Being a successful project manager requires various qualities. Amongst the many, timely completion of the project is at the very top for obvious reasons. After all, any delay in project completion means cost escalations. Therefore, timely completion of the project has to be one of the top priorities of the project managers. It is where achieving milestones becomes extremely important for effective management and thus keeping the team on track. Now let us understand precisely what are milestones in project management and why are they so important? Milestone is a management tool that is used to delineate a point in the project schedule. They are the finish mark of completion of significant phases of the project tasks (also called phase gates) creating important deliverables. Milestones are symbols to mark significant achievements in the project timeline. Milestones help break down the project into manageable chunks and thus assist project managers plan, execute and monitor & control the project in an effective manner.
Scheduling with Milestones: Key for the success of a project
When we speak about milestones, their scheduling is of critical importance. Milestones are essential for precise project planning and scheduling. They provide a way to accurately estimate the time it will take to complete your project by marking in-between dates that are considered significant, like holidays or deadlines in other projects you’re working on at the same time. Milestones also make an appearance in various documents such as schedules and plans; they can be found in Gantt charts (used for determining significant periods) down to calendars with shift reminders when assigning tasks amongst people is vital – which may explain why this unique system of measurement has been used since ancient times.
Linking Milestones in project management
Milestones are essential in project planning, as they allow you to plan and complete a task or part of the project. Let’s take a look at the use of project milestones in precise planning and scheduling: we call them “milestone schedule”.
Using Milestone Schedule and reaping the benefits associated with it
Creating a milestone schedule or simply a chart allows project managers and sponsors to divide the whole project into smaller chunks. This allows for faster communication with sponsors/customers because they do not have to read every detail of your plan; they just need an overview.
Conclusion for milestones in project management
To conclude, we can say that the use of milestones is vital in project management. It can enable you to ensure that your project is on course and will get completed on time. Once this is done, you can ensure that there are no delays and no project cost escalations. Much like this, as a successful project manager, you should be aware of other project management concepts/tools as well. A PMP certification can help you to be aware of and learn such important project management concepts/tools. So, for your success in project management, you need not only to clear the PMP certification exam but have a thorough understanding of the key concepts, which is why you must look for the right training institute and the right trainer.