External dependencies in project management examples
Project Management Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for project managers. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. A given project team may have a dependency on an external team in order to complete work on their own project. The Boeing Dreamliner project is probably an excellent example of a large project that depended on company A to develop widgets, company B to develop sprockets, both of which were key dependencies for the "assemble the airplane" project.
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How dependency mapping can lead to better project outcomes
Society and life in general is highly interconnected, and everything that happens usually affects something else, whether directly or indirectly. For instance, an election in the United States might have an effect on fuel prices in Kenya. Similarly, it is possible for an occurrence in China to have an effect on the New York Stock Exchange. Just like in society, tasks and activities within a project are highly interconnected and will affect other tasks and activities , both directly and indirectly.
In project management, such relationships are referred to as dependencies. Project dependencies are relationships between two or more project tasks and activities where the successful initiation or completion of one task or activity is dependent on another task being initiated or completed.
In this case, coding and development is dependent on wireframing and design. Dependencies are very important in project management. Poor management of project dependencies can easily lead to inefficient work, backlogs, late project completion, and budget overruns. In some cases, poorly managed project dependencies can lead to total failure of the whole project. These are factors that prevent a project task or activity from moving forward until the blocker is eliminated, fixed, or worked around.
Blockers can be internal or external, and can be within or outside your control. For instance, before you can start working on a construction project, you need building permits from relevant authorities. In this case, the building permits are blockers. The construction work will not move forward until you obtain the necessary permits.
Bottlenecks are resources that have lower output capacity than the demand placed on them at a given time. As a result, bottlenecks end up slowing the initiation or completion of the next task or activity. Machine A to fill the bottles with soda, machine B to add caps to the filled bottles, and machine C to pack the bottles into crates ready for transportation. If machine A has a capacity of bottles a minute, while machine B has a capacity of bottles a minute, machine A is a bottleneck, since it affects the productivity of machine B.
Even if you increase the capacity of machine A, final throughput will still remain at 80 bottles a minute. Constraints are factors that introduce boundaries within which a project has to be executed. Constraints affect the performance of the entire project. In our previous example, machine C is a constraint, because it limits how many bottles the entire factory can produce in a minute.
This means that constraints are bottlenecks, but bottlenecks are not necessarily constraints. Also referred to as causal dependencies, these are relationships between tasks where the dependency is inherent. It is impossible for the dependent task or activity to be initiated until the other task is initiated or completed. Due to their inherent nature, logical dependencies cannot be avoided or executed in parallel. They represent the natural flow of tasks, and avoiding a task or step within the process will result in project failure.
For instance, if you are constructing a house, you cannot start digging the foundation until you complete the architectural designs. You cannot start constructing the walls until you complete the foundation. You cannot install the doors and windows until the walls are complete. All these are examples of logical dependencies, because each step within the process relies on the output of the preceding step.
Resource-based dependencies describe relationships between two tasks without a logical dependence, but which are reliant on the same resource for completion. The shared resource creates a constraint or bottleneck between the two activities. However, you only have one skilled carpenter, who is already working on the bed.
In this case, construction of the table is dependent on construction of the bed, since the table will only be built after the carpenter is done working on the bed. Resource dependencies extend beyond human resources. For instance, if you need to paint two cars, but you have only one painting booth, the second car will only be painted after the first one has been painted.
Since resource dependencies do not have a logical dependency between them, this means that without the shared resource, it would be possible for such activities or tasks to be completed in parallel. In the above examples, for instance, if you have two skilled carpenters, both the table and the bed can be built at the same time.
Similarly, if you have two painting booths, both cars can be painted simultaneously. Preferential dependencies that are based on the preferences of the project team or stakeholders, industry standards, convenience, or best practice.
In most cases, preferential practices are introduced with the aim of enhancing the quality of the project deliverables. This means that preferential dependencies are not an absolute must.
If you so wish, you can ignore preferential dependencies and keep the project moving forward, but then this could potentially lead to quality problems at the end of the project.
