Project milestones: project management for the progress of your projects
Most projects do not see an end because of poorly organised project management. Project milestones are effective scheduling tools whose purpose is to prevent the clumsy management of a project. Project milestones are also essential for marking the time needed for a project to be completed on time.
But what exactly are project milestones? What is the difference with deliverables or simple tasks? What are the best procedures for setting milestones in a project? What are the crucial points in a road map where a project milestone should be added? How to explain milestones to customers, stakeholders and interested parties?
Read on to find out everything you need to know about project milestones.
Project Milestone: definition
A project milestone serves the function of a milestone and therefore a reference point on the road to the completion of a project. It may be placed at the end, at the beginning and during the course of a project. Or it may be placed at the end of a particular phase.
The project milestone is placed as a placeholder once the team has completed one of the planning or production phases in the road map of a project.
It can also take on a second function: to be used as a placeholder to mark a significant event in the road map of a project.
Project milestones are crucial in determining the cruising speed of a project, ensuring that deadlines and the set road map are met.
Project milestones also prove to be powerful scheduling tools. In fact, they provide a clear comparative advantage: the subdivision of a long and complex project into smaller phases, allowing it to be completed in a more accurate and organised manner.
In a nutshell, a project milestone specifies the objectives that the project must achieve by a predetermined date. It corresponds to a precise point on the abscissa of completion of a project and not to a time-dilated period. It sets the objectives of what is to be achieved, not the strategy or method for reaching the goal.
The schedule with project milestones
Project milestones are the basis of a management methodology whose purpose lies in calculating the time required for a project to succeed. This is why they are key elements during the development of a project. We find them within scheduling systems, such as the Critical Path Method, in which milestones are grouped into main categories.
Thanks to project milestones, the team working on the project is able to account for the level of progress, as segmentation into smaller intervals or steps provides better control.
They can then be interconnected through the same process used for tasks. Since they are interdependent, it may happen that the team is at a standstill: on the road map, a task is not completed and therefore cannot move on to the next step signalled by the project milestone.
If you create a common channel between task and project milestone, you will not create an impasse again, where they are stuck waiting for another task to be completed.
When to set a milestone?
Project milestones track the progress of a project, following a careful division into phases. Each project milestone divides the end point of one phase from the starting point of another phase.
We typically find four phases in project management:
- beginning,
- planning,
- implementation,
- closure.
But when is the best time to set project milestones?
The answer is not as complex as one might think: once all the tasks of that project phase have been completed.
For example, the definition of the roadmap is usually the last stage in the start-up phase of a project. In this case, we can insert a project milestone to symbolise the transition from the initiation phase to the planning phase.
However, each team may decide the most propitious time to insert a project milestone, after analysing the different variants that govern a project. For this reason, it is advisable to consult the professionals in the field and other teams within your company. Conducting a short training course can prove to be the key to an optimal understanding of project milestones.
Project milestones can be associated with a time fact rather than with the choice of a particular task or task.
The question therefore arises: are there project milestones that are not linked to the different project phases? The answer in short is yes.
You have complete freedom to choose and place as many project milestones as you consider necessary for the success and success of your project.
Traditionally, project milestones are used to divide projects into phases, but these scheduling tools can be used to identify an important task, deliverable or other.
Tracking progress with project milestones
The essential element of project planning can be summarised in one simple action: monitoring and tracking the progress of a project in real time. Project milestones therefore have the function of being the metronometer of a project's progress. Calculating completed project milestones allows you to determine how soon you will be able to complete the project.
Project milestones are useful when communicating with stakeholders. The latter, in fact, do not want to have a detailed millimetre report of the project's progress. They are interested in an outline report on the current position of the project in relation to the established road map. Project milestones lend themselves well to this as they illustrate the main stages that have been completed and relate them to the final objective.
When you are reporting during the stakeholder meeting, it is easier and more intuitive to show them
- the milestones completed during the month
- the milestones that will be completed next month
- the milestones that were completed on time
- milestones that have been completed but have been delayed due to problems encountered along the way.
Project milestones: beware of false synonyms
Now that we have explained what project milestones are, let us try to shed some light on some methods that resemble project milestones but are not exactly the same thing.
Project milestones do not correspond to:
- Deliverables: Although project milestones may coincide with the production of deliverables, they are not exactly the same thing. Deliverables are defined as the result of completed work, whereas project milestones are nothing more than a specific point in time that specifies the progress of the project towards the final goal.
- Goal: Despite their many similarities, goals are the projection of objectives that should be achieved in the future. Project milestones, on the other hand, quantify the progress made up to a specific point in time. and rather act as intermediate stages on the path towards the final goal.
- Stages: Again, the similarity could be misleading. However, project milestones are the start and end points on the straight line represented by a phase. A project can be divided into several phases in order to mark the different moments of realisation. Project milestones mark the juncture at which we move from one phase to the next. It is, therefore, possible that multiple project milestones may coexist within a phase.
Explaining the differences is not always easy, since project milestones travel together with the concept of deliverables, goals and phases. However, the concept to retain is the following: project milestones are versatile and can scan the different moments of a project. Their purpose is to communicate to the team and the rest of the company the progress that has been made and, above all, point the way to the final success of the project.
Teamwork to complete project milestones
Project teams operate at their best when they work in synchrony.
Giving project managers, teams and stakeholders the opportunity to communicate on the same platform ensures uniform work with the same objective. Managing a project from a shared operating system enables fast project planning. Indeed, you can plan your project milestones, using pre-formatted templates and an intuitive and easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. You can also set visual timelines via Gantt charts, which help you coordinate work and get constant notifications on team progress from a single, all-in-one platform.
Ready to set your first project milestone? Write in the comments about your management experience with milestones.
Article translated from Italian