# Drone CI runs all steps simultaneously when I use depends\_on instead or only 2 specified

**URL:** <https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-ci-runs-all-steps-simultaneously-when-i-use-depends-on-instead-or-only-2-specified/11197>\
**Category:** Drone Support\
**Created:** [September 27, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-ci-runs-all-steps-simultaneously-when-i-use-depends-on-instead-or-only-2-specified/11197 "2019-09-27T02:03:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![polina-mar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/74df32/32.png) [@polina-mar](https://drone.discourse.group/u/polina-mar)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-ci-runs-all-steps-simultaneously-when-i-use-depends-on-instead-or-only-2-specified/11197/1 "2019-09-27T02:03:10Z")

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Hi all,

I’m using Drone Ci 1.0.4 recently ran into mysterious issue with Drone CI. My CI pipeline consists of 6 steps. First 3 step should run in a sequence. Steps 4 and 5 are independent and can run at the same time. Step 6 should notify me if build was successful  
I recently added  
`depends_on:`  
`- step_4`  
`- step_5`  
And I noticed strange behavior: all steps 1-6 run at the same time. It causes steps to fail if they depend on each other  
Any help with my issue would be appreciated

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**Author:** ![bradrydzewski](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/drone.discourse.group/bradrydzewski/32/3513_2.png) [@bradrydzewski](https://drone.discourse.group/u/bradrydzewski)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2019, 2:29am UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-ci-runs-all-steps-simultaneously-when-i-use-depends-on-instead-or-only-2-specified/11197/2 "2019-09-27T02:29:42Z")

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This is expected. A pipeline is either represented as a sequence (denends\_on is never used) or a graph (depends\_on is used). When your pipeline is defined as a graph you must define the ordering using depends\_on for all steps. Per the [documentation](https://docs.drone.io/pipeline/docker/syntax/parallelism/):

> Note that when you define the dependency graph you must configure dependencies for all pipeline steps.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![polina-mar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/74df32/32.png) [@polina-mar](https://drone.discourse.group/u/polina-mar)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2019, 3:29am UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-ci-runs-all-steps-simultaneously-when-i-use-depends-on-instead-or-only-2-specified/11197/3 "2019-09-27T03:29:01Z")

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Thank you for a prompt reply @bradrydzewski! Very helpful answer