What are Milestones?
In a general sense, milestones can be derived as an element through which a project receives its final destination of success. Most of the time milestones are a form of achieving something great or reaching a level of greatness which has never achieved by anyone.
Building a milestone in project management makes things exciting and adventurous for all people. And that is because while delivering a certain kind of project management planning process, a project manager needs to look into the profit matters closely.
What is Project Planning and Why is a Milestone Significant to Project Planning?
Project planning can be defined as the management of complete projects in a particular manner. A milestone is a major and integral part of any project. These milestones provide a transition of forms from one phase to another.
It provides an urge for the successful completion of the project by achieving something remarkable. A project which involves milestones as one of the main targets of the particular project management task makes the probability of achieving such a project a bit more complicated.
1. Frequency:
While working on a project, a manager comes across certain types of situations and issues which take advantage of the key milestones that the company achieved.
Most commonly whenever it is required to prove some points these milestones achieved by the company can be used as one of the elements of success. But usage of these project milestones quite frequently can turn in as one of the disadvantages for the sake of the growth of the company.
To overcome such issues it is better to lower the frequency of these milestones for the overall development of the project.
2. Visibility:
Milestones can be mentioned as one of the targets of the company or an organization which needs to be achieved on a timely basis. Sometimes proper visibility can make things easier when it comes to project handling.
Every milestone of the project needs to be visible so that the results of such milestones should be remarkable because of the visibility of these milestones. However, these milestones create a level of standard for successful project management tasks.
3. Time:
Time matters the most when it comes to the achievement of major milestones of the project and even milestones delivery for successful project management. Sometimes while addressing the performance of the team or the company, a manager needs to be aware of the milestone they achieved by completing the particular project.
And to make that happen the manager need to mention the milestone that the team achieved and even need to provide the performance appraisal for the work delivered.
4. Accountability:
Creating a remarkable milestone account most of the activities which are involved in completing and achieving such a milestone.
Most of the time while delivering certain project work, the possibility of achieving milestones can be minimal, but even after such minimal possibility the manager achieves the milestone, and making the process of achievement stage complete, is the necessary part of the project management.
All these works are required to complete the project milestone for the overall growth of the project.
5. Risk factor:
As the achievement of a project, a milestone is considered as one of the risk factors of project management techniques. It is important that even with such level of risk factor encourages the project manager to push their limits to achieve their milestone of the project.
It is not necessary that every risk factors need to be difficult in nature. Sometimes the risk factor encourages the person to achieve the level of a milestone that supposed to be achieved.
6. Management factors:
One of the most important significances of these business milestone projects is management factors. These management factors of the milestone projects create differentiation between project management and their elements of resources.
This kind of differentiating leads the project to a level where it understands all the elements of the resources which is required for the completion of the project.
How to Identify Milestones in a Project?
Identifying project management milestones in a project mainly deals with the standard of the project. Most of the time the project holds the highest level of standard and at that time it is necessary to understand the level of the project milestone which needs to achieved accordingly.
There are several ways to identify the milestone of a project and understanding the process of such a milestone.
1. Purpose of the project:
Each time, while understanding the project, a manager needs to make things clear with the task or the project. Therefore, if a person identifies the project better than the achievement of such milestone can be easy as nothing.
Firstly, to identify the main purpose of the project, it is necessary to understand the main purpose of the project so that the rest of the activity flows smoothly. The smooth flow of the activities attached to the project delivers the standard of the milestone.
2. Identification:
Once the manager understands the purpose of the milestone, then it is easy to perform the deliver the act of milestone which can be achieved for the purpose of the growth of the project management. Most importantly a manager should be aware of the project milestone and also identify the workflow to achieve such a project milestone.
Mostly, there is a possibility that people may make mistakes while identifying the project and end up achieving different dimensions of a project milestone which is unnecessary.
3. Implementation:
Completion of the project milestone needs to maintain all the information about the resources which is used for the completion of the project. And acquiring such information can be made possible by establishing the link between the project and its acquired elements.
Once it reaches the completion stage of the project draft, then it is time to maintain the implementation stage, which involves all the successful fulfillment of the milestone project.
4. Timeline growth:
The identification of the project needs to be accompanied with the project timeline. A project timeline is a period of time, which is very much necessary to utilize for the sake of the completion of the project milestone. These milestones help to maintain a certain level of progress within the project.
