Dependency management

Success for agile software teams revolves around collaboration, flexibility, and efficiency. Whether you're a coach or Release Train Engineer supporting multiple teams, or a scrum master or engineer aiming for improvement within your team, honing your dependency management skills will boost efficiency and productivity.

While dependencies often seem like hurdles, here's an insight: they can be a powerful strategic tool to enhance your agile team's performance. In this post, we'll explore how you can leverage dependencies to guide your team towards greater efficiency and success.

Agile Team Autonomy

At the heart of agile is the concept of autonomy and self-management. It's all about empowering teams to own the end-to-end delivery of their work with minimal dependencies. This means optimizing their workflow rather than relying on other teams to deliver value to users. When teams need to depend on others, the flow of work becomes less predictable.

In larger, more complex companies, dependencies are often unavoidable due to the sheer size and intricacy of systems. The real challenge is transforming these dependencies into opportunities for improvement rather than roadblocks. By improving the visibility of these dependencies, teams can better understand them, prioritize and sequence work effectively and manage delivery planning and execution more efficiently.

More than one-third of agile teams report that team silos and the delays that result are a problem

17th State of Agile Report, Digital.AI

Dependency visualization

Improving the visibility of dependencies starts with open communication and transparency. When team members are comfortable sharing their tasks and challenges, you create a culture of trust and collaboration. This transparency is critical for identifying dependencies early and managing them effectively.

Software that allows teams to map out dependencies clearly can be a great tool for improving the visibility of work, making it easier to track their status and plan accordingly. Regularly updating and reviewing the dependencies you've mapped keeps everyone on the same page and helps you anticipate potential bottlenecks before they occur.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is a user-friendly app that integrates seamlessly with Jira to support team planning, which includes visualizing dependencies. You can display dependencies by type and risk, and see dependencies both within your team and with other teams.

Dependency Patterns

Once you're able to see dependencies clearly, you might recognize patterns forming. These dependency patterns can show where a team is relying too heavily or too dependent on another team to deliver work.

Consistent bottlenecks highlight opportunities for improvement, like a change in team composition. When you notice these patterns, it's essential to reassess and implement strategies to become more self-reliant, ensuring a smoother flow of work and improved delivery timelines.

Prioritizing and Sequencing Work

Once dependencies are identified and made visible, you can improve the flow of work by organizing tasks in a sequence that avoids work being delayed by other tasks. Not all tasks carry the same weight or urgency, and understanding the critical path—the sequence of tasks that determines the fastest time to deliver value—can help focus efforts where they are needed most.

Sequencing work thoughtfully ensures that dependent tasks are tackled in the right order, minimizing delays and rework. This strategic approach to task management not only enhances team efficiency but also supports a smoother workflow and avoids delivery being derailed at the last minute.

Better Collaboration

By identifying and visualizing dependencies, you spot bottlenecks early, re-prioritize tasks, and manage delivery plans effectively. More importantly, it empowers your team to take complete ownership of their tasks while constantly improving their workflows.

Remember, every dependency is a piece of a larger puzzle that holds the potential to boost your team's efficiency. By understanding and managing these dependencies proactively, you can ensure smoother workflows, fewer roadblocks, and a highly efficient agile team.

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How organized are your Jira boards? On the scale of “well-thought-user-stories-beautifully-prioritized-by-customer-value” to “the-digital-equivalent-of-a-90’s-era-laminate-desk-cluttered-by-sticky-notes-and-old-coffee-cups”, where do yours sit?

It might be time to find a tool to help you whip your Jira issues into shape. And the best way to keep things in shape is to visualize the work in one place.

Read on for tips and to see how Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps you prioritize work effectively.

Visual task management

Put simply, when you can see something clearly, it’s easier to understand and manage. Enter: visual task management.

Visual task management uses boards to display and track work, which can give you a view of complex project tasks that makes it easier to comprehend.

For those of us who work in Jira, well yes we can see our epics, stories and tasks on the screen, but it isn’t always clear how they relate to each other.

That’s where a tool like a User Story Map, such as the one in Easy Agile TeamRhythm, offers so much value.

Get to the benefits

Giving yourself the ability to visualize your work comes with a long list of benefits. When your whole team can see the work laid out before them, communication is easier and teamwork can improve.

1. Consistent communication

Local and remote teams can see the same view of work from any location. Epics across the backbone with linked issues lined up beneath. When work is added or changed, you still have a central source of truth that is shared by everyone, no matter where they’re located.

2. A time-saving tool

Sprint or version planning is quick and easy when team members have all the information they need in a single view. Planning is much easier when initiatives, epics, user stories and subtasks along with story points and goals, can all be seen in one place.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm provides this all-in-one view, along with the ability to create and estimate new issues on the story map, and sequence them with drag and drop. Easy.

3. Avoid unexpected roadblocks

Ever had a release derailed by an unexpected dependency? For a smooth and dependable release, you need visibility of issues that are dependent on others.

We’ve made it easy to visualize the dependencies between issues on the TeamRhythm User Story Map, so you can avoid unexpected delays and keep delivering value to your customers.

You can choose to see dependencies between issues that are on the same board (internal dependencies), and where one issue is on another board (external dependencies). This gives you a clear picture of how work should be prioritized so that you avoid roadblocks and manage delays before they become a problem.

Read more: Dependency lines on the TeamRhythm User Story Map >>

4. Productivity increases

Working life is better when you can see how your contribution makes a difference. When everyone in the team can see how their work is important, and ideas for how to do things better start to flow, that’s when you start smashing your goals.

We’ve designed Easy Agile TeamRhythm to help teams focus on continuous improvement. That is something for everyone to get excited about because the team leads with their ideas for how they can make their working life better. Turn those ideas into Jira issues in just a few clicks so you can put things into action in the very next sprint.

TeamRhythm helps you see what to do first

Laid out clearly in a User Story Map format, with the ability to overlay a map of dependency lines, TeamRhythm makes it really clear which issues need to be tackled first to make sure that you can keep delivering for your customers.

Everyone in the team has an instant view of their priorities. Communication is streamlined. Collaboration is simplified and productivity increases. Doesn’t that sound great?!

Watch a demo, learn about pricing, and try for yourself in our sandbox. Visit the Easy Agile TeamRhythm Features and Pricing page for more.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

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