Technical GlossaryData Engineering and AI Infrastructure

Dependency Management

The process of managing the dependencies among tasks, datasets, and execution orders within a data workflow.

Dependency management defines which tasks in a data workflow cannot start before certain data assets or prior jobs are completed. If handled poorly, it may lead to jobs running on incomplete data, partial reports, and broken model inputs. For that reason, dependencies should be defined not only technically, but also in terms of data readiness and business meaning. Strong dependency management significantly reduces the risk of cascading failures in data systems.