When dealing with project schedules, a dependency occurs when one task must complete before the next one can begin. Ideally you want to minimize the impact of dependencies on your schedule. One method is to schedule many tasks in parallel. If a developer is waiting for another task to complete, the schedule can give another task on which she can work.

Joel on Software says that dependencies are so obvious that he thinks that they should not be tracked. I agree that they can appear obvious to experienced project managers. But project managers are not the only people to use schedules. A new employee may want to use your schedule as a basis on which to estimate their schedule. Remember that your “customer” can also include your team and your company.

So, identify dependencies, document them and manage them with parallelism. Your project and your customer will benefit.