to Visualize Project Interrelationships
ADVISORY ARTICLE
By Devin Partida
New York, USA
Dependency mapping can be an effective project management tool if decision-makers play to its strengths. Those using it strategically can visualize interrelationships in workflows, giving them insight into their processes’ scope, speed and risk.
The Benefits of Using Dependency Mapping for Projects
Dependency mapping uncovers the relationships between teams, resources, deliverables and tasks, enabling project managers to identify potential bottlenecks early on. For example, instead of pausing progress while waiting for materials to be delivered, they’ll know to place their order one week in advance, mitigating a delay.
A comprehensive overview tells them how much time and how many resources they need to progress, ensuring they can allot an adequate amount for each step. Optimizing allocation helps leaders ensure they don’t go over budget or experience unexpected delays, streamlining their workflow and potentially increasing their time to completion.
Visualization helps reduce miscommunications. It makes data points more accessible to clients, stakeholders and non-technical team members, ensuring minor details aren’t overlooked. While documenting dependencies in a traditional text-based format technically works, it often results in unspoken confusion and misunderstandings.
Dependency mapping benefits staff just as much as project managers. Approximately 29% of employees agree a lack of visibility is a significant productivity obstacle, underscoring the importance of making process status accessible. Elevating their level of oversight to ensure minor details aren’t overlooked is among the easiest ways to increase efficiency.
Clearly illustrating how each task and milestone are interconnected establishes a singular, unambiguous progression path, improving interdepartmental communication. Teams that share knowledge and objectives coordinate better and interact more effectively, meaning no more quick check-ins or clarifying questions on subject matter that should be fundamental.
Using Dependency Maps to Visualize Interrelationships
Administrators must identify all internal and external dependencies to define interrelationships between every element within the work’s scope. Is a delay inevitable if a critical team member takes a sick day? Will a client’s feedback on deliverables affect the timeline? Even if these variables aren’t within their control, they must account for them.
Those working on multiple jobs simultaneously must consider interdependencies — also known as cross-project dependencies — to determine how the completion of one could affect another. Identifying correlations between these variables involves understanding why they affect one another and what can be done.
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How to cite this article: Partida, D. (2024). Using Dependency Mapping to Visualize Project Interrelationships, PM World Journal, Vol. XIII, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/pmwj145-Sep2024-Partida-Using-Dependency-Mapping.pdf
About the Author
Devin Partida
New York, USA
Devin Partida is an editor and writer currently residing in Upstate New York. She is the Editor-in-Chief of ReHack.com and is especially interested in writing about business operations and BizTech topics. Devin’s work has been featured on Entrepreneur, Forbes and Nasdaq.com. She can be contacted at devin@rehack.com
