On Milestones In Project Management

Whenever a group of people starts working on some project, it usually defines milestones — some points in time when they have to complete the specific scope of work. The idea of milestones is excellent; however, it is misused or entirely unnecessary in many cases. Let us check these cases and see how to deal with them.

Why Do We Need Milestones?

Milestones in project management are used to track the progress of some specific activities or processes. They consist of the amount of work that the team has to do and the time when it has to be done.

Milestone may include functional, technical, or financial requirements. They define the scope of work and the expected outcome of work. Additionally, milestones identify the direction of the company's progress, specific goals, and how it will benefit from them.

So, the primary purpose of milestones is to build a precise picture of the future goals and the time when these goals have to be achieved. Milestones may also include lots of additional information and requirements to identify the objective and clarify how to achieve it.

Achievements vs. Milestones

There are several main differences between achievements and milestones.

Achievement is not a goal. It is a state of the project that may or may not be achieved. Consequently, achievements usually have no specific date.

In most cases, the achievement is not a metric or performance measurement — it is just a general description of the desired state or behavior. So, the project team rarely tracks achievements as precisely as milestones.

Achievement does not describe the scope of work, only the outcome. However, the team may do that intentionally to demonstrate what exactly they did to achieve the result.

There is one more minor difference — milestones are usually required to achieve for the project to be successful, while the achievements are optional.

The team can transform almost every achievement into a milestone by defining a precise goal, performance metric or measurement, and work score.

Expectations vs. Milestones

Often a project may also have a defined list of expectations. They may include possible results, expected behavior, performance metrics, etc.

The only significant difference between the expectations and milestones is that expectations have no specific date when they have to be completed. Consequently, they are not a part of the plan, and there are no guarantees they will be ever implemented.

It is easy to convert expectations into milestones — the team has to define the delivery date for each expectation.

Achievements and milestones are not the only milestone-like entities used in the project management that are not actual milestones. It is crucial to understand the difference between them, especially for startup projects. If the team knows that and defines milestones correctly, it can succeed and build a solid project.