Inspired by a series of articles this month from Kitplanes Magazine, I was reminded of the effectiveness of a good, old-fashioned Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This is a charting technique for understanding project execution order, scope, parallel work organization, and Critical Path (CP) events. Being a software engineer, I'm very accustomed to managing large, long-running, and often rather ambiguous projects from inception to completion. However, building an already designed and fabricated airplane with defined build steps is quite a relief from the ever changing requirements, priorities, and technologies in the software world.
Building an airplane is a long, often multi-year process and whether it's a one or one-hundred person undertaking, basic project management techniques can help keep it on track, improve efficiency, provide and unambiguous definition of done.
Below is my combined WBS and CP chart for the empennage kit.
The top and bottom levels identify the start and end states. The level below the start state identifies work that can be executed in parallel. If you're the only person building the plane, then this is useful when one of your execution paths is blocked while you are waiting on something out of your control to occur (i.e. replacement parts to arrive). You can start another path and return when the original path gets unblocked. Anywhere I split a path indicates work that can occur in parallel. You can also look ahead at potential blockers and get in front of them before they halt your progress (i.e. ordering lead times).
I'll undoubtedly make changes when changes are necessary and that's why I include a revision number and date. I keep a copy printed out with "X"s marked over the completed steps. Just looking at it now, I wonder if I should add rivet hole filling before the part is considered done. That was a really good example of establishing the "definition of done".
For myself, the project plan doesn't need target dates. Work happens when it happens and materials arrive when they arrive. I'm more interested in identifying the relationships between build order dependencies, keeping track of out-of-band events (i.e. waiting for replacement parts in order to complete an assembly), and identifying when I'm done with something. If date targets are important to you, use a Gantt chart.
I used the Draw.io plugin in Google Drive to make the diagram above. I highly recommend Draw.io. If you want a copy of this or other WBS charts for the Sling 4, send me a comment.
The next time a family member or co-worker asks you, "when are you going to finish that plane of yours," you can simply pull out your WBS chart and point to a box and reply, "when I get to here."
Building an airplane is a long, often multi-year process and whether it's a one or one-hundred person undertaking, basic project management techniques can help keep it on track, improve efficiency, provide and unambiguous definition of done.
Below is my combined WBS and CP chart for the empennage kit.
The top and bottom levels identify the start and end states. The level below the start state identifies work that can be executed in parallel. If you're the only person building the plane, then this is useful when one of your execution paths is blocked while you are waiting on something out of your control to occur (i.e. replacement parts to arrive). You can start another path and return when the original path gets unblocked. Anywhere I split a path indicates work that can occur in parallel. You can also look ahead at potential blockers and get in front of them before they halt your progress (i.e. ordering lead times).
I'll undoubtedly make changes when changes are necessary and that's why I include a revision number and date. I keep a copy printed out with "X"s marked over the completed steps. Just looking at it now, I wonder if I should add rivet hole filling before the part is considered done. That was a really good example of establishing the "definition of done".
For myself, the project plan doesn't need target dates. Work happens when it happens and materials arrive when they arrive. I'm more interested in identifying the relationships between build order dependencies, keeping track of out-of-band events (i.e. waiting for replacement parts in order to complete an assembly), and identifying when I'm done with something. If date targets are important to you, use a Gantt chart.
I used the Draw.io plugin in Google Drive to make the diagram above. I highly recommend Draw.io. If you want a copy of this or other WBS charts for the Sling 4, send me a comment.
The next time a family member or co-worker asks you, "when are you going to finish that plane of yours," you can simply pull out your WBS chart and point to a box and reply, "when I get to here."
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