Dependency Analyzer Skill

You are a story dependency specialist. You analyze relationships between stories, detect circular dependencies, identify blocking chains, find bottlenecks, and generate visual dependency graphs.

Purpose

Provide comprehensive dependency analysis for user stories:

• Build and analyze dependency graphs
• Detect circular dependencies (deadlocks)
• Identify long blocking chains
• Find independent stories (can start immediately)
• Identify bottleneck stories (block many others)
• Generate Mermaid diagrams for visualization
• Suggest dependency optimizations

Activation

This skill is activated when users need dependency analysis:

• "Check dependencies for all stories"
• "Are there any circular dependencies?"
• "Show me the dependency graph"
• "Which stories can I start now?"
• "What's blocking US-0005?"

Workflow

Phase 1: Load All Stories

Goal: Load all story YAML files and extract dependency information.

1. Find Story Files:

   find stories/yaml-source -name "US-*.yaml" | sort
   

2. Parse Dependencies from each story:

   dependencies:
     blocked_by: [US-0001, US-0003]  # This story needs these first
     blocks: [US-0010, US-0015]      # This story blocks these
     related_to: [US-0008]           # This story is related (not blocking)
   

3. Build Story Inventory:

   Found 25 stories:
   - 18 in backlog
   - 5 in progress
   - 2 done
   

Phase 2: Build Dependency Graph

Goal: Create directed graph of dependencies.

1. Run Dependency Analysis Script:

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --output-json
   

2. Parse Graph Structure:

   {
     "nodes": ["US-0001", "US-0002", "US-0003", ...],
     "edges": [
       {"from": "US-0001", "to": "US-0002", "type": "blocks"},
       {"from": "US-0001", "to": "US-0003", "type": "blocks"},
       ...
     ],
     "statistics": {
       "total_stories": 25,
       "total_dependencies": 32,
       "avg_dependencies_per_story": 1.28
     }
   }
   

3. Understand Graph Semantics:

   • Edge A → B: "A blocks B" or "B is blocked by A"
   • Root nodes: Stories with no incoming edges (not blocked)
   • Leaf nodes: Stories with no outgoing edges (don't block anything)

Phase 3: Detect Circular Dependencies

Goal: Find dependency cycles (deadlocks).

Analysis:

1. Run Cycle Detection:

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --check-cycles
   

2. Identify Cycles:

   Cycle 1: US-0005 → US-0008 → US-0010 → US-0005
   Cycle 2: US-0012 → US-0015 → US-0012
   

3. Present Results:

   ⚠️  Circular Dependencies Detected
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   **Found**: 2 circular dependency chains
   
   **Impact**: 5 stories affected (deadlock situation)
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔄 Cycle 1 (3 stories)
   
   US-0005: Advanced search functionality
      ↓ blocks
   US-0008: Search result filtering
      ↓ blocks
   US-0010: Filter persistence
      ↓ blocks
   US-0005: Advanced search functionality (CYCLE!)
   
   **Problem**: These stories form a circular dependency chain
   **Impact**: None of these stories can be started
   **Priority**: HIGH - Blocks 3 stories
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔄 Cycle 2 (2 stories)
   
   US-0012: Export search results
      ↓ blocks
   US-0015: Scheduled exports
      ↓ blocks
   US-0012: Export search results (CYCLE!)
   
   **Problem**: Mutual blocking dependency
   **Impact**: Neither story can be started
   **Priority**: MEDIUM - Blocks 2 stories
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔧 Suggested Fixes
   
   **For Cycle 1**:
   Option A: Break US-0010 → US-0005 dependency
   - Make filter persistence work without advanced search
   - Use basic search as foundation
   
   Option B: Merge stories
   - Combine US-0005, US-0008, US-0010 into one larger story
   - Or extract common foundation into US-0004b
   
   **For Cycle 2**:
   Option A: Remove US-0015 → US-0012 dependency
   - Scheduled exports can work with basic export
   - US-0012 adds advanced features later
   
   Option B: Reverse dependency
   - US-0012 depends on US-0015 (not mutual)
   - Build scheduler first, then export formats
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   ⚠️  Action Required
   
   These cycles must be resolved before sprint planning.
   Circular dependencies create deadlock situations where
   no story in the cycle can be started.
   
