Something About Dependency Management
I was reading a LinkedIn post by Klaus Leopold (Creator of Fligh Levels®). He started rising a question, “Is it better to eliminate dependencies rather than manage them?”, then I wanted to share my thoughts about Dependency Management.
IMO as Software Engineer and Agile Coach, there’s no way to truly eliminate dependencies, most of the cases you’re moving the dependencies some where else. So why we don’t assume the fact that we have dependencies and manage them instead of invest a lot of time and effort trying to “eliminate” dependencies?
Of course first thing you want to do is identify the dependencies and visualize them. That would be the first step, then you want to sequence the work in order to properly address the work without blockings. But that’s assumes you identified all the dependencies. A classic approach (at scale) is the big room planning. But let’s be honest, are we really able to identify everything in advance? Also, in many cases the “dependency management” ends in the big room planning. Then no body is managing (coordinating and supporting the teams in that regard) those dependencies (and the new ones neither).
The Flight Levels approach will help you to understand and manage your flow between teams (Level 2: End-to-end coordination), including dependencies as you could see in the post I’m sharing.
I also like the Dependency Management in Kanban. The Kanban method (in the Kaban Maturity Model) present a wide range of techniques to manage dependencies according to the nature of the decepedencies (it take in account context, organizational maturity, cost of delay and other factors).
Since Flight Levels is not a (Scaling) Framwork and it doesn’t not prescribe any framework, methodology or method, you could introduce different approaches and/or techniques. that better makes sense for in your organizational context. But seriously, take a look at the Kanban way!
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𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘋𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘒𝘢𝘯𝘣𝘢𝘯:
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝗮𝗻𝗯𝗮𝗻?
𝗦𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘍𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴:
