Building Smarter Cross Project Predecessors

[Adam_Bobrowski]

I'm looking for assistance in options for implementing Cross Project Predecessors in a way that is more automated.

For some background, the company I work for handles studies that can last for several years at a time. Different Functional lines have highly different involvement over the lifecycle of these overall projects with some only being involved in the startup or closeout phases of a study.

I have built dashboards that use identifier fields in custom forms to identify all the projects or help requests connected to a project. We're also looking at building in Milestone Paths to understand where each individual functional line is in their team's progress within the overall study.

We want to allow teams the flexibility to track, assign, and report out on their team member's workload but there is a need to understand dependencies and impacts with certain deliverables over the course of the overarching project. These are the two main questions I'm trying to answer right now.

1. Is there are better or easier way to create dependencies between connected projects other than manually adding Cross Project Predecessors at the task level?
2. If we use Cross Project Predecessors, how can we clearly and simply show which project or task is causing or has caused impacts to the overall timelines?
   
   

Please let me know if there's any other clarity I can help provide. Thank you!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore · Accepted solution]

Hi @Adam_Bobrowski,

Noting that (1) Cross Project Predecessors "is" the (only native) way to create dependencies between connected projects, in order to assess the source project / task timeline impacts (2), we invented our Timeline solution, which lets you choose one or more Critical Tasks, set their Path Colors, then view Timeline to trace the resulting multiple Critical Paths through all predecessors and feeder projects, so I invite you to consider it for your usecase. On a hunch (since you mentioned Functional lines), our Roadmap solution might also be of interest, too.

Regards,

Doug