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Featured Partners: Project Management Software
Introduction
As a project grows in size, the number of interactions and dependencies grow exponentially. Independent tasks become less and majority of tasks become more dependent on the completion of other tasks.
For instance, take the case of a product launch. The marketing team has to bring out its messaging and identify the channels in which take the message to its target market. The development team has to finish the product, QA team has to sign-off on the product quality, the support teams needs to be ready to field all the requests and PR team needs to be ready to pitch loudly.
At some point, it becomes very hard to manage all the interdependencies involved in the launch and there is a need for an elegant representation of the project dependencies.
This is where the Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) (also known as the Design Precedence Matrix or Problem Solving Matrix) comes in. Dependency structure Matrix (DSM) is a square matrix used to represent the project dependencies. A quick look at the DSM should convey what are the other tasks that are dependent on the output of a given task. Its visually compact way to represent complex systems is one of its biggest advantages. The DSM is widely used in engineering projects that exhibit feedback loops and cyclic dependencies.
Industries such as property development, construction, aerospace, automotive and semiconductors actively use the DSM for their project management.
A typical DSM matrix
Let us take the product launch example and construct a simple dependency matrix. The rows and columns are both tasks. For each cell, we mark as X if the task in the column is dependent on the task in the row. In the example below, PR release is dependent on product development and Social media marketing and quality control is dependent only on product development.
Once we build this matrix we can see the rows represent the tasks that are impacted by a given task and the columns represent what tasks impact the given task. This allows us more effective scheduling. Constructing a well thought DSM would allows us to use computing tools to prioritize the delivery of tasks whose rows have the maximum “X “es.
| PR release | Social Media Marketing | Development | Quality Control | Customer Support | |
| PR release | x | x | |||
| Social Media Marketing | x | x | |||
| Development | x | x | x | x | |
| Quality Control | x | ||||
| Customer Support | x | x | x |
In summary, when used correctly, DSM provides a very compact and visual way to look at tasks and allows us to make the project management more efficient.
Featured Partners: Project Management Software
1 Wrike
Wrike is the most powerful work management platform on the market, enabling teams to plan projects and collaborate in real time. Our award-winning software is trusted by 20,000+ companies across the globe, including Sony, Estée Lauder, and Siemens.
Wrike’s customizable features include Gantt charts, request forms, dashboards, cross-tagging, time tracking, and proofing. Integrate with 400+ apps from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Automate repetitive tasks and achieve 50% faster planning. Work from anywhere with 100% access to your files via our mobile and desktop apps.
Whether you’re a small startup or an established brand, Wrike has the solution for you. Paid plans start at $9.80/user/month. Join our community of 2.3 million — start your free two-week trial today.
2 monday.com
monday.com Work OS is an award-winning no-code work management platform that helps teams manage projects and workflows more efficiently.
Used by 152,000+ customers worldwide, this fully customizable software lets you plan, manage, and track every project in one place. monday.com offers time-saving and easy-to-use features such as automations, time tracking, document sharing, and real-time collaboration. Multiple board views such as Gantt and Kanban help you structure and navigate tasks and projects the way you prefer, and dashboards give a high-level overview of your progress.
In addition, integrations with apps such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and Excel, allow you to easily continue working with your favorite tools from within the platform. monday.com also offers dedicated solutions, such as monday dev and monday sales CRM, designed to answer the needs of specific industries.
3 Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a leading work execution platform that has real-time work management features, collaboration and automation tools. Users are presented with a familiar and easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interface. However, it has enterprise-grade capabilities that even Fortune 500 companies like Cisco, Bayer, HP, and PayPal are confident to adopt in their business. Strong project management features enable teams to utilize different views of real-time data, and switch easily from Gantt, card, grid and calendar views. Smartsheet has automatic update requests, and can be used for waterfall and agile projects, product launch, sprint planning, and more. The resource management feature provides users the visibility who is busy, and who is not, in real-time. They can also attach files, share sheets, get notified, view the activity log, export, email, and print.