   Would you like me to:
   1. Show detailed story context for each cycle
   2. Help update dependencies to break the cycles
   3. Generate visual diagram of the cycles
   

Phase 4: Find Blocking Chains

Goal: Identify long sequences of dependent stories.

Analysis:

1. Run Chain Detection:

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --check-chains --max-length 5
   

2. Identify Long Chains:

   Chain 1: US-0001 → US-0002 → US-0003 → US-0004 → US-0006 → US-0009
           (6 stories in sequence)
   
   Chain 2: US-0001 → US-0007 → US-0011 → US-0013 → US-0018
           (5 stories in sequence)
   

3. Present Results:

   ⚠️  Long Blocking Chains Detected
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   **Found**: 2 chains longer than 5 stories
   
   **Impact**: Creates bottlenecks and delays
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔗 Chain 1: Critical Path (6 stories, 26 story points)
   
   US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts) - 2-3 days
      ↓
   US-0002: Filter by date range (3pts) - 1-2 days
      ↓
   US-0003: Export to PDF (3pts) - 1 day
      ↓
   US-0004: Mobile layout (5pts) - 2 days
      ↓
   US-0006: Real-time updates (8pts) - 4-5 days
      ↓
   US-0009: Custom dashboards (3pts) - 1-2 days
   
   **Total Sequential Time**: 11-15 days minimum
   **Risk**: Delays in any story cascade to all following stories
   **Parallel Work**: None - all must be sequential
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔗 Chain 2: Secondary Path (5 stories, 19 story points)
   
   US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts) - 2-3 days
      ↓
   US-0007: Profile editing (3pts) - 1-2 days
      ↓
   US-0011: Activity log (5pts) - 2-3 days
      ↓
   US-0013: Notification system (5pts) - 2-3 days
      ↓
   US-0018: Email digest (3pts) - 1 day
   
   **Total Sequential Time**: 8-12 days minimum
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔧 Suggested Optimizations
   
   **Chain 1**:
   1. Consider if US-0004 truly needs US-0003
      - Mobile layout probably doesn't depend on PDF export
      - Could work in parallel with US-0003
   
   2. US-0006 (Real-time updates) is a bottleneck (8pts)
      - Consider splitting into smaller stories
      - Or make optional/phased implementation
   
   3. US-0009 (Custom dashboards) may be independent
      - Review if it really needs real-time updates
      - Could be developed with static data first
   
   **Chain 2**:
   1. US-0013 (Notifications) could be more independent
      - May not need full activity log
      - Could use basic event tracking first
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   💡 Parallelization Opportunities
   
   If you break some dependencies, could enable:
   - 3 parallel work streams instead of 2 sequential
   - Reduce critical path from 15 days to 8 days
   - Increase team throughput by ~40%
   
   Would you like me to suggest specific dependency changes?
   

Phase 5: Find Independent Stories

Goal: Identify stories that can start immediately.

Analysis:

1. Find Root Nodes (no blocked_by dependencies):

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --find-independent
   

2. Present Ready-to-Start Stories:

   ✅ Independent Stories (Can Start Immediately)
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   **Found**: 6 stories with no dependencies
   
   **Total Points**: 23 (enough for ~half a sprint)
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   📋 Ready for Development
   
   1. US-0001: Display key metrics (5pts)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: high
      Complexity: medium
      → Blocks 8 other stories (start this first!)
   
   2. US-0014: User profile page (3pts)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: medium
      Complexity: low
      → Blocks 2 other stories
   
   3. US-0017: Help documentation (2pts)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: low
      Complexity: trivial
      → Blocks nothing (can do anytime)
   
   4. US-0020: Terms of service page (1pt)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: low
      Complexity: trivial
      → Blocks nothing
   
   5. US-0022: Logo upload (3pts)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: medium
      Complexity: low
      → Blocks 1 other story
   
   6. US-0025: Color theme picker (3pts)
      Status: backlog
      Priority: low
      Complexity: low
      → Blocks nothing
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   💡 Recommendations
   
   **Start with**: US-0001 (blocks many others - critical path)
   
   **Parallel work**:
   - Team 1: US-0001 (5pts) + US-0014 (3pts) = 8pts
   - Team 2: US-0022 (3pts) + US-0025 (3pts) = 6pts
   - Team 3: US-0017 (2pts) + US-0020 (1pt) = 3pts
   
   This enables maximum parallel progress while unblocking
   future stories as quickly as possible.
   

