Remove the “remaining” planned work/planned cost as if you were performing a baseline change, then mark the task 100% complete. That is, the effort completed will reflect the cost/work at the 50% progress.
If you *are* using baseline change management at your organization, prepare a spreadsheet showing the before and after change (% complete, cost, work) and use Notes to comment the history. You might then be able to assign the task’s remaining budget to another task.
Typically managers like the “birds on a wire” charts; i.e., milestones on one page. “OnePager” software is excellent for this. “Milestones Professonal” is more heavy duty, and is also excellent.
Extracting your milestones into Excel, and color coding and annotating works just as well as anything, and you get to be creative!
Ideally, the WBS should be created from a/the Statement of Work (SOW). Though this might be more applicable to aerospace/DoD projects, commercial projects may also employ a SOW or similar methodology to provide projects with formal user requirements. The sections in the SOW would link directly to the applicable sections in the schedule.
Further, the WBS ought to be directly linked to the cost management system as well (accounting charge numbers, project numbers, work packages & etc.).
Thus, an ideal WBS represents the project structure, from the customer’s point of view, and the program management/scheduling/cost management point of view(s).
