Workitem Relationships

Hi – I’m just starting out w/LP. I think it’s pretty nice software so far, but I’m wondering how you establish relationships between workitems beyond what’s implicitly defined by the workitem owner.

For example, can I have a workitem “Write requirements for Iteration 2 use cases” be dependent on “Reprioritize Iteration 2 Use Case Inventory”, even if the two workitems are owned by different person?

It’s the same idea as a straight dependency in MS Project … but of course that uses fixed end dates which are nicely removed in LP.

Let me know

Dave

I’ve been using LP for about a week and for me this is the standout “omission” in what is otherwise a seriously good product (I would have posted this to the forums but I was having some difficulties in logging in here). You guys may have plans to introduce it, or it’s there and I can’t see it or you may have a philosophical explanation for the “omission” but I’d be glad to see your comments.

Denis

We have avoided implementing explicit cross person dependencies up to this point since we found that implicit dependencies actually captured most of what we needed as a team. We’ve actually been using LiquidPlanner to plan LiquidPlanner. With that in mind… I happen to see an explicit dependencies workitem at the top of our list right now ;)

This is an evolving product and I’m keeping an eye out for anything that will help you guys plan your projects better, so keep letting us know what you would like to see.

Adam,
Thanks for the feedback, but I think Dave earlier encapsulated the issue and I’ll try to restate it:
Person X is doing Task 1
Task 2 (whoever does it) is logically dependent on Task 1 being marked or declared as “Done”
Therefore the earliest start date for Task 2 is the declared finish date of Task 1
(In parentheses, logically, the role of Person X or any other Person is immaterial – the relationship exists only between the tasks)
Logically, this means fluidity: in essence I can’t know, estimate or guarantee when my project will finish until I know that Task 1 is complete (or I have a new estimate for it, because whoever is doing Task 2 may have a good probabilistic estimate but needs to know the likely start date for that estimate)

Does that make sense? I mean what I say; this is cool and promising software. But how about this point?

Regards,

Denis

Absolutely Denis, in fact we are working on implementing explicit dependencies as I type.