To successfully manage projects, you must plan, control, and execute fundamental

objectives in a targeted, efficient manner. Professional project management plays an

important role in a business’s ability to stay competitive, particularly for businesses using
primarily project-oriented processes.
Depending on the project type and the focus of project monitoring, you can structure your
project in SAP PS using work breakdown structures (WBS), or activities, or both, in one or
more networks, which can be linked using relationships, if required.
A work breakdown structure is a model of the project that shows the project deliverables in
hierarchical form. The work breakdown structure represents the structural organization of
the project and provides a phase, function, or product-oriented description of the project. It
outlines the project in manageable sections. The individual elements of the work
breakdown structure are called WBS elements. You can break down the WBS elements
further, depending upon the project phase.
A network represents the course of a project by describing the time sequence and
dependencies of events and activities in a project. A network consists of two fundamental
elements – activities and relationships. Networks and their activities form the basis for
planning, analyzing, and controlling a project. Networks include information about the
dates, costs, personnel, capacity, materials, resources, and services that are required for
carrying out a project and its tasks.
The criteria according to which a project is structured using a work breakdown structure or
network, or both, can vary depending on the type and complexity of a project. For example,
the criteria can vary depending on the responsibility and structure of the departments or
teams involved, or on how production and assembly are integrated. It is therefore
impossible to provide an answer to the question of how best to structure a project.
However, you should take the following recommendations into consideration when
structuring your projects.
There are different ways to create project structures. In the figure, these options are
presented schematically.

As well as being able to create work breakdown structures and/or networks manually, you
can also use existing project structures as templates. You can create a project by copying
other operative projects, standard structures, or simulation versions. Assembly processing is
another indirect method of generating a network or, if necessary, a WBS from a sales order,
for example.