Lesson 3: Fundamental Project Concepts: Part 2
Project Milestones
There are many fun terms and concepts which live in the project management universe. We'll look at five fundamental ones here.
Why have I selected only five? Well, its a little bit arbitrary on my part. Really, in my experiences, these are the five biggies. Knowing these will help you navigate some of the project management world with flair and confidence.
With that being said, as we move forward in this lesson (and in the remainder of our course), please do keep in mind that we're only covering the some of the basics here. Doubtlessly, your list of known project management terms concepts will grow as your immerse yourself in the role.
The first concept we want to look at is the milestone. PMFORUM, a wonderful website devoted to project management-related information, offers a truly gifted glossary which explains milestone nicely:
A point in time representing a key or important intermediate event in the life of a project. A milestone should be capable of validation by meeting all of the items prescribed in a defining checklist as agreed with the stakeholders.
We can sense two two basic elements of this introductory definition: key event and validation.
Key Event: Milestones give your project team a kind of little "hello there, notice me for some reason" flag at specific points in the project. What points? Well, that all depends (sorry, but it does). Milestones typically represent important project events, such as the completion of a phase or the creation of a prototype. They break up the project into little chunks, and give the team a chance to focus on some of the smaller goals along the way. Milestones are not activities in themselves; they do not require resources, cost money, or take time. They are just little flags that say HELLO. Think of them like little stickies that you put in a textbook to remind you of important parts of the book.
Validation: This part of the concept of milestone is less well-known, but equally as vital to understand the concept. Determining what is, and what is not, a milestone cannot come simply from the twisted mind of the Project Manager. Rather, the team should work together to identify what those milestones should be. Otherwise, when you actually reach a milestone, there may be key people on the project team that have no idea why it's a milestone. This doesn't mean that you have to take a democratic vote every time you think something should be viewed as a milestone; that would be wholly impractical, and furthermore, you aren't paid to do that. Rather, you will want to flesh out the milestones with, at least, your senior project team and any other key members involved in that key event.
References used in this section
PMFORUM: http://www.pmforum.org/library/glossary/
