The project management term organizational breakdown structure (also referred to by the 3 letter acronym OBS) refers specifically to a tool that can be utilized by the project management team and or project management team leader in a hierarchal manner for the purposes of conducting and creating a thorough and clearly delineated depiction of the project organization for the purposes of creating an arrangement for the purposes of establishing a relationship between and among the various project related work packages as well as between those work packages and the project’s pre-defined performing organizational units. It is important to keep in mind that organizational breakdown structure is also written and recorded as organization breakdown structure with the same definition applied and typically using the same three letter anagram of OBS. The organizational breakdown structure should be established at the onset of the activity to help in the purposes of organization; however, it is possible to conduct this in an ongoing basis.
This term is defined in the 3rd and the 4th edition of the PMBOK.