A project management milestone on a construction site may be the point at which materials are delivered.
Project management milestones occur when crucial stages are reached, such as completing an important report or delivering goods to the customer. While the outcome of the project stage generally requires a lot of work to achieve, the milestone itself is effortless. Rather, a milestone in project management is a measurement point in the work process. Often planned in the early stages as checkpoints, milestones not only mark the timeline or stage of a project, but also its direction.
For example, in the examples above of a milestone that is a complete report or client handover, the project manager may have scheduled a change in the direction of the next step based on these results. If something important was missing from the report, a decision would have to be made as to which employee would be responsible for correcting the error quickly. If the customer was not satisfied with the item delivered, it would be necessary to arrange for a sales representative to discuss and correct the problem. These project management milestones will cause a change in the direction of the process to adapt to the new decisions made to achieve the necessary objectives.
If a project management milestone is just used as a checkpoint instead of being scheduled as a possible needed change of direction, a small hiccup along the way can affect the end goal. If only project management milestones are marked, minor details can go unnoticed at first and make it seem like everything is on schedule when in fact it is not. For example, in a construction project, the point at which the materials are delivered can be considered one of the key milestones in project management. However, if left like this, checking the list without making sure everything is there to complete the build on time, these details can cause a big problem.
In the original project plan, if this type of milestone also has a scheduled checkpoint, it is much less likely to miss issues. This makes project management milestones much more crucial than just a measurement, but also a valuable planning tool. Identifying problems quickly and then turning around to deal with them quickly can keep a project on track without disrupting the entire plan or schedule.