Inter-project Dependencies

​@James Bonfield 

To reduce the risk of unintended schedule ripple effects across projects, consider the following approaches:

1. Use Milestones for Controlled Linking

• Add a milestone in the downstream project and create the predecessor relationship from the upstream project to that milestone.

• This ensures that changes from the upstream project only affect the milestone, not the full downstream schedule.

• The downstream project will only reflect changes after the Schedule (CPM) button is clicked manually.

2. Leverage the “Dependencies” Tab for Visibility

• Use the Dependencies tab to clearly visualize project relationships.

• Combine this view with filters or highlights to surface critical paths or problem areas.

3. Monitor with “Inter Project Relationships” Tile

• Use the Inter Project Relationships tile to:

  • Understand dependency types and dates

  • Identify any scheduling violations

  • Proactively manage potential risk areas across projects

4. Restrict Dependency Creation via Permissions

• Consider enabling the global option:
  "Respect Read/Write Work Permissions to Create Inter-Project Relationships"

• This helps limit who can establish cross-project dependencies, important because not all project managers maintain the same level of scheduling discipline, which can unintentionally introduce planning disruptions.

Thanks ​@pawan.raju .

We have many of these controls in already -

• The use of specific milestones and appropriate relationships are recommended, but we can’t enforce our community to use these and always stick to our guidelines.
• I’m keen to understand which ‘Dependencies'’ tab you refer to - Planview has so many independent ways of managing dependencies!  Could you be a little more specific, I’d like to confirm I’m not missing something here
• The T127 Inter- Project Relationship tile is in use, and we’re developing a PowerBI dashboard which would present similar data and more in a format which is more presentable to stakeholders and which will remove the inevitable duplicate records if you have both dependent projects in your work portfolio
• Restricting access isn’t really an option given our resourcing model, but raising the relationships isn’t the problem, it’s if the dependency subsequently moves. 

What we were led to believe is that there is an option to warn the downstream project that movement has taken place and flag some kind of violation without applying this directly to the plan, despite automated CPM activity through the Progressing Engine runs.  This sounds too good to be true but it’s really this piece of functionality that I’m trying to uncover! 

​@James Bonfield  The "Dependencies" tab I’m referring to is a dedicated work entity tab within Planview Portfolios that allows users to view and manage cross-project relationships in a centralized, visual format.

If the tab is not currently visible, it can be enabled by an administrator via:
Administration > Menus and View Settings > Menu Actions (Work)

Once enabled, you’ll find it alongside tabs like Portfolio View and Portfolio Members. From there, you can filter, highlight, and analyze dependency relationships more effectively.

Please refer to the screenshots below for a visual reference on where this appears and how filters/highlighters can be applied.

To address your specific question, whether the system can flag downstream violations without automatically applying changes, even during Progressing Engine runs. I recommend raising a Professional Services ticket.

They can help assess whether your environment supports this behavior, walk you through the relevant global configuration options, and guide implementation based on best practices aligned with your governance model.

​@James Bonfield one point of clarification:

• The Progressing Engine determines the Actual Start, Schedule Start for remaining work, and Actual Finish, plus all of the remaining effort calculations (based on Progressing Options in place).
• The Progressing Engine does not then run the CPM (Schedule) calculation.
• Any Progressing Engine date determinations are done on each line item, the impact of changes on successor work items is not determined.
• It is left to the project manager to review what has happened (progress) and to determine any replanning actions.

The Interproject Dependencies tile is intended to highlight upstream/downstream dependencies and to highlight when an upstream dependency is impacting the dependency (running late).I don’t know if you are setting a milestone type on milestones, but a “Dependency” milestone type could be used to filter out, and alert through reporting, on upstream dependency delays/changes.