Software Journal

Some of the project management tool (FogBugz, for instance) do not support dependencies between tasks in a project. Other project management tools (MS Project, for instance) encourage dependencies and have a significant Gantt charting component. There are good arguments both ways.

Dependencies on the code level typically do not exist in current architectures. For example, if you are writing a ChessCalculator and I am writing a ChessGame.jsp that uses the calculator to make the next move, then I can just write a template calculator class (which returns say the first valid move) and continue with my work. No real dependency here.

Sometimes, real dependencies do exist. To make sure we find real (and not contrived) dependencies, I looked up my current enterprise project plan, and found the following dependencies:

“Operations Reports on 3.8″ (a 2 week task) depends on “Reports requirement 3.8″, which is a 3 day task, which depends on “Version 3.8 System Delivery”. The assumption is that the reports (which run on Crystal) can be easily developed once the requirements (layout, columns) have been identified with the client. However, the client does not want to schedule time for that until the working system has been delivered.

This is a bit difficult to model without using the dependencies.