arrow-left Back to Announcements
DATE:
AUTHOR:
The Easy Agile team
Programs

Highlight critical dependencies on the dependency map

DATE:
AUTHOR: The Easy Agile team

This release gives program and team planners a laser-focused view of the dependencies most likely to derail delivery with two new types of dependencies on the dependency map.

Why this matters

When the riskiest dependencies are buried in a sea of links, delays creep in unnoticed. By instantly exposing bottlenecks (many-to-one or one-to-many blockers) and chains (three-plus issues in series), teams can tackle the right work first, preserve flow, and hit commitments with confidence.

What's new

A critical Dependencies filter shows only the highest-risk links and auto-disables other filters for total focus.

  • Bottlenecks – Filters the map to issues that either block many others or are blocked by many, so you can remove congestion fast.

  • Chains – Highlights sequences of three or more linked issues that must ship in strict order, revealing cascading risk.

Additional improvements shipped with this release

  • Team Planning speed boost – Primary board renders first; secondary boards lazy-load. Core rendering optimised across all program issues.

  • Teams button warning – icon appears when hidden cross-team dependencies exist.

  • Quick-create on secondary boards – Newly created issues now auto-link to the selected roadmap parent.

  • Custom-fields reliability – Immediate issue updates replace background jobs, reducing permission-related errors.

  • Bug fixes – Correct assignee field options, proper strikethrough on Done issues, and Kanban backlogs no longer show scheduled issues.

Key things to know

  1. Critical Dependencies represent the single biggest threat to flow—address them first.

  2. Turning on the Critical filter blocks out all other dependency filters to minimise visual noise.

  3. Use Bottlenecks when you suspect a single congested issue; use Chains to uncover long delivery sequence

What do I need to do?

  • Cloud users: this functionality is instantly available to you

  • Data Center users: Upgrade to v8.2.0 or later, then enable the Critical Dependencies feature in the Dependency Map.

  • Try the Critical, Bottlenecks, and Chains toggles in your next dependency review to spot risk hotspots immediately.

Learn more / get help

Powered by LaunchNotes