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A Jira dependency report for the steering meeting

Checked against Atlassian’s documentation on 7 October 2026.

Once a fortnight someone takes a list of cross-team dependencies into a steering meeting: what waits on what, when each end is due, and which ones put a date at risk. On Atlassian Community it is a dependency register “compile[d] manually in a separate Spreadsheet”, or “How to identify and track internal and external dependencies in a sprint and beyond” (Community, December 2025). This page says what Jira gives you for that report, how to build it from an export, then what Blockline does.

What Jira does by itself

  • Plans has a dependencies report, on Premium and Enterprise: the dependencies between the issues in a plan, drawn as lanes or a list (Atlassian). It covers what is in the plan; someone builds the plan and keeps it current.
  • On Standard there is no dependency report. The timeline draws dependencies between epics of one space; the links themselves are on each issue.
  • The issue search exports to CSV, one row per issue, with the columns you choose.

A report from the export

  1. Search for the open work that waits on something in the spaces of the meeting (a link-type search can return the blocking side too, so check the links column after the export): project in (STOR, PAYC, MAPP, DATA) AND issueLinkType = "is blocked by" AND statusCategory != Done
  2. Export CSV (all fields). Each issue’s links come as columns per link type and direction, such as “Inward issue link (Blocks)”, next to its due date, sprint, fix versions, status, assignee and parent.
  3. In the spreadsheet, split the linked issues into one row per blocker, look each blocker up (a second export of the blockers, or a lookup on its key) for its own date, status and assignee.
  4. Pick each side’s date: the due date when there is one, else the sprint’s end, else the release. Compare the two and mark the rows where the blocker lands after the work waiting on it.
  5. Add each story’s epic from Parent, so the meeting talks about deliverables, not stories.

It works, and it has to be done again before every meeting: links, dates and statuses move every day, and the sprint’s end date is not in the export at all, only its name. The links between two stories of the same epic need taking out by hand, or they count against it.

With Blockline

Blockline is our app. It keeps that register for you, judged:

  1. Open Apps › Blockline on the spaces of the meeting, or a space’s Blockline tab, and go to Team matrix.
  2. Each cell counts one space’s open dependencies on another, with the worst level among them; pick a cell to list them, each with its reason.
  3. Export dependencies saves the register: one line per open dependency behind the cells on screen (or behind the cell you picked), with both ends’ space, key, summary, status, date and where the date came from, then the risk and its reason, worded as on screen. The file opens in Excel as it is.
  4. Export matrix saves the grid itself, one line per pair of spaces; Export CSV on the risk board saves every deliverable worst first with its top reason.

What it counts, so the register stands up in the meeting:

  • A dependency is a Blocks link, or any link type a Jira admin adds; a story’s dependencies count for its epic, and a link inside one epic does not.
  • Each date is the first of the due date, Target end, the sprint’s end, the release date or the latest child, and its source is a column (Where dates come from).
  • Every row is as the person exporting sees it: an issue they cannot open is left out.
  • The columns of every export are in Exporting to CSV.

What the meeting looks at first

A register of fifty lines is read in the order the risk is, not the order of the keys. Sort the export by Risk, Blocked first: a circular dependency is a planning error only the two teams can untangle. Then At risk, a blocker landing after the work that waits on it, or not started close to the date. Then Watch: no date, no owner, or in progress for weeks. Those are the questions for the owners of the blockers, and the board’s Data health tab lists them for fixing in Jira.

For the conversation after the meeting, the blocking team’s side is in Tell the team that holds you up. More on the Blockline home page.

The team matrix over four spaces, each cell counting the row space’s open dependencies on the column space with the worst risk among them: STOR waits on PAYC twice, At risk, on DATA once, Watch, and on MAPP once, OK; MAPP waits on PAYC once, At risk; PAYC and DATA wait on each other once, Blocked; DATA waits on itself once. The STOR to PAYC cell is picked, listing STOR-4 waiting on PAYC-3 and STOR-7 waiting on PAYC-4, both At risk, with their reasons.
The team matrix over four spaces: open dependencies per pair with the worst risk, and the STOR → PAYC cell picked, two dependencies At risk with their reasons.

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