Question

I think we will all agree that getting your Masters degree is a major milestone. We use the term milestone all the time in ordinary English. However, it is a "word of art" in project management.  People, what do we mean when we say that "Task-27 is a Milestone Task"? What value do milestone tasks have in our schedule do you think? How do you indicate a milestone in the schedule in Microsoft Project?

Answer 1

Milestones are specific points added in the timeline of a project for the purpose of better monitoring and control. The milestones (or shifting them) do not have any impact on the project's overall duration as they are actually not activities or tasks. Rather they should be treated as the ending of different phases in the project's lifecycle. Milestones are very crucial to project stakeholders such as the sponsor or the management because they form the basis of comparison with the baseline schedule and cost on a broad and holistic basis without looking at the nitty gritty of each individual activities. Milestones are also crucial for the project manager herself because they give her the opportunity to:

• Evaluate previously identified risks to ensure they are being managed well.
• Look for new risks to the project.
• Verify that they have a business commitment to continue.
• Check whether project assumptions are still valid.
• Double-check the budget and deadline estimates to determine if they are still achievable.

In MS-Project, of course, a milestone will be entered as a 'parent' task of zero duration. All other 'child' tasks will be indented below this milestone so that the duration of the milestone becomes the sum of the duration of the critical activities under milestone. A typical example is shown below.

In the above example, the Task no. 4, 10 etc. are acting as milestones.