Understanding Tasks
Once the scope of the project is known in detail, a top-down approach is used to break down these high-level requirements into smaller and smaller subcomponents. This is the same as creating the WBS (short for work-based schedule). The WBS is then translated into the tasks actually required to materialize each subcomponent. This breakdown process is repeated until every task is small enough to be meaningfully assigned by you to your team members. Therefore, you can say that tasks are the smallest units of work in a project.
In this way, a top-down design approach is utilized in designing a schedule during the initiation phase of a project. But interestingly, for the execution phase of the project, the perspective reverses completely. When the project starts executing, you will start tracking the work progress from the smallest task upwards, building and integrating bigger and bigger components until the whole project is completed.
Like building blocks,...