HI540 Unit 3 Work Breakdown Structure Example

Course	HI540 Project Management of Health Information Systems
Unit	Unit 3
Paper type	Work breakdown structure
Length	About 980 words, 6 pages double-spaced
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Purdue University Global
Program	MS in Health Informatics
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for HI540 Unit 3

Sixty-Three Packages, One Name Each: A Unit 3 Work Breakdown Structure for a Three-Hospital Perioperative Rollout

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HI540: Project Management of Health Information Systems

Unit 3 Work Breakdown Structure

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Ashby Valley Health, its people and every figure are composite; the sources cited are real.

What this part is doingOpening with the rule for when decomposition stops tells the grader the tree was built on a principle, not stretched to fill a page.

Purpose and Decomposition Rule

This work breakdown structure lists everything the Ashby Valley Health perioperative rollout must deliver, and nothing it does not. It follows the charter signed in Unit 2, so every package traces to one of the three objectives: implant capture, real-time intraoperative documentation and retirement of the standalone scheduler. In the project management guide, a breakdown like this one is the scope itself, divided level by level into pieces small enough to plan (Project Management Institute, 2021), and the practice standard adds the 100 percent rule: the children of any element must add up to all of the work of the parent, with nothing missing and nothing extra (Project Management Institute, 2019). Decomposition stops at the level where a package can be handed to one person and recognized as finished by someone else. That rule produced uneven depth on purpose. Interfaces need three levels because each feed has its own builder and its own tester, while project management reaches only level two because its outputs are reports and meetings with a single owner already. Branches are named for deliverables, not for departments, so no package exists merely because a team needs something to do.

Level-One Branches

1. Project Management: charter maintenance, status reporting, steering committee support, change control and closeout.

2. Build and Configuration: scheduling build, intraoperative documentation build, implant capture build and security roles.

3. Data Conversion: surgeon preference cards, future-scheduled cases and the scheduler archive.

4. Interfaces: the implant supply feed from materials management, the charge link to billing and the instrument tracking link to sterile processing.

5. Testing: unit, integrated, charge reconciliation and user acceptance testing.

6. Workflow and Policy: future-state workflows, downtime procedures and revised perioperative policies.

7. Training and Super-Users: curriculum, classroom delivery, the super-user program and at-the-elbow support.

8. Cutover and Stabilization: dress rehearsals, two go-live waves and thirty days of command center support for each wave.

Three of the eight branches contain no technical work, because a circulating nurse's day changes whether anyone plans for that change or not.

What this part is doingPlacing workflow, policy and training beside the build branches, not beneath them, shows the grader that nontechnical work carries the same weight as configuration.

Selected Decomposition to Level Three

3.1 Preference card conversion. 3.1.1 Extraction from the old scheduler, owner: data analyst. 3.1.2 Cleansing of duplicate and retired items, owner: data analyst. 3.1.3 Orthopedics validation, about 1,100 cards, owner: orthopedics surgeon lead. 3.1.4 General and vascular validation, owner: general surgery surgeon lead. 3.1.5 Remaining specialties validation, owner: perioperative informatics nurse. 3.1.6 Load into production, owner: data analyst. A draft version gave package 3.1 two owners, the data analyst and the surgeons together. That split responsibility is exactly what the stopping rule forbids, so the conversion work and the validation sign-off became separate packages. The data analyst can finish loading cards; only a surgeon lead can say the cards are right for that specialty. 3.2 Future-scheduled cases. 3.2.1 Extraction of cases booked past each go-live date. 3.2.2 Manual rebooking of cases that fail the automated load. 3.2.3 Scheduler confirmation call list. Owner for all three: lead scheduler. 4.1 Implant supply feed. 4.1.1 Item master mapping, owner: materials management analyst. 4.1.2 Interface build, owner: interface analyst. 4.1.3 Interface unit test, owner: second interface analyst. 4.2 Charge link to billing. 4.2.1 Charge code mapping, owner: revenue integrity analyst. 4.2.2 Interface build, owner: interface analyst. 4.2.3 Reconciliation report, owner: revenue integrity analyst. 6.2 Downtime procedures. 6.2.1 Paper downtime packet for each operating room, owner: perioperative educator. 6.2.2 Recovery procedure for back-entering implants after downtime, owner: perioperative informatics nurse. 6.2.3 Downtime drill before each go-live, owner: perioperative nurse manager at each hospital. Downtime appears as its own package because unplanned outages are a documented source of safety events in electronic records (Larsen et al., 2018), and because an implant used during an outage is exactly the item that never reaches a bill.

Work Package Dictionary Entries

Nine packages receive full dictionary entries in the appendix; two are shown here in the shared layout. Package 3.1.3, Orthopedics preference card validation. Description: the orthopedic surgeons review each converted card for items, quantities and positioning notes, and mark it valid or returned. Deliverable: about 1,100 cards marked valid in the validation worklist. Acceptance: no card used in the first two weeks after wave 1 is unvalidated. Owner: orthopedics surgeon lead. Depends on: 3.1.2. Package 6.2.2, Implant back-entry after downtime. Description: a written procedure for scanning implant stickers from the paper downtime packet into the record within one shift of recovery. Deliverable: approved procedure and a tested reconciliation step. Acceptance: a drill recovers 100 percent of implants used during a simulated two-hour outage. Owner: perioperative informatics nurse. Depends on: 6.2.1 and 4.2.3.

What this part is doingWriting acceptance as something a second person can check, such as a drill that recovers every implant, makes each dictionary entry testable rather than descriptive.

