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I know Jira has support for linking tasks semantically (X blocks Y; is blocked by Z) but I wish more task managers had better support for this. A few do, but very few of those will actually show you a task graph.

I actually wrote about this exact thing: https://xavd.id/blog/post/my-perfect-task-app/#dependent-tas...

My hope for the perfect task tracker springs eternal.

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I really wondered why this is not an explicit thing in most task / issue trackers. There should be some semantic relations between issues which are standardized and come with special feature support.

If we know the dependencies and the priorities, we could also backtrack the graph and assign an "implicit (virtual) priority" to all issues which block issues with higher prio. It would also be nice to mark if something is on a critical path (that has been defined).

The overhead to write down dependencies is imho well worth when you consider how much that information can help you prioritize and save time by not starting something that will end up being blocked later. This is an issue I see repeatedly, also in companies who use Jira.

It's a basic feature in project management tools like MS Project. If a tool doesn't even match what Project can do, that's a pretty bad sign about the utility of it.

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