Two Views of a Project

Every project in GreenVee has two parallel descriptions, and understanding the difference between them is one of the most important things you can learn about the system.

The first is the work plan — an ordered breakdown of the work that needs to happen: who does what, in what order, by when. The second is the technical structure — a description of the physical thing being built: which components, how they connect, what specifications they must meet.

These two views sit side by side. Neither is a child of the other. Both hang directly off the project.

The work plan (Spine A)

The work plan is a hierarchy of containers that break the project’s work into progressively smaller pieces:

Project
  └── Segment          (major phase or area of work)
        └── Task Package   (a related cluster of tasks)
              └── Task       (a concrete unit of work, assigned to a Project Member)
                    └── Subtask  (optional finer breakdown)

Alongside tasks, the work plan holds Milestones (fixed points in time that mark a delivery or commitment) and Gates (checkpoints with pass/fail conditions that govern whether the project is ready to advance). Both milestones and gates live at the project or segment level, not inside tasks.

The work plan answers questions like: “What are we doing this week?”, “Who owns this deliverable?”, “What is blocked?”, “Are we on schedule?”

The technical structure (Spine B)

The technical structure is a description of the installation or system the project will deliver. It is organized as a tree of Nodes, each representing a physical location, subsystem, or component. Attached to each node are Required Goods — the materials, devices, or equipment that must be installed there — along with their technical Specifications.

Project
  └── Technical Structure
        └── Node              (location, system, or component)
              └── Required Good    (what must be installed here)
                    └── Specification  (technical requirements)

The technical structure answers questions like: “What does the finished system look like?”, “Which cabinet goes in which location?”, “What are the technical requirements for this component?”

The metaphor: recipe vs. dish

Think of it this way: the work plan is the recipe — the steps, the sequence, the people responsible, the time it takes. The technical structure is the dish — the ingredients, the components, the finished thing that will be handed over to the customer.

You need both to run a project well. The recipe tells the team what to do. The description of the dish tells the engineers what to build and tells the customer what they are getting.

Caution

These two views are easy to confuse when you are new to GreenVee. A task like “install cabinet A” lives in the work plan. Cabinet A itself — its node, its required goods, its specs — lives in the technical structure. The task and the node are related in meaning but are separate records in the system.

For Project Managers

Your primary view is the work plan — segments, task packages, tasks, milestones, and gates. That is where schedules are set, people are assigned, and progress is tracked.

For Engineers

Your primary view is the technical structure — the node tree, required goods, and specifications. That is where you define what the project will actually deliver in physical terms.

The other three spines

A GreenVee project has five structural spines in total. The two described above are the most architecturally distinct, but the other three also attach directly to the project:

Spine	Name	What it holds
A	Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)	Segments, task packages, tasks, subtasks, milestones, gates
B	Plant / Technical Structure	Node tree, required goods, specifications
C	People and Time	Project Members, planned hours, bookings, time entries
D	Money	Budget, cost items, cost occurrences, procurement orders
E	Materials	Goods and variants consumed on tasks, stock movements

Spines C, D, and E are covered in depth in their own sections of the docs:

• People, Skills and Teams
• Time and Calendar
• Money
• Materials, Equipment and Warehouse

See The Five Spines in the reference section for a complete overview.

How the two main views connect

While the work plan and technical structure are structurally independent, they are linked through materials usage: a task in the work plan can record that it consumed specific goods from the technical structure. This is how GreenVee connects the “doing” side (tasks) to the “building” side (components). See Materials, Equipment and Warehouse for details.