Tip for SAFe Dependencies in Mural

In a real world setting dependencies are usually made visible on a SAFe program board by connecting cards with a piece of red wool, using some tape. As a SAFe RTE, you will find yourself carrying balls of red wool and scissors to a PI-Planning meeting.

I have become a big fan of PI-Planning online, using mural, a great online whiteboard. In mural, you can create the same dependencies, using connectors. A quick way to do this is to press C and move your mouse cursor to an object on the board. The cursor will change to a hair-trigger and if you then left-mouse button and drag, you can easily and quickly draw a connector to another object on the board.

You can also change the straight line connector to a nice curve, make it red so it looks like wool - and you end up with a program board that looks and behaves just like in real life. Except for one thing: the dependencies are not very robust. Unlike wool, they are easily accidently moved if someone clicks on the board just to move it. That is a very undesirable property, you want your dependencies to remain in place, reliable, rock-solid.

Good news! There is a way to do this quite easily.

If you right-click on the connector, you can lock it!

That will keep it 'strongly bonded' to the objects it is connected to. Ask everyone to lock their dependencies, and your program planboard will be less vulnerable to accidental moving of dependencies!