High-Level Design (HLD) Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is detrmined by the High-Level Design (HLD) that explains the architecture that would be used for developing a system or a product. The architecture diagram provides an overview of an entire system, identifying the main components that would be developed, acquired or reused for the products and their interfaces. The HLD uses possibly nontechnical to mildly technical terms that should be understandable to the administrators of the system. In contrast, low-level design further exposes the logical detailed design of each of these elements for programmers. Each components must be traceable
- Up stream, via the User Stories (US) / Use Cases (UC), to the requirements that it satisfied; and
- Down Stream via the Detailed-Level Design (DLD) to the particular system / product components (Hardware, Firmware and / or
Software) that make-up the system / Product to be build.
Once build and commissioned, the HLD is used as the basis for the enhancement and / oe maintenance of the System / Product.
From System Engineering perspective ALL components that will be used in the construction of the System / Product (and later enhancements of the System / Product) must be registered in an approved WBS which governs the SDLC:
- Detailed-Level Design (DLD) phase;
- Construction phase; and
- Maintenance phase.
Each Configuration Item in the WBS is associated with:
- Description (i.e. what is the Configuration Item (CI) designed to do);
- installation Instructions (i.e. How to handle the CI); and
- Release Notes.(i.e. Special Instructions).
