Your go-live is October 14, and one piece of it belongs to the platform team. You raised it in July, they said yes in principle, and since then you have sent 4 follow-ups and had 2 hallway conversations that both ended with someone telling you it is on their radar.
Nobody has said no. You are in a queue: their sprint is planned, their priorities came from their own director, and 6 projects are asking for the same 2 weeks of work.
So you keep asking politely, because that looks like the only lever you have, and the item stays amber with a note that says following up with platform. Then October arrives, the piece is not there, and the question in the room is about your date.
The Shift
What can you actually do about a dependency you do not own?
You can put a date on the answer, say what you will do if it never comes, and make the wait visible every week to the people who can move the queue.
Asking for the work is where the effort goes, and it is the part you cannot enforce. Asking for an answer works differently: a named person can say yes, no, or November 6, and all 3 are things you can plan against. An open-ended request produces silence.
The follow-ups also keep the cost of the wait inside your inbox: 4 polite chases are 4 conversations nobody else saw, so the item just looks amber and handled.
An unowned dependency is a decision nobody has been asked to make: where your project sits in another team's order of work. Until a named person is asked for that call by a date, nobody is deciding anything and the time comes out of your schedule.
Issue 06 treated dependency load as the fourth side of the iron triangle, with a named owner on every dependency. This issue is the harder half: what to do when that owner works for somebody else.
The System
How do you manage a project dependency you do not control?
Turn it into a dated request to a named person, with a stated default if no answer arrives and a weekly cost line anyone can read. Four moves.
Put a date in the ask. "Platform support for the integration" is a topic, and topics get discussed. "We need the staging endpoint available by September 18" is a request, and requests get answered or declined. Say what it unblocks; the person reading it is triaging 6 similar messages, and yours should be the easiest to size.
Get a name. Ask it plainly: who on your side owns this, and who can commit to a date. A team name in your tracker is a gap wearing a label. If nobody will take the name, that is your answer, and it is worth more than another month of follow-ups.
Ask for the answer by a date, and say what you will do without one. This is the move that usually gets skipped. "If I do not have a date by Friday, I will plan on this landing in November and flag the go-live change in Tuesday's report." The default turns silence into something the other side has to accept or correct.
Report the wait as a cost, weekly, in one line. "Waiting on platform team" asks for nothing. Put the numbers in: open since July 22, 3 workstreams queued behind it, every week it stays open moves go-live by a week. Same line, same place, until it changes.
Then escalate once, on the schedule you announced, carrying that same line and the specific call you need. Escalation goes badly as a surprise or as a complaint about another team; it goes fine as the thing you said you would do 3 weeks ago.
You answer for the dependency, and what you owe on it is the early warning and the ask; the delivery belongs to the team that owns the work. Dated request, stated default, weekly cost line, one scheduled escalation: that is the job done, even if the date moves.
The Asset
The asset for this issue is the Dependency Escalation Tracker.
One page, one row per dependency you do not own: what you asked for, the named person you asked, the date you need an answer by, the default you stated, this week's cost line, and the escalation date. It also carries a 4-point score for reading a row at a glance, 3 rungs for choosing a default you would actually run, and 4 shapes of cost line that put a number in the report. One glance shows which dependencies have a real answer behind them and which have only a friendly conversation.
You'll find the download button in The Move section below.
The AI Assist
The slow part is wording: the same message to 5 teams in 5 slightly different ways, then a shorter version to a sponsor that does not read as a complaint. That hands off well.
Use this prompt with one dependency at a time:
Draft two short messages about a project dependency I do not own.
Dependency: [what I need]. Owning team: [team]. Named contact: [person, or NONE]. First raised: [date]. Needed by: [date]. Queued behind it: [items]. Impact if it slips: [what moves].
Message 1, to the contact: the request and the date, what it unblocks, a request for a yes, a no, or a committed date by [answer-by date], and what I will do if nothing arrives. Maximum 6 sentences, plain and non-accusatory.
Message 2, to my sponsor: where the item stands, what each week of waiting costs, and the specific decision I am asking for. Maximum 4 sentences. No history, no blame.
Use only the facts above. Write UNKNOWN where I have not given you something, and do not invent dates, names, or commitments.
The wording is the part to hand over. Where the default sits stays with you: a hard default on a team you will need again next quarter can cost more than the week it saves.
The Move
Pick the dependency you would be asked about first if your date moved next month. Send one message today asking a named person for a yes, a no, or a date by the end of next week, and write the sentence saying what you will do if none of the 3 arrives.
The Dependency Escalation Tracker is free for Execution Signal subscribers. Enter your email and it lands in your inbox instantly, together with the Starter Pack.
Reply prompt: which dependency are you carrying right now with no named person behind it, and what would you do on Monday if the answer never came? I would like to hear how you have handled it.
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