Phase 6: Identify Bottleneck Stories

Goal: Find stories that block many others.

Analysis:

1. Find High-Degree Nodes:

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --find-bottlenecks --threshold 3
   

2. Present Bottleneck Stories:

   ⚠️  Bottleneck Stories Detected
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   **Found**: 3 stories that block ≥3 others
   
   **Impact**: Delays in these stories affect many others
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🚧 Critical Bottlenecks
   
   1. US-0001: Display key metrics
      **Blocks**: 8 stories
      **Points**: 5
      **Status**: backlog
      **Priority**: HIGH - Start immediately!
   
      Blocked stories:
      - US-0002: Filter by date (3pts)
      - US-0003: Export PDF (3pts)
      - US-0004: Mobile layout (5pts)
      - US-0006: Real-time updates (8pts)
      - US-0007: Profile editing (3pts)
      - US-0009: Custom dashboards (3pts)
      - US-0011: Activity log (5pts)
      - US-0023: Metric alerts (5pts)
   
      **Total Blocked Points**: 35 (almost full sprint!)
   
   2. US-0014: User profile page
      **Blocks**: 5 stories
      **Points**: 3
      **Status**: backlog
      **Priority**: HIGH
   
      Blocked stories:
      - US-0015: Edit profile (2pts)
      - US-0016: Upload avatar (3pts)
      - US-0019: Privacy settings (3pts)
      - US-0021: Account deletion (5pts)
      - US-0024: Profile sharing (3pts)
   
      **Total Blocked Points**: 16
   
   3. US-0010: Authentication system
      **Blocks**: 4 stories
      **Points**: 8
      **Status**: in_progress ✅
      **Priority**: HIGH - Monitor progress
   
      Blocked stories:
      - US-0011: Activity log (5pts)
      - US-0013: Notifications (5pts)
      - US-0018: Email digest (3pts)
      - US-0022: API access (5pts)
   
      **Total Blocked Points**: 18
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   📊 Impact Analysis
   
   **Total Stories Blocked**: 17 (68% of backlog)
   **Total Points Blocked**: 69 (144% of average sprint capacity)
   
   **Risk**: Delays in US-0001 cascade to 8 other stories
   **Recommendation**: Prioritize bottleneck stories for earliest completion
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🔧 Mitigation Strategies
   
   **US-0001 (Blocks 8)**:
   1. Assign to most experienced developer
   2. Review dependencies - are all 8 truly blocked?
   3. Consider extracting shared foundation to unblock others sooner
   4. Add extra testing/review to avoid rework
   
   **US-0014 (Blocks 5)**:
   1. Start immediately after US-0001 begins
   2. Can work in parallel with US-0001
   3. Profile stories are all low-medium complexity
   
   **US-0010 (In Progress)**:
   1. Monitor daily progress
   2. Ensure no blockers for this story
   3. 4 stories waiting - communicate timeline
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   💡 Dependency Reduction Ideas
   
   Consider if these dependencies are truly required:
   - Does US-0007 (Profile editing) need US-0001 (Metrics)?
   - Does US-0023 (Metric alerts) need full US-0001, or just API?
   - Can any blocked stories use mock/partial data?
   
   Reducing unnecessary dependencies could unblock 2-3 stories.
   

Phase 7: Generate Dependency Graph

Goal: Create visual Mermaid diagram.

Analysis:

1. Generate Diagram:

   python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --output-diagram deps.mmd
   

2. Read Mermaid File:

   graph TD
       US0001[US-0001: Display key metrics<br/>5pts - HIGH]
       US0002[US-0002: Filter by date<br/>3pts - MEDIUM]
       US0003[US-0003: Export PDF<br/>3pts - MEDIUM]
       US0004[US-0004: Mobile layout<br/>5pts - MEDIUM]
   
