# See which work is waiting on other work

Two change requests belong to the same regulatory program: *Regulatory
reporting: claims data extract* cannot finish before *Unify customer
identifiers across policy and claims*, the item it depends on in the demo
data. Link them as predecessor and successor and the board draws the arrow,
and colors it red when the dependent one has run ahead.

## Before you start

The two items must be linked with **Predecessor** / **Successor** links, and
**both ends must be returned by the board's query**. A dependency pointing at an
item the query does not return is not drawn and is not counted on the card.

## Steps

1. Open the board and stay on the **Board** tab, because arrows exist there only.
2. Look next to a card's state for a small link icon with a number. The number
   is how many dependency pairs that card takes part in.
3. Click the icon, or press Enter or Space while it has focus, to draw that
   card's arrows. Click it again to hide them; the click never opens the work
   item.
4. To draw every pair on the board at once, select **⋯** (More actions) in the
   board's command bar, then **Dependencies**. The entry appears only when the
   board has at least one dependency pair, and it shows a check mark while it
   is on.
5. Read the direction and the color: each arrow runs from the predecessor to
   the successor, and turns red when the successor sits in a column further
   along the process than its predecessor.

## What you should see

Curved arrows over the board with an arrowhead at the successor end. They are
measured from the actual cards, so they redraw when you scroll inside a column
or resize the window, and they disappear for the duration of a drag and come
back on drop.

While the identifier work sits in **In Review**, a column ahead of the extract
in **In Progress**, the arrow is the ordinary gray: nothing is out of order. In
the picture below the identifier work is back in **Triage** while the extract
that depends on it stays in **In Progress**, so the same arrow is red, because
dependent work has gotten ahead of its prerequisite.

![Dependency arrows; red marks work running ahead of what it waits on](https://anykanban.com/docs/_img/dependency-arrow-red.png)

## Notes

An arrow needs both cards actually rendered, so an endpoint hidden by the
filter, still behind **Show more**, inside a collapsed column or lane, or in a
removed state drops the arrow silently. "Further along" means the board's own
column order, the order you see, which is the state model sorted by category
(Proposed → In Progress → Resolved → Completed) unless the board defines its
own list of columns, in which case it is that list's order. Either way it is
the board's order, not a judgment about dates.

## Related

- [Find one item on a board of four hundred](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/find-one-item/)
- [Show the board as it was at the start of the month](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/the-board-as-it-was/)
- [Work with a column that has hundreds of cards](https://anykanban.com/docs/find-and-analyze/a-column-with-hundreds-of-cards/)