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Planview Customer Success Center

Creating Soft Project Dependencies

A soft dependency is when a project is designated to finish before the current project starts; however, the successor project's start date will not be impacted by the predecessor project's end date. For example, if you have a predecessor project with an end date of 10/30 and that date slips out into November, the successor project with a start date of 11/1 will retain its start date and work can begin. Soft dependencies are represented on the project Gantt chart by an arrow between the projects.

The Project/Project-Predecessors section is where you create soft project dependencies (Finish-to-Start, no lag time). Note that when you add projects to this page, none of their information, such as Start Date, Constraint Type or Lag Time, can be edited here (can be changed on the Details section for each project). 

Create predecessor projects by clicking the Add Predecessors button. Select the projects from the modal (use Shift-click or Ctrl-click) and then click Select.

Hard Dependencies

Although you can create soft project dependencies only on the page, any cross-project task dependency you create will automatically create a hard dependency on the external project, and that project will appear on this page with Type = Hard. 

Also note that any soft dependency created on this screen is used as a hard dependency for predictive planning using PPA.

Permissions Required

  • Project > Edit > Predecessor permission on the current project    
  • Project > View permissions on any projects you want to select as predecessors