to someone tomorrow. If a “task” fails the four-part test, break it down further.

Challenge · from memory

?Challenge · from memory.

From memory: name the four levels of a WBS, and the four-part test for a real task.

Levels: Phase → Deliverable → Work Package → Task. A real task you can name, hand to one role, estimate in hours, and know when it is done.

Module 5 throughline

A project manager cannot manage what has never been broken down. The Work Breakdown Structure turns a promise into a plan the team can resource, price, and control.

Open the Budget Builder →On to Part B · Schedule & Staff →
The five readersThe Team what to do, and in what orderThe Client what arrives, and when it arrivesYou the author, what to control each weekThe Reviewer whether quality was planned into the workThe Firm whether the margin holds to the end

One plan gets written and five people read it, each of them asking a different question of the same document. A plan that answers one reader and fails another is a plan that will be renegotiated later, in a meeting nobody wanted. Seven steps are the method. Five readers are the audit. Four archetypes are the failure modes.

Remember: Part A is where a project manager establishes clarity, and the seven steps produce the plan the five readers audit.

Planning Studio · Carry it forward

When you commit the budget, Planning Studio 1 saves your plan and Part B picks it up whole: your WBS becomes the packages you sequence, and your hours become the labor demand your schedule has to honor. The foundation you build here is the foundation you will stand on next module. Build yours now →