Usually when joining a fairly technical team, the team has put together "learn these things" to get up to speed. For example, on our team where I am currently, you should be fairly familiar with statistics and maths after the first year on the team.
I think you could use a gantt chart to accomplish the same thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart
And your comment about the dependencies is still accurate for my team since we have to be efficient about doing the concurrent parts together to make sure we get this product to our client on time.
It's been useful for me to visualize all the moving parts of my project and see options that I have in a way that is familiar to me.