Dependency and risk management

This is delivery risk: what could prevent this work from landing. Enterprise risk — the framework, appetite and register at company level — is legal-risk:enterprise-risk, and the two should not be merged.

Dependencies are commitments or they are wishes

A dependency in your plan that the owning team has not agreed to, with a date they have committed to, is a wish. Most plans contain several.

For each: what exactly is needed, from whom by name, by when, and what happens if it is late. Then confirm it with the owning team in a way they would recognize as a commitment — an item on their plan, not a mention in a meeting.

Track dependencies both ways. Teams reliably track what they are owed and forget what they owe, which is why everyone believes they are being let down.