Dependency Management Best Practise

Matt Tench Experienced Project & Programme Manager| Freelance Geneva, Switzerland

I’m working on setting up a PMO for a large organisation, engaged in a large programme with many work-packages that have a lot of inter dependencies in terms of deliverables (gives) and required products (gets).

The work-packages have submitted plans in which these are all called out, and the project plan captures the dependency information in text fields (give or get/ target or source work-package/ project phase they deliver from or to).

Constraints:

1) In most cases the names of the gives and gets to not match up from plan to plan (although they are the same scope item).

2) The work-package ‘gives’ do not always match a desired ‘get’ elsewhere in the plan. This can be either through an abstraction of specific deliverables to a more rolled up line item, or bad planning on the part of the work-packages.

The problem is going to be managing these going forward. Does anyone have any best practise or successful ways of managing and tracking these?

Saving Changes...

Posted: Mar 20, 2006 10:47 AM

Sort By:

Michael Wood Project Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent Contractor Gig Harbor, Wa, United States

A master dependency chart would help. Plus a common tool and terminology for all projects, preferably one that codifies dependancies. Good Luck

Posted: Mar 21, 2006 1:24 PM

Matt Tench Experienced Project & Programme Manager| Freelance Geneva, Switzerland

Thanks Michael.

I had reached the same conclusions, but did not want to lead anyone in their answer.

Can I ask specifically what formats & tools have you had success with for dependency management (storing and maintaining individual projects data and amalgamating them into a master)?

I have looked at the out of the box MS Project linking and external dependency functions, and found they broke easily and quickly.

Has anyone tried Project Server for this?

I would be interested in alternative views as well. This is an increasing problem as the programmes and projects we manage increase in complexity and participants.

Saving Changes...

Posted: Mar 23, 2006 6:28 AM

Michael Wood Project Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent Contractor Gig Harbor, Wa, United States

HI Matt
A good CIO friend of mine is having great success wih MS Project Server in managing his portfolio... He showed me what he is doing just a few weeks ago and I must say I was impressed. Still some kinks to work out but overall a real improvement.

Posted: Mar 24, 2006 3:02 PM

Please login or join to reply

Dependency Management Best Practise

Sponsors

Vendor Events

Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data

Newsletters