For instance, in the construction industry, industry standards require that a slab should be allowed to cure for at least 28 days. This industry standard is not an absolute must. There are some contractors who allow slab curing in less time, but this could potentially compromise the strength of the slab.
If a project team decides to follow the industry standard, this introduces a preferential dependency for other activities that are reliant on the slab being completed before they can be initiated. External dependencies describe situations where the initiation or completion of a task is dependent on factors that are outside the control of the project manager or project team. Some external dependencies, however, are impossible to anticipate and account for. For example, if a project requires some raw materials that will be supplied by an external supplier, this creates an external dependency.
If the supplier delays the delivery of the materials, this will result in a delay on the project. The same applies for projects that require approvals from state or federal agencies.
In the above examples, the project manager knows that these external dependencies exist. In such situations, a skilled project manager will put in place measures to properly manage the dependency with minimal risk to the project. For instance, when the Covid 19 pandemic broke out, many countries locked down their borders. If you had a project that was dependent on materials from another country, for instance, the movement restrictions would introduce an unexpected external dependency into the project.
Sometimes, projects involve multiple teams. This is particularly common in large projects or large organizations. In such situations, there is huge risk for cross-team dependencies. Cross-team dependencies occur when the actions of one team could potentially affect the initiation or completion of a different project task or activity by another team. The design team has to wait for the engineering team to complete the product development before they can come up with product graphics, videos, and other marketing material.
The marketing team in turn has to wait for the design team to complete the marketing material before they can start marketing the new product online. This relationship creates a situation where delays in one team will cause delays in the activities of the other teams and ultimately affect the entire project.
To properly manage project dependencies, you need to first understand the relationships between the dependent activities and how they affect each other. Generally, there are four types of relationships in project dependencies….
Logical dependencies typically have a finish to start relationship. With a finish to start dependency, one activity has to be completed satisfactorily before the successor activity can be initiated.
This is usually due to the fact that the successor task uses the output of the preceding task as an input. For example, if you are making a cake, you have to finish preparing the dough before you can put it in the oven to bake.
A finish to finish dependency describes a relationship where one task can only be completed after the preceding task has been completed. For example, writing an article has to be completed before editing can be completed. Editing can start while writing is ongoing, or after the whole article is completed, but it can only be completed after writing is completed. Here, the successor task can only be initiated after the preceding task has also been initiated.
Going back to the previous example, editing can also be considered as having a start to start dependency on writing. You can wait until the article is complete before you start editing, or you can start editing while other sections of the article are being written, but you can only start editing after writing has started, not before. Start to finish dependency occurs where one task can only be completed successfully after another task has been initiated. The best example of a start to finish dependency is seen in shift work schedules.
The outgoing shift worker can only finish their shift after the relief worker comes in and starts their shift. Dependencies are inevitable in projects. Every project manager, therefore, needs to be highly skilled in identifying and managing project dependencies. Proper identification and management of project dependencies lowers project risk, while at the same time improving the quality of project deliverables. The answer to this question will vary from one project to another, depending on the specific conditions and requirements of each particular project.
That said, however, there are some dependency management strategies that are applicable to most projects. Before you can properly manage dependencies, you need to be aware of the dependencies in the first place. The first thing you need to do, therefore, is to go through your project plan and project workflow and identify any possible instances where dependencies might occur. The best way to do this is to visualize your project workflow using Gantt chart software or Kanban visualization tools.
Visualizing your workflow in the form of Gantt charts or Kanban boards allows you to see how different activities and tasks in your project plan relate to each other, thus helping bring all dependencies to the fore. Communication is therefore very important when managing project dependencies. First, you need to talk to the team members whose tasks create the dependencies. Make it clear to them that other project tasks are dependent on what they are handling, and explain exactly how their work will affect the rest of the project.
Using team collaboration software can also increase transparency and make everyone aware of how their work affects the work of other team members. Check in with them regularly to ensure that their work is moving smoothly at all times. Aside from communicating with the project team, you also need to communicate with the project stakeholders and make them aware of the dependencies that exist within the project, and how they could potentially affect the project. Explaining the project dependencies to stakeholders keeps everyone on the same page and prevents surprises in the event that a dependency causes delay to the project.