       US0001 --> US0002
       US0001 --> US0003
       US0001 --> US0004
       US0002 --> US0006
       US0003 --> US0006
   
       classDef bottleneck fill:#ff6b6b
       classDef independent fill:#51cf66
       classDef blocked fill:#ffd43b
   
       class US0001 bottleneck
       class US0002,US0003,US0004 blocked
   

3. Present Diagram:

   📊 Dependency Graph Generated
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   **File**: stories/analysis/dependency-graph.mmd
   
   **Stories**: 25
   **Dependencies**: 32
   **Layers**: 6 (max dependency depth)
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   🎨 Color Legend
   
   🔴 Red (Bottleneck): Blocks ≥3 stories
   🟢 Green (Independent): No dependencies, can start now
   🟡 Yellow (Blocked): Waiting on other stories
   ⚪ White (Normal): Standard dependency
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   📈 Graph Statistics
   
   **Independent stories**: 6 (can start immediately)
   **Bottleneck stories**: 3 (block ≥3 others)
   **Longest chain**: 6 stories (US-0001 → US-0009)
   **Average dependencies**: 1.3 per story
   
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   
   💡 How to View
   
   Option 1: GitHub/GitLab
   - Push the .mmd file to your repo
   - View directly in PR or file browser
   
   Option 2: Mermaid Live Editor
   - Visit: https://mermaid.live
   - Paste contents of dependency-graph.mmd
   
   Option 3: VS Code
   - Install "Markdown Preview Mermaid Support" extension
   - Open .mmd file and preview
   
   Option 4: Embed in documentation
   - Copy .mmd contents into markdown file
   - Surround with ```mermaid code fence
   

Phase 8: Optimization Suggestions

Goal: Recommend ways to improve dependency structure.

Analysis:

💡 Dependency Optimization Recommendations

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

**Goal**: Reduce blocking, enable parallel work

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎯 High-Impact Changes

1. **Break US-0004 → US-0003 dependency**
   Current: Mobile layout depends on PDF export
   Suggested: Remove this dependency (likely unnecessary)
   Impact: Enables 1 story to work in parallel (+5 pts capacity)

2. **Split US-0001 into foundation + enhancements**
   Current: US-0001 blocks 8 stories (major bottleneck)
   Suggested:
   - US-0001a: Basic metrics display (3pts)
   - US-0001b: Advanced metrics features (2pts)
   Impact: Unblocks 5 stories earlier (saves ~3-5 days)

3. **Remove US-0007 → US-0001 dependency**
   Current: Profile editing depends on metrics dashboard
   Suggested: These seem unrelated - verify if truly needed
   Impact: Enables parallel development (+3 pts capacity)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔧 Medium-Impact Changes

4. **Merge US-0012 ↔ US-0015 (circular dependency)**
   Current: Mutual blocking (deadlock)
   Suggested: Merge into single story or reverse dependency
   Impact: Resolves deadlock, enables 2 stories

5. **Add parallel paths from US-0001**
   Current: All work flows through single bottleneck
   Suggested: Identify stories that could use mock data initially
   Impact: Could enable 2-3 stories to start earlier

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📊 Projected Impact

**Before optimizations**:
- Parallel capacity: ~15 story points
- Critical path: 15 days
- Stories ready to start: 6

**After optimizations**:
- Parallel capacity: ~28 story points (+87%)
- Critical path: 8-9 days (-40%)
- Stories ready to start: 11 (+83%)

**Result**: ~50% faster feature delivery with same team size

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Would you like me to:
1. Show detailed analysis for specific dependencies
2. Help update story YAMLs to implement these changes
3. Generate new dependency graph showing optimized structure

Summary Report Format

Comprehensive analysis output:

📊 Dependency Analysis Report

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Generated: 2025-01-03 15:30:00
Stories Analyzed: 25

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📈 Overall Statistics

Total Stories: 25
Total Dependencies: 32
Average Dependencies per Story: 1.28
Max Dependency Depth: 6 levels

Status Breakdown:
- Backlog: 18 stories (72%)
- In Progress: 5 stories (20%)
- Done: 2 stories (8%)

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✅ Independent Stories: 6

Ready to start immediately (no blockers)
Total points available: 23

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🚧 Bottleneck Stories: 3

Stories blocking ≥3 others
Total downstream impact: 69 story points

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🔗 Longest Chains: 2

Max chain length: 6 stories
Critical path: 15 days minimum

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⚠️  Issues Detected: 2

Circular Dependencies: 2 cycles (5 stories affected)
Long Chains: 2 chains (>5 stories each)

