Mastering Complexity

12

Projects and Structure

Suppose our DSM spreadsheet represents a set of tasks. The order of elements is the task sequence. Marks in a row of the DSM spreadsheet represent all of the tasks whose output is required to perform the task corresponding to that row. Reading down a specific column reveals which tasks receive something from the task corresponding to that column. Marks below the diagonal represent a forward transfer to later (i.e., feedforward) tasks. Marks above the diagonal depict feedbacks to earlier listed tasks (i.e., feed-back tasks) and indicate that an upstream task is dependent on a downstream task as shown in Figure 12.1.

•  An essential difference between traditional workflow tools—unlike PERT (program evaluation and ...