ISBN : 978-81-963532-2-3 (E-Book) theprogress of a project by monitoring the timely completion of the milestones. If he observes thatthe milestones start getting delayed, then he has to carefully control the activities, so that theoveralldeadlinecan still be met. WorkBreakdownStructure Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is used to decompose a given task set recursively into smallactivities. WBS provides a notation for representing the major tasks need to be carried out inorder to solve a problem. The root of the tree is labeled by the problem name. Each node of thetree is broken down into smaller activities that are made the children of the node. Each activity isrecursively decomposed into smaller sub-activities until at the leaf level, the activities requiresapproximately two weeks to develop. Fig. 36.1 represents the WBS of a MIS (ManagementInformationSystem)software. Whilebreakingdownataskintosmallertasks,themanagerhastomakesomeharddecisions.Ifa task is broken down into large number of very small activities, these can be carried outindependently.Thus,itbecomespossibletodeveloptheproductfaster(withthehelpofadditional manpower). Therefore, to be able to complete a project in the least amount of time, themanagerneedstobreaklargetasksintosmallerones,expectingtofindmoreparallelism.However, it is not useful to subdivide tasks into units which take less than a week or two toexecute. Very fine subdivision means that a disproportionate amount of time must be spent onpreparingand revisingvarious charts. 177 Software Engineering Keerthana P, Manasa KN, Ganga D Bengal
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