Skift Take
A work breakdown structure has helped me in creating packages of activities in which I could break down a particular event. The benfits of such approach include identifying what needs to be done in order to carry out a particular event.
Such packages can now be delegated to people in the team or in the organization. At the end of the day I’ll have an Organizational Breakdown Structure.
If have an objective understanding who does what is crucial to avoid procrastination and stimulate accountability. By assigning packages of activities I can also trace easily who is not doing the job and measure performance.
An easy way to assign packages is to create a chart in which on the left side I’ll have the identified packages and on top the people in my team:
Next step is to assign degrees of interaction with the task. In order to do that I usually create keys for degrees of accountability:
In this Case I’ve identified 2 degrees of interaction which are direct management and participation. Every event might have an indefinite number of keys according to the context, whitout forgetting that the function of such tools is to summarize, therefore it is important to keep things simple.
Another variation could be to add key stakeholders in the matrix in order to understand the impact of the activities on different groups and the degree of participation required.