MS Project Tips : Maintain a section to track your external dependencies

Project Managers are always playing around with dependencies. It could be dependencies with your vendors or suppliers or peer teams or project team members.

In reality , you will hardly find a project without dependencies. If not external definitely we will have internal ones.

There will be deliverables from parties who are beyond your span of control. But your deliverables will have dependencies on those. Any delay can impact your project.

The following can help in managing those

1. During project planing stage identify your dependencies also.
2. Create a Summary task in MS Project and capture your dependencies under that.
3. On the tasks which are under your scope & control, set the predecessor field to appropriate tasks captured under your dependency summary task.
4. It’s a good practice to set a finish date for the external dependencies. To do that, you need to work backwards. Look at the task which has a dependency on the external dependency. Use your  judgment and identify a delayed start date, the task can absorb without jeopardising the overall project time lines. ( That start date – ‘y’ number of days ) would be your external dependency’s finish date. Choose ‘y’  based on your comfort level.
5. Utilize the project review calls to keep a tab on the progress by external teams. You can raise a flag based on the info you have captured on the dependency and your task as in step(4)

Related articles

• Task Dependencies Help Manage the Interconnections in Project Plans (workzone.com)
• Project Controls, Part 2- Controlling Schedules and Budgets (vistage.com)

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