Tracking Task Dependencies

Creating a schedule with the Task and Schedule tool, and tracking your progress with earned value, is an excellent way to stay on track and deliver your work on time. But when you are working as part of a team, it is also important to coordinate with your team members. This is especially true if your team member needs to use something that you are producing (or vice versa). To facilitate this type of coordination, the dashboard will allow you to define and track task dependencies. Note: if you are not working as a member of a team, you probably don't need to declare task dependencies.

Task dependencies are a way of stating, "this task cannot start until those tasks are finished." You can define dependencies between tasks that appear in earned value schedules. Once defined, the dashboard will help you to track the status of these dependencies, as described below. However, the presence of dependencies does not currently alter the earned value calculations in any way. In particular, the dashboard does not use these dependencies to perform any sort of critical path analysis. If you use "Flat View" to specify task order, the dashboard does not prevent you from reordering tasks before their predecessors. These capabilities may be added in the future. But at the current time, task dependencies are simply a way of showing you the information you need in order to coordinate with your teammates more effectively.

There are two different ways you can define task dependencies:

Most teams will use the first approach almost exclusively.

Once you've defined a task dependency, the dashboard will display icons to indicate the presence and status of dependent tasks. If a task has a dependency, one of the following icons will be displayed:

??? This depends on at least one other task, but status information for that task is not available.
 
This depends on at least one other task that still has not been completed.
 
This depends on at least one other task that still has not been completed - and unfortunately, it does not look like the dependent task(s) will be ready as soon as you need them to be.*
 
All of the dependencies for this task have been completed.
 
Other people are waiting for you to complete this task, and/or collaborating with you on the task itself.
 
Other people are waiting for you to complete this task - and unfortunately, it does not look like you will complete this task in time to meet their needs.*

These icons are displayed in the "Dep" column of the task list when it appears in the Task and Schedule window, the earned value report, or the earned value weekly view. In addition, the icon will be displayed on the main dashboard window when you select a task that has a related dependency:

You can place your mouse over these icons for detailed status information. (When you see a dependency icon in your web browser, you'll need to click as well.) The detailed status will show you all the dependent tasks (if there is more than one), the completion status of each, the names of the individuals assigned to the task, the projected** completion date, and the task's percentage complete.

Misordered Dependencies

As described above, task dependencies are a way of stating, "this task cannot start until those tasks are finished." Accordingly, when task dependencies are present, it becomes necessary to work on tasks in a particular order.

However, the dashboard does not perform any critical path analysis on your task dependencies, and it does not attempt to compute the optimal order in which tasks should be performed. Thus, you must collaborate with your teammates to determine the best task order.

Once you decide which tasks you will be working on first, second, etc, you should use the flat view of your task list to record this order in the dashboard. The dashboard will then use this order to compute projected completion dates for each task.

Once all team members have performed this step, the dashboard will compare the projected** task dates to see if any dependent tasks have been placed out of order. For example, imagine the following scenario:

Obviously, the tasks are misordered! In this case, Person A would see a yellow warning sign next to Task A, with a message "Other individuals need this task earlier than it is projected to finish." Person B would see a red warning sign next to Task B, with a message "This dependent task is not projected to finish in time."

When you see these warning icons, it is a sign that you need to coordinate with your team members to resolve the problem! It is possible that the other individual just hasn't bothered to record the task order in their flat view yet. Or, it could be an indication of a serious scheduling problem. Either way, a conversation with your team member is in order. If your team uses task dependencies, it is best for each team member to use flat view faithfully so the dashboard can provide the most useful information for team collaboration.

Dependency Dates

By default, the dashboard uses the calculated "Replan" date as the "Projected" date for dependency tracking purposes. This means:

The "Replan" date is a good choice for dependency tracking purposes because it takes actual data into account, but is not typically as volatile as the forecast date. If you prefer to use "Plan" or "Forecast" dates for dependency tracking purposes instead, specify a value for the ev.dependencies.compareDates setting in the preferences editor.