Dependency Management
Track Get and Give dependencies from your Primavera P6 or MS Project schedule
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Select FileHow this tool works
Neither P6 XER nor MS Project MPP files have a dedicated "dependency" field, so this tool detects Get/Give dependencies purely from your hierarchy naming — the WBS in a XER file, or outline-level summary tasks in an MPP file. It looks for:
- A WBS node (XER) or summary task (MPP) anywhere in the hierarchy whose name contains "Depend" or "Interface" (case-insensitive, substring match — "Dependency Management", "External Interfaces", or just "Depend" all work).
- Direct children of that node whose names contain "Get" and/or "Give" (same case-insensitive substring match).
- Any milestone activities (Start Milestone or Finish Milestone in XER; MS Project's single Milestone flag in MPP) nested anywhere below those Get/Give nodes — including further down the hierarchy, not just direct children — are picked up automatically. Non-milestone activities under Get/Give are ignored entirely.
Heads up: the match is a plain case-insensitive substring check, not a whole-word match — a name like "Getting Started" would also match "Get". Keep your Get/Give naming unambiguous to avoid false positives.
Metrics explained
Some of these are standard P6 fields; a couple are calculations this tool invented specifically for dependency tracking. They're flagged below so you don't mistake them for industry-standard terms.
The milestone's early finish date from your schedule's CPM forward pass (falls back to early start if no early finish is set). This is when the schedule's own logic says the milestone can actually happen.
If the milestone has any constraint set (any constraint type, e.g. Finish On, Start On) with a date, that constraint date is used. Otherwise it falls back to the schedule's late finish date (or late start if no late finish). The "use constraint, else late date" logic is specific to this tool — a constraint is an externally set deadline, while a late date is only "the latest the current schedule logic tolerates", and the two aren't the same thing. MPP files have no late-date field to fall back on at all, so an MPP milestone with no constraint set will show a blank Required By (and a 0-day Buffer) rather than a calculated one — set a constraint on Get/Give milestones in MS Project if you want a real Required By date.
Required By minus Readiness Date, in days. This is a custom metric invented for this tool, not a standard P6 or DCMA term — don't confuse it with "float". Positive means the milestone is tracking to be ready before it's needed; negative means it's already forecast to land after it's needed.
The activity's standard Total Float from P6, converted from hours to days using that activity's calendar hours-per-day. This is the genuine CPM float value from your schedule, unmodified.
Derived automatically: Complete if the activity is already marked Complete in P6. Overdue if Buffer is negative. At Risk if either Buffer or Total Float is under 14 days (this 14-day cut-off is fixed in the tool, not user-adjustable). On Track otherwise.