A dependency in project management is a link among project's terminal elements.
There are four kinds of dependencies with respect to ordering terminal elements (in order of decreasing frequency of use):
- Finish to start (FS)
- Finish to finish (FF)
- Start to finish (SF)
- Start to start (SS).
There are three kinds of depencies with respect to the reason for the existence of dependency:
- It is impossible to edit a text before it is wrtitten
- It is illogical to pour concrete before you dig the foundations
- It is logically possible to paint four walls in a room simultaneously but there is only one painter
Traditional critical path-derived schedules are based only on causal (logical) dependencies. The critical chain method necessitates taking into account resource constaint-derived dependencies as well.
See also: project planning
In computer science, dependency is a state that one object uses a functionality of another object. This may cause changes on implementation of one object can affect that of another object. Information hiding is a way to eliminate dependency to limit influence of changes and improve moduality.
