In this lesson we will analyze the second principle that we need to understand for planning, the role of milestones. The concept of milestones has actually a pretty long history and to understand it well, we need to go back to the Ancient Romans. Back then, milestones where real stones, one per each mile, put alongside roads. They were very important for the Romans, because one thing that they really needed during the wars was to precisely plan their movements. They had to move troops from different places to be exactly in the same place on the same day, to attack the same enemy. This was one of the most important parts of their strategy. Milestones were an essential tool for calculating distances. The troop knew that to meet the day's goal, they needed to reach a specific number of milestones. If this did not happen, they had to run the next day to make up for the lost time. And this is exactly why we use the word milestone in project management too. Each milestone is a control moment in which we are going to check the fact that we reached something. Indeed, milestones need to have a list of characteristics that let us know if we had reached it or not. First of all milestones need to be objective, objective means that they need to be connected with a specific deliverable or output so there cannot be any doubt on the fact that we reached it or not. This means that milestones can be prototypes, they can be tests, they can be meetings, or even moments that are somehow connected with something that is objective. A second very important point is that the objective must also be relevant itself. For example, the release of a prototype is not a good milestone, on the contrary the acceptance of a prototype is a good milestone. Similarly, the release of a design is not a good milestone while the validation of a design is a good milestone. So we need to be sure that we put the milestones on points that are really important for the project. A third element which is connected with the definition of a good milestone is that they need to be
positioned in time. Therefore, each of them should be a deliverable with a specific deadline, so we can check on that specific date if we met the milestone or not. Once we understood what are the main characteristics of milestones, we need to understand that there are different typologies of milestones. Let's start with an example: if I have got a contract with an external customer, by definition I would have at least one contractual milestone, which is the final output of the contract, but in many cases I would likely have other milestones at specific points along the project. So what usually happens is to make an agreement with the customer to pay a part of the total price when we meet a specific milestone. If I do something like this I'm setting what is normally defined as a contractual milestone that is agreed between me and the customer. These milestones are connected with the customer, therefore are really important to us as a project team. We cannot discover that we are not able to meet the milestone the day in which it should be met. We need other milestones before this one in order to protect it. These milestones are similar to the Roman ones: they help us to check that we are on the right track at the right time to reach the contractual milestones. These milestones are normally called internal milestones. Finally there is a third category of milestone, that is called interface milestone. It often happens, especially in big projects, that my work depends on someone else's work. So, for example, I need to work with external suppliers and I need some information from them to start working. If I'm not receiving this data I cannot start my work. So the achievement of these milestones is very important, but it is not under my control. Therefore, there are interface milestones, because of the interface between me and my suppliers. One final comment, milestones have also a relevant impact on motivation. Since they are control points, usually, when a milestone is approaching there is an increase in terms of productivity to actually reach it. Therefore, when planning milestones it is very important to also have an overall perspective. Indeed, the effectiveness of milestones is indirectly linked with their frequency. If I have a milestone every day, their relative importance is basically null, so to properly leverage on them they should be coherently distributed in time.
