What on earth is a “Workstream”?
December 28, 2010 27 Comments
A lot of my colleagues thought this would be a good topic for a blog. Do you know what a “workstream” is? Does everyone have the same interpretation of that word? Are you sure? I assume someone, somewhere does, as it is used very widely in many companies (probably driven by some consulting organization!).
Some quick research
I did some quick research and found that this word does not exist in any formal project management methodology (for example PMI, APM, DIN, PRINCE2).
The often quoted Max Wideman glossary makes no mention of it.
A quick scan of the web comes up with comments like this, which was in response to a person asking what the Spanish for “workstream” is:
My guess as to why you are having difficulty pinning down the meaning of the term “workstream” is this extract from a response to a forum question:
I think it is a proper name of various businesses and software packages which is gradually leaking into professional jargon for more general use. I think “workstream” has not yet reached the status of a real word with a settled meaning. I won’t go so far as to suggest that it is meaningless, pretentious jargonspeak. But . . . .
It can’t be translated! This rather explains why, on my work on the new international standard on project management, I haven’t come across it. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) only uses plain English terms from the Concise Oxford English dictionary, which are translatable. The Project Workout is aimed at international readers and so I have taken the view that everything in it should also be translatable.
Even Microsoft Corporation, that great source of jargon and acronyms, doesn’t include the word in its spell checkers.
Looking at real organisations, I have identified “workstream” to be used synonymously with a “department, function or directorate” and a “sub-programme”, which are entirely different dimensions in the classic organisation matrix. I also found it was used to group together virtually any number of unclassifiable clusters of activities.
The Project Workout and The Programme and Portfolio Workout
The Workout books do not contain the term “workstream” for all the reasons given above and yet it is in common use, We are not living in George Orwell’s “1984”, so you can use the term “workstream” if you really want to, but if you do use it, consider exactly what you mean and what management procedure would be used to manage it; if you can’t determine that, then you can’t expect anyone else in your team to understand you.
My advice – don’t use it!
I am sure people will still use the term, perhaps because it is such excellent fudge or perhaps it just sounds “cool”, “techno” or even “heroic”! My advice is to avoid using the word, when we have well defined, plain English, alternatives. What do you think?
For an update on this topic, see the later blog “More on Workstreams“.
About Robert Buttrick
Project Workout Blog 
Completely agree this terminology had become a rapidly adopted fad.
A fascinating discussion is worth comment. I think that you
need to write more about this subject matter,
it might not be a taboo subject but typically people don’t speak about these issues. To the next! Cheers!!
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/work-stream.html
To save people looking this up, here is what Scott led me to.
Work stream: The progressive completion of tasks completed by different groups within a company which are required to finish a single project. For example, the work stream for a manufacturing facility may include engineering, drafting, procurement, fabrication, quality control and shipping.
The above defintion is for a “work stream” (two words, rather than the single word one I’m talking about). Recently the MSP crew have coined a definition (2011 edition), so I’ll follow up with an updated blog very soon.
Are “work stream” and “work flow” considered diverse?
If by “diverse”, you mean different, then yes, I see “work flow” and “work stream” as different. Notice, in this set of comments we see “workstream” and “work stream”. I used one word – you have just used two words. I suspect that in people’s personal definitions, the use of one word or two may be very important, and they may be very understood in very different ways! So perhaps, because of this I haven’t understood your meaning.
So the above definition
“Work stream: The progressive completion of tasks completed by different groups within a company which are required to finish a single project. For example, the work stream for a manufacturing facility may include engineering, drafting, procurement, fabrication, quality control and shipping.”
… makes sense, but when “consultants” start throwing this term around in place of “Project”, or even “Project Initiative” when discussing the details of a program… portfolio or “Enterprise wide Initiative”
I would interpret “Workstream” is the functional group of “resources required to complete a group of tasks” NOT to describe the “Scope of the tasks”… Worse when a reference is made to the “workstream” to substitute “project” instead of describe the projects’ resources.
I would NOT use this term.
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I would define it as: any entry at the first level of a WBS (Work Breakdown Stucture).
I suppose that depends on where you think the “top” is. For a programme, the top is the programme level. For a project, the top is the project level. However, what I think you are pointing to is that a workstream is a BIG thing with wide scope and not a “part” of something.
Collins English Dictionary defines “workstream” (one word) as “any one of the areas of activity into which a company’s business may be divided.” – Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. (accessed: March 11, 2013)
Here’s the URL to the above definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/workstream
And so here we see a classic example of the English language moving on. But do you think that is a good definition? Thank you Jake.
I am intrigued by this term as I develop strategic plans to address several projects. As I understand it, the entire group of projects is called the “workstream”. The development of each project including the timeline, resources, etc. are each called “work streams”…..?
A group of projects could also be a “programme” or even a portfolio of projects. But, perhaps you use is not so far from the MSP definition which is akin to a “sub-programme”. I wonder, though is anyone has developed a process or a method for a “workstream” – we have them for projects, programmes and portfolios . . . so why not workstreams . . . unless, of course, it’s a redundant term that just sounds cool senior management.