A timely update of such progress can benefit the completion of the assigned project management. Therefore, time plays an important role in a milestone project which is necessary for project management.
5. Monitoring:
Every project needs to be monitored by a particular person who has been assigned the monitoring work. A person who manages the monitoring work of the project needs to be aware of the project milestone.
Because if by chance the work doesn’t meet the actual requirement of the project, then the manager needs to perform some quick measures to overcome such situations. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the project to avoid such kind of project issues.
The Importance of Project Milestones:
One of the main importance of the project milestone is that it provides the project with a specific level of standard. A project milestone creates an environment where it is necessary to encourage ourselves to achieve that particular milestone.
1. Setting standard:
Once the assigned project reaches to the level where it can be declared as in the completed stage of accomplishment of the project milestone, then the manager and the project handler maintains a certain standard of the milestone when it is compared to other project milestones.
Therefore, it is necessary that the manager makes sure that the project assigned should reach the level of its set milestones so that it can be easy to establish the standard of projects.
2. It delivers accuracy:
After the achievement of such a milestone in the project, a project manager might definitely receive a positive approach from the rest of the team members.
And one of the main importance that can be achieved through these milestone projects is that they can perform better in terms of their accuracy level. Moreover, it maintains the approachable level of accuracy of the project.
3. Forecasting future milestone projects:
After completing the desired milestone of the project, a project manager might be approached by different types of projects which need to achieve higher levels of a milestone as compared to their previous milestone.
It is very common to understand that after the person handles the achievement of one of the milestone project, then it is possible that he/she can forecast the future milestone project that can be achieved by them.
4. Provide motivation to the team:
As it is explained earlier, the project manager needs to appraise the performance, by introducing the milestone project which has been achieved by the company. This will encourage the team to work better for the sake of the overall development of the company.
Most of the time the project manager might not use their achievement as one of the motivational element and eventually, this can turn in as the performance of the team might be lowered to a negative level.
Therefore, to avoid such issues it is better if the manager mentions all the milestone projects as one of the motivating tool for the team.
5. Milestone scheduling:
Milestone scheduling is a specific period of time, which need to be declared for the sake of the completion of the project within the prescribed timeline.
These milestone scheduling helps to create a different set of activities which can be helpful while maintaining the working durability of the projects.
Different Phases of Milestone Scheduling:
There are different phases of the milestone scheduling which is necessarily useful at the time of the complete achievement of the milestone project.
1. Pre-construction phase:
In milestone scheduling, the pre-construction phase plays an essential role in performing the durable activities of the project.
This pre-construction stage provides all the necessary details of the project and its necessary resources which is required to complete the milestone scheduling. Milestone scheduling helps to maintain the actual performance of the project.
2. Survey phase:
After the pre-construction stage the project manager needs to examine the survey phase of the milestone scheduling. While performing this phase the manager need to be aware of all the resourceful elements of the project, which can be useful while achieving the milestone project.
These surveys help to conduct the level or the possibility of success while performing the achievement process.
3. Engineering phase:
In this phase of milestone scheduling, the manager will gather all the engineering equipment and mechanical elements of the project, which is very much necessary to perform the work.
These engineering stages provide the overall growth of the project, which includes all the necessary changes that needs to acquire at the time of completing the process stage of the milestone projects.
4. Permitting phase:
It is one of the final and crucial phase of the milestone scheduling. At this permitting stage, the project manager needs to understand the actual work of the project and all the effective measures which need to be delivered for the success of the milestone scheduling.
These permitting stages involve all the essential elements of the project without which the project cannot reach its completion stage.
5. Construction phase:
It is the final phase of the working stage of milestone scheduling. Most of the time in this phase all the required and utilized resources make a final project milestone which was supposed to acquire by the project manager.
The construction stage involves most of the working activities of the project, such as mechanical and engineering elements of the milestone project.
6. Post-construction phase:
Once the project manager completes the milestone scheduling then it is time for them to analyze all the actual work of the project which was monitored timely by the project manager.
This post – construction stage involves all the necessary constructive elements of the project. And finally, it reaches to its desired level of the milestone which is necessary to be declared for the success of the project.
Conclusion:
And the bottom line is that all information about the milestone projects and their importance can provide a clear picture of the project that the company delivered for the sake of their overall growth.
Therefore, at the end of the discussion, we would definitely state that all these details about milestones and their significance can help one person understand more about these topics. And one can follow all the given details to understand all the elements of the project milestone.