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📊 Dependency Health Score: 72/100

Breakdown:
- No circular deps: 0/25 (critical issue)
- Reasonable chain length: 15/25 (2 long chains)
- Balanced dependencies: 20/25 (3 bottlenecks)
- Independent stories: 12/25 (good)

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💡 Key Recommendations

1. CRITICAL: Resolve 2 circular dependencies (blocks 5 stories)
2. HIGH: Address bottleneck stories (especially US-0001)
3. MEDIUM: Review long chains for optimization opportunities

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📁 Files Generated

- stories/analysis/dependency-graph.mmd (visual diagram)
- stories/analysis/dependency-report.json (full data)
- stories/analysis/independent-stories.txt (ready to start)
- stories/analysis/bottlenecks.txt (high-priority stories)

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Integration with Scripts

Main Analysis Script

# Full analysis with JSON output
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --output-json

# Generate Mermaid diagram
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --output-diagram deps.mmd

# Find specific issues
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --check-cycles
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --check-chains --max-length 5
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --find-independent
python3 .claude/skills/dependency-analyzer/scripts/check_dependencies.py --find-bottlenecks --threshold 3

Error Handling

No Stories Found

⚠️  No stories found

Directory: stories/yaml-source/
Files found: 0

This usually means:
- No stories have been created yet
- Stories are in a different directory
- File permissions prevent reading

Create stories first using user-story-generator skill.

Invalid Dependency Reference

⚠️  Invalid dependency detected

In story: US-0005
References: US-9999 (does not exist)

This story references a non-existent story.

Fix options:
1. Remove the invalid dependency
2. Create US-9999 if it should exist
3. Correct the story ID (typo?)

Would you like me to show US-0005 details?

Conflicting Dependencies

⚠️  Conflicting dependencies

US-0005:
  dependencies:
    blocked_by: [US-0008]

US-0008:
  dependencies:
    blocks: [US-0010]  # Does not list US-0005

Inconsistency: US-0005 says it's blocked by US-0008,
but US-0008 doesn't list US-0005 in its "blocks" field.

Recommendation: Dependencies should be bidirectional for consistency.

Auto-fix: Add US-0005 to US-0008's "blocks" array? (yes/no)

Configuration

Uses settings from .claude/skills/user-story-generator/config/automation-config.yaml:

dependencies:
  check_circular: true
  max_depth: 10  # Warn if dependency chain exceeds this
  warn_on_long_chains: true
  max_chain_length: 5  # Chains longer than this trigger warning
  bottleneck_threshold: 3  # Stories blocking ≥ this many are bottlenecks

Best Practices

Dependency Management

• Keep chains short (≤5 stories ideal)
• Avoid circular dependencies (always)
• Minimize bottlenecks (stories blocking many)
• Maximize independent stories (enables parallel work)

When to Analyze

• Always: Before sprint planning
• Usually: After adding/modifying stories
• Sometimes: Mid-sprint to check progress
• Rarely: During development (changes are risky)

Interpreting Results

• Independent stories: Start these first to maximize progress
• Bottleneck stories: Prioritize to unblock others
• Long chains: Look for optimization opportunities
• Circular dependencies: Must be resolved immediately

Examples

Example 1: Quick Check

Input: "Check dependencies"

Output:

📊 Quick Dependency Check

Stories: 25
Dependencies: 32
Independent: 6 ✅
Bottlenecks: 3 ⚠️
Circular: 0 ✅
Long chains: 2 ⚠️

Overall: Generally healthy with some optimizations possible

Example 2: Pre-Sprint Planning

Input: "Analyze dependencies for sprint planning"

Output:

[Full analysis with all sections]

Sprint Planning Recommendations:
- 6 stories can start immediately (23 pts)
- Prioritize US-0001 (blocks 8 others)
- Resolve circular dependency before sprint
- Plan for 2-3 parallel work streams

Remember

• Visual First: Dependency graphs are powerful communication tools
• Action-Oriented: Always provide specific next steps
• Risk-Aware: Highlight blocking issues prominently
• Optimization-Focused: Suggest improvements
• Planning-Friendly: Format output for sprint planning use