Owner Count

Sixty-three packages are held by twenty-three people. Most hold one to four. The lead build analyst holds fourteen, because most scheduling and documentation build packages default to the person who knows the system best. The count does not show a mistake in the breakdown; it shows a resource conflict that the schedule in Unit 5 and the resource plan in Unit 6 must resolve. Moving some of those packages to a second analyst would be a staffing decision, not a scope decision, so it is noted here and deferred.

Why This Structure Serves the Project

A breakdown tied to deliverables lets every later document reuse its codes: the schedule activities, budget lines and risk entries in Units 5 through 7 all carry a package number. Reviews of large health IT implementations warn that projects fail when the social and organizational work of change is left unplanned (Cresswell et al., 2013), and this structure gives that work its own branches, owners and acceptance tests.

References

Cresswell, K. M., Bates, D. W., & Sheikh, A. (2013). Ten key considerations for the successful implementation and adoption of large-scale health information technology. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 20(e1), e9-e13. https://doi.org/10.1136/amiajnl-2013-001684

Larsen, E., Fong, A., Wernz, C., & Ratwani, R. M. (2018). Implications of electronic health record downtime: An analysis of patient safety event reports. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 25(2), 187-191. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocx057

Project Management Institute. (2019). Practice standard for work breakdown structures (3rd ed.). Project Management Institute.

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.

HI540 Unit 3 instructions, in plain terms

In Unit 3 the task is normally a work breakdown structure for the project you chartered, decomposed to the level where work can be estimated and assigned. Expect to show level-one branches, an outline or tree to level two or three, numbering that ties each element to its parent, and a work package dictionary for selected packages. Many prompts ask you to name an owner for each package and to explain how the 100 percent rule was applied, so the structure holds all of the scope and nothing beyond it. Nontechnical work such as training, policy change and go-live support belongs in the structure if the project must deliver it. A tree graphic and an indented outline are both accepted in most sections; check whether yours wants one or both. Cite the project management guide or the practice standard for the method.

How this HI540 Unit 3 example is built

Purpose and the stopping rule come before any branch, so the reader knows why some branches go deeper than others. Eight level-one branches are listed by deliverable, and the highlighted sentence explains why three of them contain no technical work. Selected branches are decomposed to level three with an owner on each line: preference card conversion, future-scheduled cases, the implant supply feed, the charge link and downtime procedures. A short paragraph shows a draft package with two owners being split into conversion and validation. Two dictionary entries use one layout: description, deliverable, acceptance test, owner and dependency. An owner count closes the document and treats one analyst's fourteen packages as a resource question for later units rather than a scope error. Three margin notes explain the stopping rule, the placement of nontechnical branches and the testable acceptance lines.

Where the points sit in the HI540 Unit 3 rubric

Points on this assignment tend to follow completeness first. Graders check whether every objective from the charter is covered and whether anything outside scope has crept in, which is the 100 percent rule in practice. Decomposition earns its own row: packages should be small enough to estimate and assign, but not split into tasks. Numbering and hierarchy are checked for consistency, since later schedules and budgets reuse the codes. The dictionary is often worth a separate block, with marks for acceptance criteria someone else could verify. Ownership counts in many rubrics, and a package with two owners or none usually costs points. A smaller share covers presentation and APA format. Students lose the most when they list departments instead of deliverables or leave out training and go-live support.

Common HI540 Unit 3 mistakes, and how to avoid them

A frequent error is writing activities, such as meet with surgeons, where deliverables belong, like validated preference cards for orthopedics. Another is uneven depth with no explanation, which reads as unfinished. Many drafts leave out workflow redesign, downtime planning or training, then discover the omission when the schedule is built. Some give a package to a committee, so nobody is answerable for it. Dictionary entries often restate the package name without an acceptance test. Numbering that changes between the tree and the outline confuses graders. If your project differs from this one, send the charter, your instructor's template and any notes on your team, and a tailored structure with dictionary entries can be prepared to match the scope you already have approved.

Get an HI540 Unit 3 example written to your instructions

Breakdowns belong to the project behind them, and a borrowed tree rarely survives a grader tracing it back to the charter. With your section's scenario, the Unit 3 instructions, the rubric and your Unit 2 charter in hand, a first sample is built to match; it is free, ready within 24-48h, and keeps every package to a single owner. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.

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HI540 Unit 3 questions, answered

Should training and workflow appear if the prompt centers on the system?

In most health information projects, yes. The system is half the deliverable; the other half is a department working differently. The example gives workflow, policy and super-user work their own branches for that reason. Graders who see only build and testing packages often remark that the scope stops at installation, which is where many real implementations stall.

What if a package genuinely needs two people?

Two people can work on it; only one owns it, meaning one answers for whether it is done. Where two roles each own a distinct result, the example divides the package in two, as with card conversion and surgeon validation. A package that resists splitting and still has two owners usually means decomposition stopped a level too soon.

How many levels deep should the structure go?

Three levels suit most unit-sized scenarios, and the example stops there. The practical signal is estimation: once cost and effort for an element can be estimated with a stated basis, decomposing further produces task lists rather than scope. An element that still resists any estimate at level three justifies one more level beneath it.

Where can I find a free HI540 Unit 3 sample paper?

A full Unit 3 breakdown sits on this page, with eight branches, level-three packages, two dictionary entries and an owner count.

Why does the sample split preference card work into two packages?

Loading cards belongs to a data analyst, while saying the cards are right belongs to a surgeon lead; one package with both would have two owners.