Saturday afternoon. Dining room table. My sons and I sit staring at a giant LEGO Hogwarts set.
The box is stunning — spires, towers, and bridges. The castle looks magical, and overwhelming. As a parent, I’m thinking: “How are we going to do this? So many pieces… where do we even start?”
Before I can say it out loud, my son laughs:
“Dad, what if LEGO just gave us a giant pile of bricks with the picture of the castle and said: Have fun, good luck!”
He cracks up and dives into the instruction manual.
And that’s when it hit me: LEGO doesn’t just teach kids how to build. It’s also teaching project managers about scope, Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), schedules, and cost planning.
LEGO designers don’t start with random bricks. They start with the vision: the finished castle.
That’s the project scope — the picture on the box.
For project managers, scope is the North Star. It’s the definition of what success looks like, whether it’s a completed building, a software rollout, or a process improvement. Without the vision, no one knows what they’re aiming for.
But you can’t build Hogwarts in one step. You have to break it down.
That’s where the Work Breakdown Structure comes in.
- Level 1: Hogwarts Castle
- Level 2: Towers, walls, Great Hall, drawbridge
- Level 3: Subsections of those components
At the bottom level are the Work Packages. These are like the numbered LEGO bags. Each Work Package is a self-contained piece of the project, with clear scope boundaries.
At this level, the LEGO designers had to decide:
- What materials and shapes are needed?
- How many bricks are required?
- Which special molds must be created?
In projects, this is the point where we define the resources, effort, and cost tied to each deliverable. Work Packages are where scope turns into actionable planning.
Once the Work Packages are defined, activities can be planned in order.
That’s what the LEGO instruction manual does — it’s the schedule.
Step by step, page by page, the activities are sequenced so the deliverable comes together. The WBS defines the what. The schedule defines the when and how.
That’s why even a child can sit down and confidently build something massive. The order makes sense, and progress is visible.
LEGO doesn’t just design cool sets. They also count the cost.
How many bricks go into each section? Which unique pieces are necessary? How can the set remain affordable?
This is exactly how project managers develop the cost baseline. Each Work Package carries a cost estimate. Together, they roll up into the full project budget.
Skip this step, and you’re just guessing. That’s how budgets get blown.
In real life, LEGO designers face tradeoffs too.
Maybe a tower design requires a brick that doesn’t exist. That forces a scope change. Maybe too many specialty parts drive the set’s price up. That changes cost. Maybe rearranging steps makes the castle sturdier. That changes schedule.
Scope, schedule, and cost are constantly influencing each other. Integration is the name of the game. And the WBS holds it all together.
I worked with a team rolling out a new IT system. At first, it felt like that giant pile of random bricks my son joked about. Everyone had ideas, but no structure.
When we built a WBS, things clicked.
- One branch for infrastructure.
- One for training.
- One for data migration.
From there, we sequenced the work into a schedule and built a budget from the Work Packages. Chaos became order. Just like LEGO.
- Scope comes first. Define the vision, like the picture on the LEGO box.
- Break it down. Use WBS to move from big idea to specific deliverables.
- Work Packages matter. This is where resources, cost, and effort are defined.
- Sequence activities. The schedule provides order and confidence.
- Estimate cost. Work Packages roll into a realistic budget.
- Integrate constantly. Scope, schedule, and cost live together, not apart.
LEGO makes building magical because it provides structure: vision, breakdown, sequence, and cost control.
That’s exactly what project management does.
Because whether you’re building Hogwarts on your kitchen table or delivering a multimillion-dollar initiative, success doesn’t come from dumping out bricks and hoping for the best.
It comes from structure — from starting with the vision, breaking it into Work Packages, and building step by step until the vision comes alive.
