Ideated decades ago in the context of big military projects, work packages today mostly emerge from guesswork. In many organizations, they are fabricated to meet proposal deadlines, etched in contracts, and treated as the ultimate truth. Work packages frequently lack connection to real Product Breakdown Structures (PBS), detaching planned work from what’s being built. When work breakdown structures don’t mirror the system’s physical structure, problems appear everywhere, particularly in domains that cross-cut the system hierarchy. These issues point to a deeper lax definition of parts, wholes and taxonomies, leading to badly-defined hierarchies and a great deal of confusion.