Thank you, Robert. The “portfolio of projects” seems appropriate for our education setting. I will use “work streams” to discuss the process for meeting the goals of each project.
I have an instance of the use of the term workstream which is different from the example discussed in the previous entries and an illustration for Robert’s original point about being careful when using the term. I saw this term used in the status report of yet another project at my company, so I googled the term it to see if I could find a standard definition. I found the Project Workout Blog. At my company, some project managers have started using the term workstream to refer to a grouping of related tasks in a project plan. For example, the Internal Policies workstream, the Technical Readiness workstream, the Operational Readiness workstream. These project tend to be large, cross-department projects. As is usually the case with any large and complex project, task dependencies can get complicated and the project can be depicted as a network showing the interdependencies between project tasks in two dimensions. My experience has been that this network diagram view is difficult for many business users to understand. These project managers are grouping related tasks into subsets (workstreams) that represent a summary of interdependent work which is easier for business users and technology team members to understand and visualize. Ideally, a given department is only involved in one of the several workstreams in the project, but this doesn’t always work out.
I basically think the usage is a consequence of the management to be as unspecific as possible. I work in a big, international company and here the word got introduced in the mid of 2014. It’s commonly used (in my company) as replacement for ‘my tasks, considering a specific topic’ and is always very unspecific. I think ‘work package’ let’s the listener assume that a package has clearly defined boundaries, while he cannot assume this for a ‘stream’! 😉
I agree with the author, that you’re better of, not using it!
Thank you for the post. I think you are right. It is a good word to use to sound “manly” and “informed” whilst actually saying not a lot! So many senior people and consultants use for the reasons you state. I always ask them, “What exactly do you mean by the workstream?” . . . and the answers can be very illuminating.
We actually use this in a pretty specific way: “workstreams” are parallel projects or subprojects either a) converging on development of a single system or b) taking place under the same business-unit supervision. It’s usually used in the way that “tracks” is, but “workstreams” to my ear implies more administrative independence among streams–and a lack of or need for coordination.
If that’s useful, take it. Interesting thread!
Yes – helpful. It illustrates what I said about if you do use the word, make sure it is crystal clear what you mean by it. Do you have any enterprise method covering this? And if so do have a specific method or process/roles for “managing a workstream” or os t covered by another method/process, like “managing a programme”?
I agree with Doug’s comment. For example, we have a project to deliver a software application and often that application has multiple components. Then we would have multiple workstreams, each of which would deliver a single component within the application. The workstreams could be worked on by independent people or by subteams within the project team. We wouldn’t call the workstream a “subproject” generally as it has a far more loosely-defined scope and management structure. For example, workstreams can merge and separate without any kind of tracking and the people working on them or managing them will also change freely. The responsibility for formal reporting would be the manager of the enclosing project/subproject who would be reporting the overall progress rather than the progress of each individual workstream. This term “workstream” is used quite frequently in my company (a large international bank) and I was surprised to find that it’s not widely or consistently used elsewhere. I found your site while Googling “synonym for workstream” but I haven’t yet come up with a synonym!! I needed to use the word “workstream” twice in a sentence so I was looking for a synonym. I ended up rephrasing the whole sentence.
I started thinking, when reading your response Adam, that what you were describing was a “work package” until I got to the part where you said workstreams can merge and separate without any form of tracking. However I like the outcome of your contribution, ” rephrasing the whole sentence” and you probably ended up with something less ambiguous than simply using “workstream”.
In my experience it is a generic grouping of projects or project activities in line with a technology or organisational unit to allow that unit to effectively manage and resource the work-stream. For example the HR work-stream across a corporate wide program will be engaged by several projects under that program. Apposed to engaging with that unit on a project-by-project or work-package by work-package basis a HR work stream is created across the program and its multiple projects, products, work-packages and activities. This allows for
– better integration of the multiple products or deliverables
– better dependency management
– potentially an efficient resource allocation and capacity management by that unit
– potentially leveraging off common knowledge, objects or other elements between packages and products across the projects.
The downside or risks associate with works-stream however are;
– Perception that work-streams take over the need for formal Project Program and Portfolio management activities
– Work-streams will require an additional coordination, support and management layer that feed or report into traditional governance structures.
Cheers Olaf
As another Doug on this thread… my company uses it similar to Doug Johnson and Doug K…
The company I work for, a large Global Investment Bank, uses the term work stream a great deal but everyone defines it differently!!! (or doesn’t bother to define it….) As part of a PMO, I guide people to use it as a collection of activities *within* a project (and thus under a program.) Our projects can have a technical build a legal/contractual set of activities amongst other. “Enhancements to System X” and “Execution of Contracts” are two examples work streams within our projects.
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If you think the term workstream is confusing our outfit just started using ‘pillars’ to mean programmes because they already use programme to mean project because our programme mangers need programmes to manage otherwise they’d just be project managers.
It is extraordinary the convolutions some organisations go through just to get people on a specific pay (or perceived status) grade, when there are simpler ways of doing it. Thanks for sharing.