Starting with the 50,000-foot view, the team determines the major deliverables of the project. From there, the deliverables are decomposed into ever smaller units of work. The trick here is to break the work down into measurable units so that you can verify the status of the work and the completion and acceptance of the work when you're finished. If you have "fuzzy" WBS levels or work packages, you won't be able to determine status accurately. In the IT field, we have a saying about the status of projects: "It's 90 percent complete." The problem is it always seems that the last 10 percent takes twice as long to complete as the first 90 did. If you've taken the time to document a WBS, you'll have a much better idea of what that 90 percent constitutes. The last step is the verification step where you determine whether everything you've identified in the WBS is absolutely necessary to fulfill the work of the project and whether it's decomposed enough to adequately describe the work. It has been my experience that documenting the WBS will save you time later in the Planning processes, particularly developing the project schedule and determining the project