Project Planning
A milestone is a certain point within a project that shows how work progresses. It is part of a project lifecycle and a crucial success factor. It marks a crucial event within a project lifecycle that can be a deliverable, a submission, the start or the ending date. A milestone has always a certain timing that ensures work to be fulfilled until that date. It symbolizes a project phase has started or finished and dived a project into phases.
A project plan is designed to agree on expectations of the project team with regard to the output. As a part of that the project team defines milestones that serve as objectives to be reached in order to accomplish the project within a certain amount of time. A milestone plan shows he logical dependencies within a project. Reaching a milestone involves an uncertain amount of activities. However, a milestone plan does not have to be completed one by one. It doesn’t mean that after completing one milestone the activities in order to reach the next one are designed to start after completion of the previous. Instead, working on those milestones can be processed simultaneously.
Motivation and Ambition
Setting deadlines and interdependencies between team members can create a competition amongst them. This is not necessarily negative energy but serves as a motivation and leads people to show ambition. Tight deadlines are of high importance within a project. Milestones create a sense of urgency by setting clear goals and outputs do be delivered. A time schedule that supports those objectives to be reached is clearly a tool for organizing activities, tasks and team members among each other.
Each member should be aware that he or she is part of the whole and contributes to the outcome of the project. Allocated task and duties should be distributed fairly and should suit the team members strengths. That is why a project team should consist of many diverse people to cover as many aspects, opinions and experiences as possible. Creating "quick wins" by reaching a milestone can be encouraging to continue working in this group. Therefore, it is recommended to publish such a success internally as well, since members of the project group feel appreciated.
Celebrating success in a way that the employee or the team member creates pride and additional motivation. Whether it is only a handshake, a lunch or a bonus that the team or a member receives convey a sense of appreciation. This can be seen as an incentive to further put effort into the topic.
Monitoring work progress
Milestones are defined without setting the activities beforehand. Activities that help accomplishing them are much more detailed. Non-experts might not understand the set of actions that lie behind the indicators for a successful execution. It facilitates a better communication to the management as the quick wins can be presented easily without going too much into detail. Stakeholders are interested on how far the team has made it so far. Milestones deliver an opportunity for reporting the current state, delays, achievements as well as the planned outcome. This transparency creates
Critical thinking on milestones
Milestones monitor progress by considering predefined activities, however, they do not show limitations with regards critical aspects of the project. What can be derived is a positive outcome as long as it is delivered within the time frame. Restrictions or obstacles have to be discussed in detail.
Nevertheless, milestones are considered to be an important part of project planning. Making them visual in a Gantt Chart helps team members to stay on track.
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