If your work has ever been delayed because you need something from another team and their part hasn’t been completed yet, then you’re familiar with how frustrating and disruptive dependencies can be. If dependencies aren’t eliminated or mitigated, they can lead to bottlenecks, delays, and misalignment, which hinders your company’s overall progress.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to resolve dependencies if you aren’t able to identify potential dependencies in the first place. Agile teams need a clear way to understand dependencies as they plan their initiatives in order to eliminate and mitigate structural impediments in their workflow.
Dependency mapping is the perfect practice to help teams understand, proactively eliminate, and, if necessary, manage dependencies. The primary purpose of dependency mapping is to enhance clarity among teams by providing a clear visualization of how all the different elements of a workflow rely on each other.
Keep reading to learn how to create a dynamic dependency map and, ultimately, boost efficiency and agility across your organization.
What is dependency mapping?
Dependency mapping is an activity conducted to create a dependency map, which is a visual representation of the relationships, or dependencies, between elements within a project, initiative, or system. Since various work elements often rely on one another, dependencies can deeply impact teams as they aim to deliver high-quality value for customers. For example, someone on another team may need to complete their part for a specific initiative before your team can begin its work.
Mapping out these dependencies helps you see how work elements are related to each other and how structural impediments might occur within your workflow. You’ll also be able to see the exact points where you’ll need to collaborate with other teams. Dependency mapping should happen during the very beginning stages of planning—such as during big room planning or sprint planning.
By using dependency maps, Agile teams can determine the best action to take to address structural impediments. Teams typically follow this three-step process when dealing with dependencies:
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Eliminate. The first and best option is to eliminate the dependency entirely. As you map dependencies, ask if the dependency is truly necessary in the first place. It may be possible to further break down the work or restructure teams in order to prevent the dependency from occurring.
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Mitigate. If a dependency can't be eliminated, then consider whether it can be mitigated by substituting it with a less impactful dependency. Can you implement a temporary solution that creates a less impactful relationship between work elements? Is there an architectural change that can replace a dependency with a more manageable one?
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Manage. After attempting elimination and mitigation, the focus turns to managing remaining dependencies that can’t be avoided or substituted.
However, you can’t eliminate, mitigate, or manage what you don’t understand in the first place—which is where dependency mapping comes in. In order to understand dependencies, you first need to visualize them.
How to visualize dependencies
To visualize your workflow, you can use charts and diagrams such as:
Once you’ve visualized your workflow, you can map relationships—or dependencies—between tasks by drawing arrows to connect elements of work that rely on each other in order to achieve full completion. Each arrow represents a dependency. You can color code arrows and indicate direction to show which element is dependent on others.
In some systems of record, such as backlog management tools, it can be difficult—or even impossible—to visualize these dependencies. The best way to visualize dependencies is through dependency mapping in a visual collaboration platform.
The good news is, in the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite, you can easily map out dependency data in real time that automatically syncs with your existing system of record. By creating a dependency map in Lucid, you not only enhance understanding among your team but also illustrate the relationship between teams within your organization. You can keep a record of dependencies in your workflow, update your maps in real time, and easily share your discoveries with other teams.