The reason why managing dependencies is so crucial is because dependencies create risks to the project. To avoid project dependencies from turning into project risks, you need to identify and track the risks associated with each dependency.
For the app to work, it needs to tap into a database that is currently being built by a different team, creating a dependency between your work, and the database development team.
Dependencies Management
When your code uses external packages, those packages distributed as modules become dependencies. Over time, you may need to upgrade them or replace them. Go provides dependency management tools that help you keep your Go applications secure as you incorporate external dependencies. This topic describes how to perform tasks to manage dependencies you take on in your code. You can perform most of these with Go tools. This topic also describes how to perform a few other dependency-related tasks you might find useful.
What are Dependencies in Project Management?
Society and life in general is highly interconnected, and everything that happens usually affects something else, whether directly or indirectly. For instance, an election in the United States might have an effect on fuel prices in Kenya. Similarly, it is possible for an occurrence in China to have an effect on the New York Stock Exchange. Just like in society, tasks and activities within a project are highly interconnected and will affect other tasks and activities , both directly and indirectly. In project management, such relationships are referred to as dependencies. Project dependencies are relationships between two or more project tasks and activities where the successful initiation or completion of one task or activity is dependent on another task being initiated or completed. In this case, coding and development is dependent on wireframing and design. Dependencies are very important in project management. Poor management of project dependencies can easily lead to inefficient work, backlogs, late project completion, and budget overruns. In some cases, poorly managed project dependencies can lead to total failure of the whole project.
Managing dependencies using the Swift Package Manager
In project management , identifying and handling a variety of dependencies is one of the most important tasks team leaders will manage. The challenge is that dependencies in project management are often complex. There are different types of dependencies that need to be considered in different project phases. Project dependencies, also known as task dependencies , are the order in which tasks should be performed. They allow you to work out the optimal order for the project, giving the fastest route through the work.
Task Dependencies for Better Project Management
Everything and everyone is dependent on something or someone. Your summer trip depends on weather and cheap airplane tickets; your colleagues and you are dependent on salary; your working online program highly depends on specific plugins, and so on. Nothing and no one works completely independently. If we apply this thought to Agile project management , we will see that it a project also has dependencies. Project managers in any organization think about project dependencies as about the bane. In order to succeed, project managers must counter dependencies in a proper way dealing with different tasks, issues, events, activities, exceptions, uncertainty, and constraints.
Managing Dependencies in Scrum
September 01, Category Project Management. Everyone is dependent on something or the other. Whether it is a child who relies on the parents, employees dependent on the salary, and motivation, in IT the program depends on libraries or plugins, etc. So no one works completely independently. Even in project management, there are dependencies. The project manager faces these dependencies and must counter them to be successful.
Dependencies are logical relationships between project activities. The dependencies of tasks mean that you cannot proceed to another task if the first task is not finished yet. In project management, it is important for the team to deliver projects in a sequential manner. Understanding dependencies are crucial to creating a strong project schedule.
This chapter is part of the Mix and OTP guide and it depends on previous chapters in this guide. For more information, read the introduction guide or check out the chapter index in the sidebar. However, instead of adding more code to the kv application, we are going to build the TCP server as another application that is a client of the kv application. Since the whole runtime and Elixir ecosystem are geared towards applications, it makes sense to break our projects into smaller applications that work together rather than building a big, monolithic app. Before creating our new application, we must discuss how Mix handles dependencies.
Implementation and consulting services from our team of experts. See how other teams have successfully reached their goals using LiquidPlanner. Gain helpful industry tips, insights, and Project Management trends. Learn key strategies and methodologies for successful project management. Dear Elizabeth: The project I am working on is quite complex.
A dependency is a potential impediment. There are three general categories of dependencies that a scrum team will encounter, each becoming more challenging. The least challenging dependency scenario is where a single team has all the skills needed to produce a completed and potentially deployable product backlog item PBI. They have no external dependencies.
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In my opinion, you are wrong. Email me at PM.