{"id":19124,"date":"2021-06-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/when-to-use-milestones-in-your-project-plan\/"},"modified":"2021-06-24T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T05:00:00","slug":"when-to-use-milestones-in-your-project-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/when-to-use-milestones-in-your-project-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"When to Use Milestones in Your Project Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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For any particular project, your project plan is the map that outlines the entire journey. However, as a project is made up of many small tasks that all combine together, milestones are used to get an easier and quicker view of a project’s direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Project milestones are the waypoints along the course of the project. Imagine someone is giving directions and they say: “Keep going straight and take a left at the Starbucks, then continue until the Post Office and the building you want is next to that”, the Starbucks and the Post Office are the milestones, the markers that stand out from everything else as signals of progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

When creating your own <\/span>project management milestone schedule<\/span><\/a> however, things are not as simple as just listing every deliverable due date or sign-off point. Project milestones should have a clear and consistent meaning and recognize a point of culmination of a collection of different task strands. To give you a better idea of when to use milestones in your project plan we’ll take a closer look at some of the elements that define them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Key dates<\/b><\/p>\n

Most days during the execution of a project are focused on individual task progress, however some will stick out as being of special significance. It is these that can be listed in a project management milestone schedule. Examples of these key dates to note are:<\/span><\/p>\n