Integrating Process and Work Breakdown Structure with Design Structure Matrix

Abstract

In software development, project plans document scope, cost, effort, and schedule, guide project managers, and control project execution. Developing a project plan without incorporating how an organization doing things – i.e., organizational culture – may lead to project failure. To ensure stable process performance and to benefit from organizational culture, it is crucial that organizational processes be taken into account in project planning. Organizational processes enable stable process performance across an organization and provide a basis for cumulative, long term benefits to the organization. In proposing a systematic approach that supports bi-directional transformation between processes and the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), we propose Process2WBS and WBS2Process to assist project managers in project planning with an organization’s set of standard processes. Process2WBS consumes processes and transforms them into a WBS with Design Structure Matrix (DSM) analysis, and WBS2Process transforms the WBS with project-specific information into executable processes expressed in XPDL.