Understand the impact of change

Organizations are running more and more projects and programs in parallel. It is rare for these projects and programs to be completely isolated. It is much more likely that they are dependent on other projects and programs within the organization and will be impacted by changes to the budget, schedule, scope and/or risk of those projects and programs.

It is more important than ever to be able to understand these dependencies and to be able to analyse the impact of changes or what if scenarios. The dependency matrix helps you to:

• Visualize the dependency of programs and/or projects on others.
• Analyse the impact of changes in one program or projects onto others.
• Impact areas can include budget, schedule, scope and risk.

Here is more information on Requirements traceability matrix, i.e. capturing dependencies between requirements.

Who uses it?

• Program managers to capture the impact dependencies between projects and to analyse the impact of changes.
• Senior managers and portfolio directors to analyse the impact of changes between projects in different programs and between programs.