Feature

Work Breakdown Structure

Break down project budgets into detailed, manageable components for accurate tracking and control.

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Work Breakdown Structure

Break down project budgets into detailed, manageable components for accurate tracking and control.

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Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Mastt

Mastt enables fast and easy project Work Breakdown Structure using our budgets tool, for detailed financial reporting of costs and variances. With Mastt, see in real time how your project, program or portfolio is tracking against Work Breakdown Structures.

  • Create Hierarchical WBS for projects based on phases, stages or work elements.
  • Tag WBS elements for aggregation across projects in a program or portfolio.
  • Transfer Funds between WBS elements.
  • Make changes to WBS directly for new or removed funds.

Learn more about Work Breakdown Structures in Mastt below. 👇

What is a Work Breakdown Structure?

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a detailed, hierarchical tree structure that breaks down a project into smaller, more manageable parts. Each level of the WBS represents an increasingly detailed definition of project work, represented in Mastt by a budget or sub-budget.

The primary purpose of a WBS is to simplify project planning, execution, monitoring, and control by organizing the work into smaller, manageable sections. A budget then represents the amount of money available for a WBS line item to be delivered.

Problems Managing Work Breakdown Structures

Common challenges we see when managing Work Breakdown Structures:

Budget & WBS Alignment: Tracking costs in relation to the WBS can be difficult, leading to potential misalignments between budget and work packages.

Tracking Contracts & Commitments: Tracking contracts and commitments across multiple WBS using spreadsheets is error-prone and cumbersome.

Managing WBS Changes: Adjusting and reallocating budgets and WBS to reflect contracted scope creates increasingly complex and unwieldy spreadsheets.

❌ Forecasting & S Curves: Accurate forecasting of future costs, including uncommitted amounts, risks, and contingencies, is challenging and often inaccurate.

❌ Standardizing Budget Structures: Establishing a consistent budget structure across a portfolio is essential but challenging in large-scale projects.

Drill down to interrogate budget data and create new budgets easily.

Mastt Work Breakdown Structure Solutions

Mastt offers a suite of budget management tools designed to address the key challenges of Work Breakdown Structures:

💡 Simple Budget Table: View a straightforward table that shows your budget, Work Breakdown Structure, committments and foreacasting on one page.

💡 Budget vs Actuals vs Forecast: Easily compare WBS budget data against commitments, total costs to complete, and payments made to quickly identify variances.

💡 Easy Drill Down: Access Work Breakdown Structure items quickly for detailed interrogation and faster decision-making, enabling deeper insights.

💡 Easy WBS Changes: Move money between budgets easily or make direct changes to adapt to project shifts and requirements.

💡 Auditing: Maintain a log of changes for compliance and record-keeping.

💡 Auto Reporting: Budgets automatically power reports like dashboards, project status reports, and monthly reports.

Budget Features

Mastt's simple, easy to use budget tools make creating a WBS easy.

🔷 Budget Register: Track the Work Breakdown Structure, commitments and forecasting on one page so you can see budget variances.

🔷 Budgets & Sub-Budgets: Create budgets and sub-budgets for detailed tracking and management of work elements, scope, anything!

🔷 Budget Transfers: Move money between budgets easily.

🔷 Budget Changes: Make direct additions or subtractions to budgets.

🔷 Link Budgets: to Contracts, Variations, Risks, Forecasts.

🔷 Budget Tagging: Use tags to categorize and track budget items across multiple projects, making it easier to sort, filter, and retrieve budget data in a portfolio.

Add new and re-order budgets with ease.

Work Breakdown Structure Best Practice

Mastt's simple, easy to use budget tools make it getting started today a possibility.

🟢 Keep It Simple: Avoid complexity to ensure Work Breakdown Structure are easy to understand and manage.

🟢 Track Only What Matters: Focus on financial areas you will actively monitor to avoid unnecessary details.

🟢 Standardize Your Budgets: Use the same budget or WBS templates and structures for consistency and ease of management.

🟢 Limit to Three Layers: Keep WBS manageable by having no more than three layers.

🟢 Align Budgets with Funding: Match top-level budgets with your project’s funding stages for easier tracking and reporting.

Step by Step Guides

Are you a Mastt user? For detailed information about this feature, please visit this Help Page article. You can also explore more articles at help.mastt.com.

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Andrew Benn, WSP Technical Director

"With Mastt, our client can see the status of the project anytime, reducing back and forth queries, and not having to wait until the end of the month to receive a monthly report."

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Rebecca White, RPS Program Manager

"Mastt has saved our team significant time and effort in managing the financials elements of 65+projects. The team now has total visibility over their individual projects as well as the overarching program of works."

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Erik Maasepp, Capital Insight Senior Project Manager

"Mastt takes away a lot of user error that spreadsheets bring. With Mastt, we are able to combine multiple projects into programs or portfolios for management level analysis and direction."

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CAPT. Dan Foley, Army Digital Transformation Manager

"Mastt is increasing the team’s tempo and productivity by enabling real time information across our portfolio of projects. This transparency is assisting us to make informed decisions, to identify opportunities and reduce the risk."

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Dan Atkins, Jacobs National Program Manager

"Mastt's ability to record critical financial information as well as program forecasted delivery and milestones put Jacobs in a favourable position to our clients."

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Mohammed Salameh, Compass' Associate Director

"Moving to Mastt is one of the best decisions my team has ever made. It’s cost-effective, easy to use, and a quick set up."

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Fergus Bruce, Project Manager at WSP

"A key factor in our decision to adopt Mastt is its user-friendliness. It had to continue to empower us to work smart, allowing us to consistently deliver excellence across multiple sectors and geographic regions."

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